Posted at 10:50 AM in Friends, our most precious resource, Love, Worksheet Confidential | Permalink
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My Las Vegas love....
As you say, "words are hard." And unexamined, place-holder, endlessly-repeated, jargon-ista words have the dangerous life-span of radioactive waste. "Well, they said it that way ... so we should say it that way, too!" Blah, blah, blah, etc.
The industry's been through this ... more than once. It's a BIG reason (IMHO) why average donor-comm performance (and US household giving) is in decline ... because new practice unwittingly copies bad practice.
My latest real-life example? A good, beloved, award-winning, life-saving nonprofit community hospital system that got ZERO response to a massive email appeal. Hey?!? Me, too! Been there, done that, once upon a time ... before I gulped down 2 decades of training re: "words are hard."
Who told you this shit was easy?
Posted at 02:44 PM in Brush Ministry, Friends, our most precious resource, I Love My Work, Love, Worksheet Confidential | Permalink
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Dawn! HELLO!!!
Yes, the tool is still relevant ... more than ever ... I teach it all the time. It's called the Flesch-Kincaid calculator (after its co-founders).
Here's the URL: https://goodcalculators.com/flesch-kincaid-calculator/
As I probably harped on back then, grade level is NOT about getting 6th-graders to make donations.
Grade level is exclusively about how fast and easily I (an adult who might make a gift) can comprehend what you're trying to tell me: a 6th-grade level is faster than an 8th-grade level is WAY faster than a 10th-grade level ... and if you're trying to shove 12th-grade writing down my throat, you better be buying me a hot-fudge sundae with 3 cherries on top. And a day in rehab.
12th-grade writing ceases to be of any use after the 12th grade (unless you want to be a peer-reviewed scientist or college professor). For the general public, it's an insult to our attention spans.
Flesch-Kincaid standards ripple through the User's Manuals on our sub fleet, where sailors with high-school diplomas tend nuclear reactors and drive the boats. The people at the wheel are 18 and 19 years old (under senior supervision, of course). Thank you, Flesch-Kincaid.
Without Flesch-Kincaid, what a mess we'd be in.
Posted at 11:59 AM in Friends, our most precious resource, I Love My Work, Love, Most liked 3Nup, Worksheet Confidential | Permalink
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Posted at 02:35 PM in Friends, our most precious resource, Love, Most liked 3Nup | Permalink
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I think my personal best was flying out of a dinky airport in NY state (with an incredible snack selection, though; kudos), to speak in Green Bay, WI the next day and the Twin Cities the day after that. Keynote speaker at 3 National Philanthropy Days in 3 days. I don't remember much except running, dragging, buying snacks, speaking; repeat in reverse.
Not to mention the time my flight for Denver from Pittsburgh left 8 hours late due to a PA blizzard. The pilots bought pizza for every passenger who hadn't given up and gone home. They promised we'd leave; the final flight was a quarter full. Landed at dawn, got an invite to Denver's best Ethiopian restaurant from my cabbie, checked into the conference hotel for 1 hour's sleep, did the gig, checked out, went home; probably crashed for 24 hours.
Or how about that time my plane taxied for takeoff in Odessa, TX (which smells of oil ... literally; it's the "drill, baby, drill" capital of the world). The pilot suddenly got a bad dashboard light. He taxied back to the gate (I'd moved about 400 yards in total by that time, none of them in the air). And, lo, there wasn't a room to be had in town. The oil boom was so hot they were scouring the jails for employees. The airline was as helpful as could be. I think I slept that night alongside some hotel's vending machines.
Or, hey, that time in Winnipeg, when Simone forgot her passport ... and I had to present for both of us. Having spent years rebuffing her: "You know what you know. I know what I know. I don't have to know what you know, too. Just tell me what to do."
Or then there's O'Hare. O'Hare's special. It's in the middle of a continent. A super-hub. Weather conditions across North America effect O'Hare's arrivals and departures. What road warrior doesn't have a great O'Hare story? Like the time all flights were grounded ... and I snuggled into a dim hallway cot beneath a thin blanket at 3 AM. There were thousands of other passengers on cots under thin blankets stuffed in the halls, as far as the eye could see. O'Hare looked like the London Tube during the Blitz.
Posted at 12:12 PM in Friends, our most precious resource, I Love My Work, Love, Most liked 3Nup, Travel [we're off!] | Permalink
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Posted at 12:51 PM in Friends, our most precious resource, Most liked 3Nup, Worksheet Confidential | Permalink
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dear Andrew...
I knew none of this ... not at this level ... not this well quantified [he'd listed 5 criteria for success]. THANK YOU! ¶ We try stuff. Then we get one thing figured out maybe. Then we try something else. As I've said, it takes about 4 quarterly issues to get the mood right. ¶ The first thing we try to kill is internal committee review; but that's before we even sign a contract. A busted, dumb, lazy, "collegial" [universities], top-down ["This doesn't sound like me!"] approval process is the enemy of high-yield donor comms.
Posted at 12:33 PM in Friends, our most precious resource, Worksheet Confidential | Permalink
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Posted at 12:58 PM in Current Affairs, Friends, our most precious resource, Love, Most liked 3Nup, Worksheet Confidential | Permalink
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Per Ben Miller, SVP of Data Science and Analytics, Bonterra...
Many nonprofits saw a surge of donations and donors during 2020 and 2021. Then in 2022 things started getting back to normal. Normal in this case is a declining donor pool for more than a decade. At the end of 2022 donors were 83% of what they were at the end of 2012.
Leading the charge, new donors have declined precipitously -18%. Plus it is more costly to get new donors.
His comments elicited a strong response from fundraisers internationally. My small contribution to the mob:
Like many of you in the FEP [Fundraising Effectiveness Project] family, I can speak from different perspectives: practitioner trying to raise money, new donor, monthly donor, major donor. And I now wonder if the 10% "decline" in US donors is something similar to climate change. >> I.e., physics; natural forces normally readjusting, in other words. ¶ I'm rushing off to lunch, so I can't check my data immediately. But it's my understanding that the # of nonprofits in the US alone has something like doubled in the past 15-20 years. ¶ Then you have John Lepp's recent anecdotal reporting on how slammed his mother-in-law's mailbox is every year ... more than 500 items coming in and ONLY one was a thank you to generous Dale. ¶ What is the sum of the research done by Dr.s Jen Shang and Adrian Sargeant at their Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy? In my non-academic interpretation: "When you like your donors, they'll like you back. And they'll express that through more giving and by sticking around." ¶ THE COMPLETE DONOR.... Interesting idea, Benjamin Mohler and Andrew Polter.
love bunnies...
Posted at 09:01 PM in Friends, our most precious resource, I Love My Work, Most liked 3Nup, Worksheet Confidential | Permalink
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Posted at 04:02 PM in 10 or more likes, Friends, our most precious resource, Lazy Poems series, Most liked 3Nup, Politics | Permalink
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