The Little Words Mean the Most

Movie nights

 

We have this little tradition during the holidays: we binge on new movies, guided by our movie critic nephew, Daniel Joyaux.

He strongly recommended La La Land and Manchester by the Sea, and said Rogue One (part of the Star Wars series) wouldn't disappoint dyed-in-the-wool fans like Simone and me. La La Land broke our hearts. Manchester by the Sea pulled those broken hearts from our chests and stamped them flat as shadows. Rogue One was as it should be, but the Empire is just getting started.

Cuss you, Daniel. You owe us some happiness. The white Christmas we got was buttered popcorn in our laps. Those stains don't come out.

 

 

The wisdom of endowment

 

What's the right size?

 

The oldest endowment in the West is a scholarship fund established in 1249, at a new school within the University of Oxford, which wasn't all that old itself.

         The benefactor was a distinguished "everyman." A childless ecclesiastical scholar. William of Durham. A man of learning. Of values. He traveled more than others. Compassionate. Visionary. A man who knew for sure that a good education costs money.

         With his endowment, William of Durham kicked opened a door to the future for a moment and for indefinite centuries to come ... and said, I know how to help. He endowed a scholarship fund, with a will executed in 1249: his endowment insured that smart-minds-born-into-poverty could receive the best education available anywhere on earth. That was William of Durham's bet in 1249. He didn't know what Oxford would become.

         What would your bet be right now?

         On endowment. On enduring centuries, permanently, until it didn't matter anymore because environmental ecological nature-friendly sanity ultimately against all reasonable odds prevailed. And we didn't kill our planet. Unlikely. But somehow.

Why NOT an annual novel? I just read one

 

 

it was OK

 

 

 

Sean likes to call me from the beach in Australia

...where it is NOT frickin' freezing literally. And yet my brain waves still have not managed to drop a coconut on his foot. That's him at 6 AM, doing his daily one-hour beach-and-wildlife walk and discussing some very exciting news. It's called Moceanic, and it's going to be bigger than [gull noise, wind rattles palm fronds, wallaby joey cries for breakfast, giant crab crashes down, mammoth spider plucks at Sean's cap, kangaroo pops him a fast right to the gut: NATURE MUGGING! NUGGING!!!]

 

listening to Dirty Dancing in the background

 

Perspective is what changes you

 

Astronaut Mike Massimino writes, "Leaving the planet is unlike anything else ... you realize that we're very lucky, that we're living in a paradise."

More accurately, he might have said: "Most of us are barely subsisting in the midst of what could be a paradise."

Astronaut Mike, love you, babe. Understand, though: at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. Orbiting our planet is a meager baseline. Sweeping everyone into the tent is so much more important.

Many nonprofits exist because somewhere a small group of caring people saw suffering and could not abide standing by, aloof. They decided, "Somebody's got to do something about this. And it looks like it's up to us. Who will help?"

[1st draft for new book] A rambling confession by the author....

 

If you own a first, 2007 edition of this book, I want to reassure you.

At least 80% of this SECOND edition is either new ... or rewritten from scratch. Only the best, most lasting stuff from the first edition, published in 2007, has been carried over and refitted here.

The "4 personality types" featured in my first edition? Gone. I've replaced them in this new volume with discoveries in neuroscience. Those "4 personality types" remain helpful to copywriters. They helped me for years; I still reference them. But they were primitive guesses, comparatively. We know a lot more about persuasion today, thanks to MRIs.

The neuroscience I hope to explain in this book is the same science I use myself today to succeed at copywriting assignments that attempt to raise funds for campaigns, projects, programs and overhead.

As I began revising How to Write, I was astonished and delighted to see, in fact, how far my own understanding of donor communications had advanced since 2007, thanks to countless mentors. Progress, ho!

Welcome to my distillery: so many top fundraisers contributed knowledge and wisdom to this book.

What I can confidently write and talk to you today about would have utterly stumped me in 2007: I didn't yet have the training, experience or skills.

Since then I've completed hundreds of challenging communications projects; attended dozens of transformative workshops and webinars annually; and read added millions of counseling words from experts who could speak with authority.

And in any case? There is so much more to talk about now.

The brain may not have evolved much in the last 30 years. But in other ways, change in communications has happened at a bewildering clip.

E.g., social media has become a major presence in daily life. But remember: Facebook only went worldwide in 2005. And no one successfully exploited its potential to raise money until quite recently. (The Pareto agency in Australia and its client, Soi Dog, an animal welfare charity based in Bangkok, get the credit.)

Smart phones — mobile — are now a HUGE thing in daily life.

iPhones arrived in stores on June 29, 2007, after the first edition of this book went on sale. Yet, even in 2016, the majority of charity websites I review during audits still are not "mobile-friendly." (We'll have to talk about that.)

Another change: email, lowly email, can now raise hundreds of millions in contributions for political campaigns ... notably first for Barack Obama. "We willingly make lots of mistakes [i.e., we test]," asserted his campaign functionaries, "and then we rake it in." Pin that candid statement next to your computer. Or this synopsis: First make mistakes. Then make money.

Most important, most promising, most sweepingly ... charities large and small have tried "donor-centricity" for the first time.

Those that applied donor-centricity well, without restraint or interference, reported extraordinary improvements in revenue.

I hope you will join those donor-centered ranks ... once you read this new book.

-- Tom Ahern

 

Lifetime value (LTV) 1

 

• The lifetime value (LTV) of someone who gives just once to your cause will be no higher than $35, likely. Fifty dollars is an above-average entry-level gift for most charities in English-speaking countries. Typically, you will lose money trying to acquire first-time donors. That's normal; it's an investment in the future to spend $2 to acquire $1 in newbie giving. In fact, it's frugal. Charities spend just $50 or so to acquire each new donor. Starbucks spends $1,400 in advertising to acquire one new customer. "You'd say Starbucks is foolish," Roger Craver wrote, "until your learned that the 20 year Lifetime Value of a Starbucks customer is $14,099."
  

 

... people tell me

 

 

 

Heidi Venture made this

 

 

You'll find Heidi blogging here.

accents i can't do mostly or at all

Chapter 19, in part

 

 

Brain science helps you raise more money

Brains are organs. Those particular organs run our world and of course make all the gifts.

         Since the human brain is so important to the survival of the planet and our species, countless scientists study our mental, management organs in ever-more-sophisticated ways.

         And while there are so many mysteries of the brain yet to be delved, some things we do now know to be true.

         For instance: there is a biological reason why unhappy images almost always raise more money.

         It is "merely" a matter of stimulus/response. Autonomic behavior. An unhappy image snags the mind's attention automatically, without your conscious thought or participation. Why? Because we are prey animals as well as hunters and alphas.