BEQUEST PROMOTION - THE ULTIMATE GIFT

A bequest promotion programme often takes two to three years to show financial returns, but the investment and the ‘leap of faith’ which is essential to begin promoting bequests pays off in what will almost certainly be the largest gifts your organisation ever receives.

Bequests come in the form of cash, residuals of estates, property, antiques, paintings, investments and jewellery, mainly from existing members, supporters and donors. Your donors are often delighted to find that there is another way in which they can help you; a way which ensures that your good work will continue beyond their lifetime.

The decision to leave money to charity is most often made when a person is 70 years or older, so start building a list of individual supporters, identifying those who are 65 or 70 years or older and therefore possible bequest prospects.

Dedicated bequest promotion begins with suitable bequest literature and well-trained bequest liaison officers who interact with older supporters. Your donors are unlikely to think of this on their own – so talk to those who have reached the stage of life when bequests are a consideration – and offer them literature and advice on how they can make the ultimate gift to fund your work. It requires a regular programme of mailings to those supporters and constant publicity about bequests in newsletters and annual reports.

Another idea is a Bequest Society, which offers membership to supporters who have made a confirmed bequest. Finally, when asking for bequests:

• Ask for age
• Ask for confirmation
• Ask for interest in estate planning
• Ask for membership in a society
• Ask for recommendation of friends.

PREPARING A PROPER APPEAL

There are seven steps to setting up the necessary disciplines to ensure that your appeal mailing programme has effective, well-presented themes and always gets into the mail on time:

• Prepare your full year’s mailing programme with timelines from first briefing to mailing date.
• Prepare a checklist of items required to brief your copywriter and designer.
• Call a meeting of key staff. Show them an example of a really good mailing package with an emotive theme, great copy and illustrations and a strong ‘ask’. Give your staff members the calendar and checklists and urge them to be on the lookout for stories, ideas and pictures for future appeals and newsletters.
• Diarise to contact your team at least two weeks prior to each creative briefing deadline and remind them of what they have promised to do.
• Make sure that you send everyone examples of every finished mailing so that they can see what they have helped to create – and share the results of your mailing.
• Keep abreast of new ideas and techniques by subscribing to fundraising publications.
• Donate to other non-profits – particularly those who are providing similar services to your own. Use their mailings to draw comparisons with your own.

Once these disciplines are in place, you’ll be producing better, more effective appeals that are always on time.

THE POWER OF THE CHALLENGE GIFT

How it works
A wealthy and generous donor, corporate sponsor, Board Member or Trustee agrees to put up a specific sum of money on the basis that you will go out and raise a like amount from other sources. Or the challenge gift might be a matching gift of one Rand for every Rand that you raise – there are many variations on the idea.

The donor is providing you with a powerful incentive or ‘reason to give’ that you can market to other potential donors.

The secret to getting started:

• Decide on a list of potential donors who are most likely to be challenge gift prospects for your organisation.
• Put together a presentation which shows how you plan to use the gift to generate double or treble the amount they donate.
• Enthuse them about how their investment will produce dividends of many times its face value.
• Focus strongly on the benefits for both your organisation and its constituencies when the challenge amount is matched or exceeded.

A GOOD LOOK AT THE YEAR AHEAD

To help us cope with change and in fact to survive it – we need to plan.

Strategic Planning sets out to answer these vital questions: Who are we?
Where are we?
What is the future we want for ourselves?
How are we going to get there?


Planning requires us to do 5 things:

• Think
• Write
• Use orderly procedures
• Make time. Take time off from your normal routine and even get right out of your office.
• Involve all the key people in your organisation.

A properly-run planning session takes 2 to 3 days of solid hard work – but the reward is that you will come out of it exhilarated, enthusiastic and with a clear sense of direction.

GO FISHING WHERE THE FISH ARE

Raising capital sums and major gifts from individuals who are themselves wealthy or who are able to influence large gifts from other sectors is a funding method which requires time and dedication.

You first have to think very hard about which influential volunteers might have an affinity with your cause. Then you have to go out and recruit them to help you for a short period of time.

You might be lucky and find them among your Board members or trustees, your alumni, or your present donors. Or you might have to dig deeper and search among the relatives of the people you help, or your neighbours or community leaders, sponsors or suppliers.

If your cause is worthwhile and your needs are genuine and urgent, you’ll always find influential volunteers to identify with what you do, and you’ll also find other wealthy and concerned people who will give you the time to listen to your request.

There is no substitute for sitting across the desk from another person and presenting your case for support and then making the ‘ask’. It’s by far the most difficult for a donor to refuse and it is therefore by far the most effective method.

Be prepared to be ‘knocked back’ a few times, but persevere and you’ll discover the enormous satisfaction, excitement and fulfilment of getting those all-important big gifts for your organisation.

TIME TO WEAVE A WEB

The Internet is becoming a fast-growing means of recruiting donors (especially in an emergency or crisis) and e-mail communication is growing in usage as a method of communicating with your donor community.

It pays to have a presence on the Internet. The trick is firstly to find a reason for people to visit your site and secondly to advertise your web address as extensively as possible.

Where do you start?

• Get your key staff members together and brainstorm some ideas for what you want to appear on your site. This will then form the basis of your brief to whoever you get to design the site.
• You’ll need help making sure that your site appears on as many search engines as possible.
• Remember that a website is a ‘living’ advertisement for your organisation that requires regular attention and updating.
• Offer useful information relating to your sphere of activity.
• Offer links to other international sites giving useful information about the type of work you do or assistance you provide.
• If you allow donors to make secure gifts online, then ensure that your latest donor renewal mailing is prominently featured on the first page.

WRITE YOUR OWN COPY

Fundraising copywriting is a highly specialised field best tackled by an experienced professional. But if your budget doesn’t stretch to copywriting fees, these tips can help you write a winning appeal letter!

• Pick the single most appealing or urgent aspect of your work and base the appeal on that; avoid trying to cover all your projects and needs in one appeal
• Formulate the ‘offer’ – what you want the reader to ‘buy’ and how much it costs
• Make your first sentence an attention-grabber
• Write about a real person (or animal) in need and how your organisation plans to help
• Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs; don’t try to impress your reader with your literary skills
• Aim for a warm, conversational style; this is not a business letter or formal report
• Use connectives – and, but, because, so you see – to link sentences together and draw the reader on
• Write from the heart and let the emotion out; if you’re angry and upset, sad or despairing, let it show
• Include fine descriptive detail, e.g. a damp curl on a sick child’s forehead, the sight of a broken toy, weather or seasonal conditions; these set the mood, and draw the reader into the situation
• Never start a sentence with ‘A’
• Remember to ask for the gift
• Tell the reader exactly what you want him/her to do – sit down right now and write out a cheque, post your gift back in the enclosed envelope, etc.

AN OFFER THEY CAN'T REFUSE

The ‘offer’ is a vital ingredient to any direct mail package. In a nutshell, the offer describes what the donor is buying.

This is not restricted to the tangible – e.g. new school, hospital or piece of equipment – but also what these items will achieve in terms of human upliftment. A new classroom or school means children can be educated and the door to a brighter future opened. A hospital means more lives saved or dread diseases beaten. Food parcels ease hunger and promote good health, etc.

If the need is huge, you should break it down to bite-sized chunks, to suit a cross-section of donor pockets.

For instance, a new building can be broken down to walls, doors, windows, etc. Fuel for an ambulance can be related to the number of kilometres between possible death and rescue.

Many organisations find it difficult to come up with a specific need, when what they really want is money for running costs. But asking for donations to pay the rent or the phone bill just won’t work! Instead, think about what would happen if you can’t pay the rent or phone bill: your organisation couldn’t operate.

Concentrate on the people who would suffer if you went out of business, and construct your offer around them.

COMMITTEES KILL COPY

If you’ve employed a professional direct response copywriter to pen your appeal letter, beware of passing it on to your committee for approval. Everyone will have an opinion, and want to make their mark by ‘improving’ the letter.

Here are six ways to kill copy:

1. ‘It’s too emotional’ – fact is, emotion equals success when you’re trying to motivate people to donate money. If they don’t feel angry (animal or child abuse), sad (hunger, poverty), inspired (education), frightened (cancer, AIDS), they won’t get involved. And if they don’t get involved, they won’t give.
2. ‘It doesn’t sound like me’ – many CEO’s are used to writing formal reports and business letters and they’re uncomfortable signing a letter that’s so different from their usual style. But great direct response copy tends to be warm and friendly in style.
3. ‘It’s too long’ – but is it interesting? Does it flow and draw the reader on? Is it broken down into short paragraphs and headlines so that even if it’s only scanned, the message gets through?
4. ‘We haven’t mentioned all our other projects’ – it’s important to concentrate on the single, most appealing aspect of your work and build a focused appeal around that. Too many different ideas in one letter will confuse the prospective donor.
5. ‘We should just change a few of the words’ – like substituting assist for help, malnourished for starving, invest for give... Direct mail copywriters use short, common and emotive words to get the message across clearly. Don’t be tempted to substitute these for bigger, more impressive words.
6. ‘You can’t start a sentence with and, but or because!’ – an experienced copywriter knows that a letter should flow seamlessly from one point to the next, and will therefore take some licence with the rules of grammar.

What you should change: any facts, figures, names and descriptions that are incorrect or untruthful.

IDEAS FOR NEWSLETTERS

Stuck for articles with which to fill your donor newsletter? Involve your volunteers and staff in a workshop to brainstorm ideas for identifying news stories, possible themes and sourcing photographs. Here are some prompts to get you started:

• Case histories of people who have benefited from your services
• Current happenings and how your organisation is responding
• Special projects
• Answers to donor queries
• General work of the organisation – a chance to tell donors about other aspects of your work
• Useful information
• Letters from donors/ beneficiaries
• Report back on mailings,
• Creative ways to thank donors for their support
• Bequest and ‘in memoriam’ articles – plants the seed in donors’ minds
• Review objectives of your Organisation
• Surveys – find out what your donors are interested in reading about
• Staff activity
• Introduce new needs or campaigns planned
• New publications planned
• Inspirational stories
• Great photos of people/projects who have benefited
• Tips and ideas

PICTURES WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Good photographs breathe life into your appeals and newsletters. Keep a camera on hand to capture precious moments, and follow these tips to get the most out of your shots:

• Use the camera’s highest resolution setting so your photographs will be suitable for print
• If you’re using a digital camera make sure you have a memory card which holds at least 256MB, otherwise you may be forced to set the camera on a lower resolution in order to take a sufficient number of pics
• Get as close as possible to the subject
• Never take a photo facing into the sun – your subject will come out in shadow, or you’ll suffer from a case of lens flare, the result of sunlight shining into your camera’s lens, which produces a series of bright spots on your photograph
• If shooting indoors with a flash, move the subject away from a background wall to avoid harsh shadows
• It’s a good idea to keep the camera’s flash on, whether indoors or out. The flash helps to fill in unsightly shadows – under people’s eyes, in shady spots and generally helps to brighten up the photo
• Crop out unnecessary or busy backgrounds
• Deep etch photographs and/or add drop shadows to make them leap out of the page

WILL OUR E-NEWSLETTER GET OPENED AND READ?

Yes! If it...

• Gets past the spam filters – avoid asterisks, exclamation marks and words like FREE in your subject line. Don’t use a colour font and never, ever send an attachment
• Comes from a known and trusted source – make sure your organisation’s name appears in the FROM line
• Sounds interesting – spend some time developing a catchy subject line; keep it to 50 characters or less and get some benefit to the reader into it.

BEFORE YOU EMBARK ON A CAPITAL CAMPAIGN

Feasibility study:
What is the image of the organisation? Do you have a donor base willing to support the capital campaign? Do you have the resources in place to make it happen? Conducting an initial feasibility study to assess – or ‘test the waters’ – is essential before leaping in head first with potentially disastrous consequences.

A clear fundraising strategy:
Should the feasibility study be positive, take the time to devise a clear and achievable fundraising strategy to guide you through the life of the campaign.

Articulating the case for support:
Put together a clear, emotive and compelling case for why your donors should support the campaign.

Potential donors:
Segment your donor file to make sure that major donors are asked by their peers, and medium and general prospects are also asked in the appropriate way.

Supporting materials:
You will need a case statement, budget, website, and visual representations to support your campaign and inform your donors of the need to give. Remember, donors will only give if they believe in the cause and trust you to deliver on their behalf.

Be realistic:
A capital campaign is a vast undertaking. Make sure your preparation and lead-in time are adequate, and that you don’t alienate your donors by selling a vision that is not realistic or achievable. Experience shows that donors will not forget the promises you don’t keep, nor their expectations which you have left unfulfilled. Once trust is lost, it’s hard to regain.