The good folks at CDR Fundraising, a consulting firm that helps nonprofits raise money, has posted an interesting PowerPoint show. It’s full of interesting facts about the history of fundraising during economic downturns. It’s mixed news for riverkeepers, land trusts, and other local nature protection and pollution control organizations.
The bad news is that national charities with high name recognition weather these storms better than local ones. The good news is that individuals who gave to your organization before the recession hit are likely to keep giving, although perhaps at reduced levels. And the trend away from paper checks and towards online credit card transactions will continue.
…2/3rds of online donors plan to increase giving online, vs. 1/3 who plan to give the same amount or less.
The author of this PowerPoint skips past an important point. It’s so obvious to him that he didn’t bother to include it: It matters how you ask. Fundraising letters, emails, and web pages that make a clear and compelling case for the work of the organization are more successful than those which are loaded with shoptalk, confusing, and hard to follow. The most successful fundraisers relentlessly test their materials to determine which variations on words and pictures most effectively evoke the charitable instinct.
Click here for “Fundraising in Difficult Times.”
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You blog is all about breaking through the “shop talk” wall all around us, or in this case, break down that dam, to use a water analogy.