Finally, when I did the analysis of our fall newsletter, we had broken even – we had only brought in enough money to pay the newsletter expenses. Which effectively equates to a huge loss as there were so many unaccounted for soft costs like salaries and meetings, etc. I told the team, “You know what, we could have taken two weeks off, had an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii and we would have been fiscally farther ahead. And we would have had a much needed break, bonded as a team and been well rested in anticipation of the busy fall fundraising season. Instead we were exhausted, disappointed and behind budget.
With this realization, I got angry. I determined to make drastic changes. When I asked other professionals, “Who is the expert on newsletters?” one name kept being repeated – Tom Ahern. We bought his book and made it our newsletter Bible. We took it literally and believed every word he wrote. We started from scratch and struck out into uncharted waters. Headed where? Success we hoped. But truly what was the risk? We were neck deep in the middle of failure. Everything is up at the bottom.
We all hated it. We thought it was the ugliest thing we had ever produced. But did it perform! Our first attempt brought in over $250,000! The most we had ever done! More than the previous year’s cumulative total!
Talk about a turn around.