The Annual Giving Exchange

Next Thursday, February 4th from 12-1pm CST, I will be presenting a one-hour interactive webinar on Leveraging Social Media to Grow Your Annual Fund. In this session we will:

• Discuss how traditional annual giving programs have evolved over the past decade
• Consider how social media has changed the way fundraisers interact with prospects and donors
• Examine the characteristics and opportunities of specific social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
• Demonstrate ways constituent engagement and gift potential can be measured through social media
• Share examples of how social media can be leveraged to grow your Annual Fund

The cost of the session is $125; as always, this fee is waived for clients of GG+A.  Click here for more information and to register.

The business of raising money for charity is not complex.  Beware of making it that way.

It’s not about convincing people to make a donation.  It’s about creating opportunities for people to make a gift in a way (and at a time) that’s both rewarding and convenient for them.  Letters, phone calls, and e-mails don’t convince people to give.  Experiences and causes do.  Fundraising appeals are just reminders that connect people to things that they have already identified as important.

The first question you should ask when evaluating your fundraising appeal isn’t “who should be the signatory?” or “what font works best?” Rather, it’s how does this make it easy for a donor to make gift?

Text fundraising underscores this very point.  In the wake of last week’s tragic earthquake in Haiti, text fundraising has been recognized as an easy and immediate way to support people in need.  Techcrunch’s recent article on mobile giving explains how and why mobile giving has recently come of age.  Click here to read the article, which includes the following list of options for texting support to the relief efforts currently underway in Haiti.

• Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross
• Text QUAKE to 20222 to donate $10 to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
• Text HABITAT to 25383 to donate $10 to Habitat For Humanity
• Text OXFAM to 25383 to donate $10 to Oxfam
• Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee
• Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada
• Text YELE to 501501 to donation $5 to Yele
• Text RELIEF to 30644 to get connected to Catholic Relief Services
• Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United Way
• Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation
• Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International

Growth used to be the annual giving mantra.

How can we increase donations next year?  What are we doing to improve participation?  Why has gift club membership been flat?

The benefit of a growth strategy is that it raises your sights and pushes you to be better.  The problem, however, is that it often causes you to neglect what you already have.  By worrying about the donors you want, the volunteers you need, or the resources you lack, you end up ignoring those things that are right in front of you.  Then (like anything that gets ignored) they get rusty, stop working, or simply go away.

We’ve learned some important economic lessons in the past year.  Bigger isn’t always better.  What goes up must come down.  Something is only worth what someone will pay for it.  But the most important lesson of all is that sustainability is undervalued.

Thomas Friedman says that sustainability will be to the next American generation what freedom has been to past generations.  Going forward, value will not be determined by how much something offers now, but rather by how long you can depend on it.

The same will be true in annual giving.  The most valuable donor won’t be the one who can give you $1,000 today, but the one who you trust (and who trusts you) to donate $100 each year for the next 20 years.

There’s a new mantra in annual giving.  It won’t be bigger, but it will be better.

Direct mail has been a fundamental tool in nonprofit fundraising for decades and, as a $50 billion a year industry, it isn’t likely to become irrelevant anytime soon.  But it won’t be around forever.

Today, more than 1.4 billion people communicate through e-mail.  If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world.  Nearly $15 billion was donated online in 2008 – 44% more than the year before.

Meanwhile, postage costs have increased 33% over the past decade and direct mail response rates continue to decline.

T. Boone Pickens has a plan to wean Americans off of oil.  Do you have a plan to wean your annual giving program off of direct mail?