Whisking Away the Doubts
We are officially halfway through May, and pretty soon you’re looking at a summer fundraising campaign, not a spring one. But here’s the next installment of our Spring Campaign series!
If you’re coming in late, here’s a recap:
Week 1: Set your goals
This week, we’re going to talk about one often overlooked element of fundraising campaigns is branding and making things visually cohesive.
I feel that sometimes when nonprofits hear “branding” they think “be more like a for-profit/corporation” and we all bristle at that (for very good reason). But branding is one page I think we should be enthusiastically borrowing from the corporate playbook.
And not because your branding needs to be sleek…it just needs to be cohesive.
Here’s what not to do.
I started working for a nonprofit shortly before their big annual fundraising event–a polar bear plunge. The organization had redone their logo a few years prior…but had neglected to change said logo on the site where they raised funds for this peer-to-peer event. So right off the bat, the logo you saw wasn’t the new one. And while the old one and the new one were fairly similar…they weren’t identical, so going from their website or an email marketing piece to the peer-to-peer site made you go “what happened there?”
Beyond that, they’d redone the logo for the event every year (“keeping it fresh”); but on the fundraising site was one logo, the “fundraiser guide” had another logo, and the “plunger information” guide had yet another logo! Looking at them all together, it was hard to think “wow, this organization has it all together!” because…well…visually this event was all over the place.
Now, what was really disappointing about this was that the organization really did have it all together! The staff members were incredibly smart; the organizers they were employed were incredibly effective at their jobs. The Chief of Staff was a wonder at keeping the staff marching forward and on the same page. They were incredible…but from the outside, it didn’t look like they were organized at all! Yikes!
So first things first, I made sure everything was visually cohesive, and I noticed our conversion rate jump as soon as those changes were made.
And do you know why? Because the donor didn’t ever think “wait…what happened there? Am I on the right page? If I donate here, will it go to the right place?” It was visually cohesive, so it was clear that the email I sent asking them to sign up for the fundraiser took them to a page that was for the current year’s fundraiser.
Whisk Away Doubts
There’s a basic premise to donor engagement that I always tell my clients: Don’t give donors a reason to second-guess you. Sometimes it’s the littlest things that can make a donor pause for a split second, and in that split second they decide not to donate.
It sucks, I’m certainly not arguing that it doesn’t, but it happens. I’ve done it as a donor “Oh, this donate page sent me to PayPal. I thought they used DonorBox. The last time I donated the page looked different. Hmmm…I better check before I donate.” Told the organization, and I was right. They had switched from PayPal to DonorBox, and I was thanked for “letting them know” about the bad link…but also, how many donors didn’t tell them and just clicked away?
This is such a subtle thing, but so often overlooked. So what do you need to do today to make sure everything looks like it belongs together in your fundraising operation?
Your Homework Assignment
Do a quick review of everything that you’re sending out for this campaign (or if you’re not running a campaign, do a quick check of your donation infrastructure). It shouldn’t take more than the rest of this hour. Click around–do any links send you to old pages? Are logos consistent? Is messaging consistent?
If you are running a special fundraising campaign, I recommend a special landing page for the campaign so that all of your messaging works together. If the email you send says “Will you donate now to help us save the whales?” Don’t send the donor to a generic “support wildlife” donation page. That causes that momentary pause where they think “but I want to save a whale…will donating here save the whales or the penguins? I dunno…maybe I should wait until it’s more clear.”
So check around your donation infrastructure. Is everything consistent and leading where things need to go? Do you need to have a few different fundraising landing pages so you have one for each program you fundraise around? I’m not trying to complicate things, but the more you look cohesive and consistent on the outside, the more the donors believe you’re cohesive and consistent internally. It might feel like an “extra” thing to do, but if you end up increasing your conversion rate, it’s maybe the easiest way I know of to do so.
