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Does It Really Matter If I DON’T Donate?

Digital Fundraising, Direct Mail, Donor Psychology
Fundraisers are doing incredibly important work.  You are connecting people who care with people (or environment/animals/causes) in need. Most of us are active in fundraising because we want to change things from bad to good.  As Tom Ahern says, donors…
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How Many Times Can You Mail Your Donors Before They Rise Up And Kill You?

Benchmarking, Direct Mail, Donor Psychology, Maths of Fundraising
So how often should you mail? Pareto Fundraising, the company I co-founded before Moceanic, looks at data and tries to work out what the optimum communications program should be to maximise lifetime value from donors. Donors are very expensive to…
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Pop Art Oops

“Sign the Enclosed Placenta”: The Weird Power of Errors in Fundraising

Donor Psychology
Don’t you hate making errors? They make you look and feel stupid. But errors are funny things. It’s impossible to predict what damage they’ll do. Surprisingly often, they hurt your pride a lot more than they hurt anything else. We…
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Which Pile of Money Would You Rather Have?

Boards and Fundraising, Donor Psychology, Trends
Dan Pallotta couldn’t have been more right with his TED talk ‘The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong.’ But he wasn’t just trying to explain the importance and good that ‘overhead’ does for charities to the public and media. It’s also the charity staff who really need to…
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Why

Why Do You Do What You Do?

Donor Love, Donor Psychology
As I was working on some articles about story-telling, copywriting for your website and making your direct mail great I found I had to come back to the absolute fundamentals about why we in charities write anything at all. It…
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Fundraising

Donor Surveys are Great! But Should We Ask for Money?

Donor Love, Donor Psychology, Major and Mid Value Donors, Maths of Fundraising
Genuine donor surveys are the most powerful tool in fundraising.  They are effectively a large, technological extension of your ears.  And few would argue that listening to individual donors about their motivations, needs and opinions is a bad thing. Whether…
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The Truth Well Told*

Digital Fundraising, Donor Psychology
Many charities shy away from the ‘bad’ their organisation tries to fix.  This is not facing reality, not telling the truth and not giving people the opportunity to make bad good. Here is a cracking example from Concern Worldwide of…
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When My Mum Helped My Fundraising

Donor Psychology
Six years ago my mum helped me craft a little fundraising plan and story around my 40th birthday. The campaign was featured on SOFII, including the letter. Last week, mum was very ill so I got the next flight to…
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The Life You Can Save

Donor Psychology
As her mobile phone disappeared into her pocket a huge smile crept across Marie’s face.  She had to hold herself back from punching the air and cheering with delight. Marie had just landed a big, new client. But for quite…
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What is the Best Language to Use When Building Relationships With Your Mid and Major Donors?

Donor Psychology, Major and Mid Value Donors
I’ve been sharing a lot of tips and material about mid and major donors lately. And this got me thinking, what’s the best language to use when talking to and trying to build relationships with these donors? Equally, are there…
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