Creative Ways to Stand Out at Year-End

Jeff Schreifels 

This time of year, we’re all bombarded with letters and emails about December sales, holiday events, and of course, year-end fundraising appeals, but some messages managed to break through all the noise. In today’s episode, we’ll be sharing our best practices for how to make your donor communications engaging and relevant, without overwhelming your donors during this busy year-end season.

Recorded 

Welcome to the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group, featuring Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels. Twice a month, we bring you the latest and best thinking about major gift fundraising so you can develop authentic relationships with your major donors. Here are your hosts, Richard and Jeff.

Jeff Schreifels 

Welcome to the podcast today. I’m Jeff Schreifels. And I’ve invited Drew Coursin, one of our Veritus Client Experience Leaders, to join me for today’s podcast episode. You know, this time of year is incredibly busy for you and for your donors, which makes it much more important to figure out how to stand out in meaningful and valuable ways. It’s going to be a great conversation. And thank you Drew for joining me today.

Drew Coursin 

Oh, thanks so much for having me, Jeff. I’m really happy to be here.

Jeff Schreifels 

So before we get started Drew, why don’t you share a little bit more about yourself and what you do here at Veritus Group. So our listeners have an idea of who you are.

Drew Coursin 

Sure thing I know my name pops up occasionally on the blog and the message boards. But I’m Drew Coursin, I started as a Veritus client back in my major gift officer days at Greater Twin Cities United Way here in Minneapolis. And since then, that was about five years ago, since then, I’ve fallen into consulting and gone back to practicing law and teaching writing. But, you know, the through line really is building relationships. And that’s what drew me back to working with Veritus.

Jeff Schreifels 

I would say like, you’re kind of like a renaissance guy, all this great experience.

Drew Coursin 

You know, I prefer to think like, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but…

Jeff Schreifels 

[Laughing] Well, good. So today, we’re going to be sharing some ideas and tips to help fundraisers stand out at the year end. Communication from non-profits has already been way ramped up for a while, but at year end, that communication accelerates. So what are some challenges you’ve seen, Drew, for fundraisers who are trying to create meaningful connections with their donors during this busy time of year?

Drew Coursin 

You know, Jeff, it really boils down to one word: more. There’s such a pressure for fundraisers, and really everyone in a non-profit organization, to just do more at that critical time of year, even for companies that don’t necessarily have a fiscal year end, at the calendar year end. It’s crazy. Everything is just crazy pace. No, you know, there’s this, this pressure on fundraisers to grab attention to get those gifts in before the year ends to close the books on the calendar year. And that translates to the potential to overwhelm and annoy and just send a lot of extra busy, not at all interesting, information to donors.

Jeff Schreifels 

So what are some of the things that your clients right now, you know, your your major gift officers, mid-level officers are doing with all of that noise that’s going on?

Drew Coursin 

The thing I tell everyone, either mid-level or major gift officers, is to be very judicious in what they send out and to go into the end of the year with the plan. You know, I think that’s something that we counsel the people we work with year round, is to have a strong clear communication strategy. But at the end of the year, it’s especially critical that you write the plan and then work the plan. It’s very tempting, especially with spur of the moment events or spontaneous initiatives to fundraise around or just great ideas that someone in marketing had is to add more and more letters or phone calls or stories. But I think, you know, if gift officers can be really choosy, and you know, when I say that I realize it’s probably code for just send less than what they’re tempted to send. I think they really benefit from being more focused on donor-centric, high quality, compelling and and concise, above all else, communications.

Jeff Schreifels 

I think the key there is the plan, right? Because when we work with our clients, we’re always helping them develop those 12-month communication plans, and especially, you know, and then we’re checking in all the time, right? So to make sure, are we still on plan? Do we need to change those up? And I think, you know, coming down to the last, you know, six weeks here of the year, maybe, you know, four weeks of the year, that’s when the plan helps us figure out who do we need to talk to, by year end, like program people, finance people, the communications team so that we, they realize they’re not going to throw a bunch of stuff on it, because we’ve already got a plan, it’s just to remind them again, remember what we did, we have this plan out here for year end. And I think you’re so right, that a lot of folks don’t do that plan. And so then they’re just throwing things out there. And you know, they’re getting pressure from communications, direct response, you know, you got to send out all these emails, you got to do all of this. But the key is, as you pointed out, is if you have a plan, and you’ve communicated that out to all of your colleagues, in other departments, you should be okay.

Drew Coursin 

You should be, and I think that’s, that’s where fundraisers really find themselves in a two-way pressure. One is, you know, if you’re a fundraiser at a given organization, and you look around or even open your own mailbox, you’ll see a stack of what may be ranging from compelling to totally annoying messages from other non-profits. And so there’s this external pressure that well, everyone else is ramping up. So I have to redouble my efforts and make sure that I’m sending twice as many, or I just want to be the last letter on that stack. And then there’s the other pressure, the internal pressure, like you mentioned, Jeff, is, is the marketing and communications teams or direct mail, who are pushing out probably their busiest time. And often there isn’t a great communication matrix between the development departments and the communications departments, which is one of the greater ironies in our industry, but a grim reality.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. One of the things you mentioned was it’s not about volume, you know, of getting stuff out. It’s not quantity, its quality. And so, I want to ask you, how do you create those touch points that are really going to stand out to donors?

Drew Coursin 

Great question. And, honestly, you know, in the spirit of keeping things as simple as possible, it really goes back to that plan. The plan is the genesis of everything. And the plan should have in it a theme or a series of themes that you cling to throughout the year, and craft your storytelling around. Because ultimately, I mean, everyone knows that what we do, isn’t and shouldn’t be rocket science. It’s taking maybe complicated topics about addressing need in our communities, and distilling them into simple, compelling, beautiful messages. And so, you know, if you can take the pressure off ourselves as fundraisers to create really elaborate or novel outreach, and just focus on on what we started with the beginning of the year, which is, maybe it’s broken down quarterly. Quarter one is theme A, quarter two is theme B. And once you get to quarter four at the end of the year, one, you know what your theme is; two, the other themes throughout the year have been building toward it and really speak to it. And three, you should already have been thinking about, you know, what are the stories you’ve been collecting in that last nine months to stay to that theme. So it’s really a matter of anchoring in that plan and that theme and then thinking creatively about if I were a donor, what would keep me interested in this story? What would keep me moving along the journey? It’s probably not another multi-page, big thick envelope full of statistics and stories. And not that those don’t have a place in our outreach but I think at the end of the year, it’s just, it’s reminders, it’s touch. It’s bringing people along.

Jeff Schreifels 

Hitting emotional triggers. I think you’re so right, keeping it simple. How do you complement those other efforts that are going on through marketing or the direct response team?

Drew Coursin 

Another great question. And another area where there’s a need for a certain level of radical detachment as a fundraiser. You know, rather than grind our gears and try to affect what our marketing, communications, and direct mail colleagues put out, I think what we can do is try our best to figure out what they’re going to send out in advance, which, again, I realized is a challenge in many organizations. But looking back maybe at last year, if they have habits of sending out statistics, then I think, you know, it’s really a matter of, of looking at complementary opposites. So if your marketing communications team is really focused on impact report, and numbers and statistics of the community served, then you as a fundraiser I think can craft shorter, more narrative, people-focused messages, you know, pick a story, a person, an experience, a testimonial. And it doesn’t have to be long, it can just be something that if you put those two things side by side, your exhaustive list of Mar-com statistics and your paragraph about someone whose lives were touched, then I think those can work together.

Jeff Schreifels 

I think that’s great. Yeah. You know, the other part thing that we talk about getting close to year end is providing impact reports. Because we know that donors go away when they don’t know how their gifts made a difference. And around this time of year is when they need to be reminded, or at least reported back on how those gifts they made during the year actually touched the lives of people or animals or whatever your mission is. So how do you make those personal impact reports standout? What are some of the things that you’ve seen, what the major gifts, the mid-level officers work on, that you see is impactful?

Drew Coursin 

You know, I think you said the word that matters. And that’s personal. I think there’s a temptation too, especially working with the marketing teams, to express impact in terms of, you know, this longitudinal, year over year, organization to community effort, but I think like you said, what’s meaningful to donors is, the answer to the question of “Is my gift making an impact?” You know, I’ve seen some success in crafting, you know, personal impact matrices where you can input dollar amount, and it has an output of, you know, theoretical number of backpacks bought or meals served. You know, those get a little dicey, I think, because, to be honest, you need to be a pretty big dollar donor to see a very tangible output like that. But I think for the majority of donors, just crafting, again, a narrative rundown of what their gift did. Not just, you know, your X amount of dollars goes to X, Y, and Z initiatives. It’s a recall of what the fundraiser knows about the donor’s passion and interests and speaks to those directly, you know, and then connects the dots, because ultimately, our job is, is largely connecting dots for donors, it’s connecting the dots between what the organization does, the populations it serves, and then the passions that people want to express in their communities. So if a fundraiser knows that a donor loves that, you know, their their donations go to improving living conditions in a women’s shelter, then the impact report can be a simple testimonial or a story about the women’s shelter and where it is, in the larger context of the organization’s efforts. It doesn’t have to be every statistic and every dollar in, outcome out.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah, I think, you know, all this impact report work is probably one of the most frustrating for the major gift, mid-level officers because they’re always lamenting to us, we’re just not getting that information. It’s out there. But, you know, our program team, our marketing team just doesn’t see it as a priority for us, and so, part of that work for the fundraiser is really trying to establish relationships with those people, and help them understand the importance of why we need to report back to donors, why it makes an impact, you know, trying to bring program people to talk with donors and, and build those relationships internally, so that by the end of the year, they’re on board with you, and they’re wanting to provide that information for you. I think that so many fundraisers tear their hair out at the end of the year scrambling, trying to get some kind of information, trying to get a story that’s impactful. And it’s so hard because they don’t have teams that see it as a value. And so like, starting next year, what am I going to do to build the relationship with those with those folks?

Drew Coursin 

Right, I that is absolutely spot on. I encourage our fundraising clients to pick a handful of program folks and essentially add them to the DEP.

Jeff Schreifels 

Oh I love that.

Drew Coursin 

And you know, don’t “work” them, like, we don’t “work” donors. But I mean, we, we stay on top of being consistent in building relationships. And there’s really no difference. It also, it makes me think I was really lucky enough to sit in at one of our client’s all-team retreats a few weeks ago, and I spent about four hours doing some strategic planning with them. And they were gracious enough to let me speak for about an hour. And I was going to give a presentation that sometimes I give about feelings in fundraising. But I woke up that day and felt kind of spontaneous. So we ended up just having an hour session about storytelling. And it really cut, I will get back to our point, I promise. But you know, the gist of it was that there’s a stigma among non-fundraisers about the craft or the art of fundraising. Yeah. And I think that cuts to what you’re saying about the disconnect between marketing or non-development departments is, whether it’s a fear or a misunderstanding or just a mischaracterization of what our job as fundraisers is, I found myself talking to this group of brilliant, talented people, and fewer than half of them raised their hands when when I asked if they’d feel comfortable doing networking or going to an event to ask someone for money. And after about an hour, we realized that well, if we do it right, and everyone can easily recall the story of the organization and the impact that it makes and know why it’s important to report that impact, then really everyone is a fundraiser. And there’s nothing magical about it. It’s just consistency and telling that story. So that that’s what made me think about our impact report. But I’m curious what have you seen lately about creative impact reports that aren’t those exhaustive almanacs?

Jeff Schreifels 

You know, it’s interesting, I think it goes back to being simple, like you said, and I don’t think it has to be, it doesn’t have to be expensive. One of the most effective things that we’ve seen a lot, is using video, you know, just from the phone, your phone video, especially at the at the end of the year. It’s great to be able to actually show some things or program in action, if you can, or simply just you yourself as the fundraiser doing a like 30-second or one-minute, “Hey, I just want to thank you for your gifts this year. Here’s what you’ve done,” you know, and sending a quick video off. I feel like video today has such an impact on people, especially if it’s very personalized to them. And we’ve gotten really great feedback from donors after they receive them, like how touched they were. And you know, they then they play them over and over again. It’s like, Look what I got. It’s almost I feel like today getting those little video clips on people in their email or text is the almost the equivalent of getting a hand-addressed envelope. It always gets opened right? A hand-addressed envelope, or a video sent to you that’s sent directly to you, that speaks your name, that says hey, I know you, you did this. And it’s amazing. And I want you to know that.

Drew Coursin 

I’ll tell you Jeff, I am getting ready for the video version of this podcast, because I’m nodding furiously and realizing, you know, we’re on a strictly audio medium, but I agree completely. The video angle has been a real game changer in the last few years. I’m curious about what comes next, you know, what sort of technology can we use that, that doesn’t stand in the way of the personal connection, but just makes it even richer?

Jeff Schreifels 

I know, I mean, it’s going to happen. I don’t know what it is yet. But it’ll happen. That’s what’s exciting, you know, it’s always evolving. So there’s always those, those things that we do that are that, you know, we’ve been doing for years and years, just that simple, handwritten note, how effective that still is, and actually probably is even more effective today than it’s ever been. So that’s something that’s old. That’s an old, it’s you know, send a handwritten note! It’s not some incredible strategy, but it’s so effective. So we got all those things, and then who knows what’s going to happen in the future, but we’re always trying. It’s interesting, all the technology that’s coming out, that direct response is trying to use is everything that we get to do in mid and major gifts, where we’re actually calling people out by name that we know their passions and interest and using those passions and interests, in our offers, in our conversation. This is what technology is trying to replicate in the direct response world to make it more personalized. Why? Because everyone knows that the more personalized, the more that you can tell the donor you know them, the more they’re going to be drawn to what you have to say and want to respond to. So yeah.

Drew Coursin 

That’s a really good point. Yeah, that that actually makes me think, you know, back to an earlier part of our discussion, you know, amidst that, that flood of colorful mailers and, you know, heavily stuffed envelopes with, right, maybe misspelled return address labels, no shade on any particular organization. You know, I think as a donor, if I saw one, you know, maybe differently sized envelope with some handwriting on the outside, I know which one I’m going to open, and which are just going to go into that stack. And that doesn’t even say anything about the content. So I think the opportunity for fundraisers just to, not that we’re looking at our job as competing with other non-profits for any particular share, I mean, we want to honor donors’ wishes and their creative, their philanthropic passions, and the reality is that we have to stand out, we have to compel people to read what we have to say, because it’s interesting, but it’s not interesting enough to like, reach through the mail and grab them, we have to figure out how to get it in front of people’s eyes first, and then it’s easy, because we have the beautiful, you know, elegant written stuff.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. Well, Drew, we covered a lot today. So I just want to thank you for joining me. It was awesome talking with you. I think we had some good stuff for folks to think about. And we hope that you’ve heard some tips and strategies that you can begin implementing right away, right? I think you did. So thank you for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.

Recorded 

Thank you for joining us for the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group. Richard and Jeff also write an ongoing blog that you can subscribe to for free at veritusgroup.net. Please join us again next time.