Just one of those days...

As staff you have to make a lot of fundraising calls. Every staff does. And every now and then you get one of those calls that kicks you right in the gut. You know the ones, right? The call where you hang up wondering IF you really are doing the right thing. The call where you hang up wondering IF you really are just panhandling.

But, at the end of the day you know you’ve been called to serve your mission and a part of that calling is fundraising. And besides, now you have one of those war stories to share with other staff!

Well, let us here at Staff Monkey encourage you! Just because you leave staff doesn’t mean you won’t still get to have those calls from time to time! We recently received an email from a staff who believed we might be engaged in a diabolical plot to rip off staff because there are a number of other Do-It-Yourself email marketing options out there that are cheaper than Staff Monkey. And he was particularly concerned because we use MailChimp (the very best of these) as our backend for our customers and yet keep this a closely guarded secret.

I would share the email, but he wasn’t nice people (although I’m sure he didn’t mean to come across as rude, right?).

We do want to take this opportunity to reaffirm to you, our much loved customers (and potentially much loved customers), that we will always look for better and greater ways to make you more awesome at what you’ve been called to do. And we are always evaluating and looking for ways to add value for what you pay for.

OK, I’m letting go now.

Writing a great newsletter is an important part of partnering with your donors.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to actually accomplish your number 1 goal when sending a newsletter (see here)… getting it READ! Although there is no magical formula (surprisingly) there are a number of things you can do to get your newsletter read and even get a response from those you are trying to communicate with about your ministry.

1. Write For Your Readers. Although your life and ministry is extremely fascinating to you (and rightly so), try to ask yourself if what you are reporting is really important to those who pray and invest in your ministry. Although it is tempting to share every detail of your month to those who help make it happen, remember that what supporters want to hear more than anything else is a story of how people are being impacted by your ministry!
2. Keep It Simple (or in this case, Short) S****d. Although this adage is slightly insulting it will serve you well. How short? Think 300 words for emails and 500 words for paper newsletters. In other words, very short. You want people to open your newsletter and decide right then and there that they will take the time to read it because if they decide to “read it later”… well, they most likely won’t. Remember, your goal is to get your newsletter READ.
3. Choose Exceptional Pictures. The first thing a reader looks at when they open a newsletter is the pictures. Make sure your pictures are of good quality, tell an interesting story and leave people wanting to know more. Obviously this can be a tall order, but try… try hard. And enlist the help of others if this isn’t one of your strengths, because you just might know a co-worker or student or someone who loves taking exceptional pictures.

If you can do these 3 things your newsletter will get read more often by more people and that’s the whole reason why you are writing your newsletter in the first place! For most people this will actually be a serious challenge, but I always considered it a (spiritual?) discipline when I was on staff and I was never sorry when I did it right.

I ask staff this question fairly often. What is your #1 goal when you send a ministry newsletter out to your supporters? I’m always surprised at the blank stares I get back in return. When I press them to think about it I usually get something to the effect “to update them on the ministry” and / or possibly “make prayer requests known”.

Both answers are good. But neither answer should be your top priority when it comes to sending out a prayer letter. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

So what should your #1 goal be? Read More

1) Spring board one of your “boring” stories off of a random event or date. The Chases Calendar of Events is a good resource for all sorts of random date facts. As well, the BBC’s On This Date offers interesting historical events that have happened through the years on a particular date.

For instance, on April 10th 2008, the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement was made. How many times have you had to help students make peace with one another? That stuff doesn’t always make newsletters but its a part of your day-to-day job and it’s important to communicate those things to donors who make it possible for you to do that job.

2) Tie in a current event and how it’s affecting your ministry.

I know of a couple of staff who are losing potential student leaders because they have to leave school and find jobs because their parents can’t afford to pay for college anymore. Many donors don’t even understand that InterVarsity staff spend most of their time training up student leaders! It’s not as glamourous as the 5 people that got saved last month, but probably just as relevant to you.

3) Find inspiration from your organization’s annual report.

Many, if not most, of your donors support YOU, not necessarily the organization you work for. But there are great things happening in your organization as well! Let your supporters know about those things that are relevant.

And if you are still all out of ideas, go put on a sandwich board sign for the day and generate one of those memorable, awkward sorts of stories.

The following comes from a book written by a Navigator staff called Funding Your Ministry. I liked this newsletter example derived from the chapter entitled “How to Write Newsletters People Actually Read.” It also made me a little hungry…

“September 16 at 4 p.m. I accompanied our Wisconsin staff member to campus to visit a friend of his. We met him at the door to his dorm room; he was carrying two cans of Old Milwaukee and a package of bratwurst-Schweigert, I think.

He welcomed us warmly, and we started talking as he poured the 2 beers into an electric frying pan. One of the beers exploded onto his books and clothes. ‘Someone must have shook this one up,’ he said. Then he dumped the Schweigert bratwursts into the beer (on simmer) and kept turning them while we talked.

His roommate soon arrived carrying a can of Del Monte cream-style corn. He scraped it into an electric coffeepot already plugged into the wall. Naturally, the pot was too hot, and soon he was futilely trying to stir the burning corn at the bottom of the pot.

“Nice balanced meal,’ I said. ‘Beats dorm food,’ they replied.

Will you join me in praying for Wisconsin students?”

Below is the age of your recipients. No big surprise as the 26 to 35 age category was over 1/3 of all the people who receive your updates. What was a surprise, was that the 56 or older group was the second largest. However, this may be misleading because it was an open ended age group.

Read More

Now that I have been offering this service for a few months, I have started to notice “sending” trends. For instance, many of your emails revolve around specific events, including conferences. Since there is a limit to how many photos can be included in any given email update, one way to share a more extensive photo album is to set one up online. If you have a ministry website set up, post your pictures from Spring Conference and provide the link.

If you don’t have a website, there are good online photo-sharing programs out there such as the popular Flickr. Here are a couple of links for you:

http://www.flickr.com/

http://picasaweb.google.com (not to be confused with the Picasa software program)

You will want to avoid using a site that requires a donor to set up a username and password. Whilst Facebook might seem like a natural place to post pictures (and it is if you spend time there), the chance that Aunt Betsy and a majority of your donor list have pages themselves is unlikely.

If you have recipients that are complaining that your emails are getting automatically routed to their junk folder, there is usually an easy solution to this – they need to make sure that your email address and/or domain is added to their address list/preferences.

For example, if you are sending your updates using a gmail address, here’s how to ensure proper inbox delivery in some popular e-mail programs and services:

Read More

Update: May 29, 2009 – The Henri Nouwen foundation asked that we remove the lecture notes taken of Henri Nouwen’s lecture on “The Spirituality of Fundraising” in August of 1992. They now sell a small booklet based on his thoughts on the matter that you can purchase at their website.

http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/fundraising_booklet/

Having great pictures in your updates to supporters is one of the best ways to get them to read your entire update, here are a few examples and tips on how to get your newsletters read!

Here is an example of a great picture taken by Katie Siemens, on staff at the Colorado School of Mines:

a) It is of a picture of the student she wrote a story about in that particular update

b) It is close-up and not straight on

c) It’s playful

Now, I am not assuming that you have all the time in the world to run around and take the perfect photo for your next newsletter/update. Having said that, here are some tips to using photos to illustrate your communication:

1) Use an inanimate object to describe an idea or event, like a picture of a brewing cup of coffee aside a story of a meeting with a student at the local coffee shop.

2) Make sure you are in the photos often. You (and your family) are your donors’ frame of reference.

3) Candid photos show ministry in action. You don’t need to have everybody smiling for the camera at all times.

4) If you do have people smiling for the camera, close-up shots where the whites of their eyes can be seen are best.

5) Simple photos without a lot of background noise stand out.