Rhea Wong (0:00)

Hey you, it's Rhea Wong. If you're listening to Nonprofit Load On, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning you get updates on the newest podcast episodes and then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up Foreign welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey folks, it's Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today I am going to do another podcast about my favorite topic, which is marketing. So as you might imagine folks, I do a lot of trainings and presentations and working with nonprofit executives. And the problem that I hear more than any other problem is Rhea, I don't have enough prospects in my pipeline. I don't have enough people who are responding to me. I just don't have enough eyeballs on the thing. So this is going to be a two part process. One, why your pipeline is dry and two, why the people in your pipeline that you do have are ghosting you. Because again, this is a problem. I hear again and again. So picture this. This is a very familiar scenario for a lot of nonprofit execs out here. You're sending emails, making phone calls, following up, and crickets. No responses, no GIFs, just silence. Does this sound familiar? It should feels like this for a lot of nonprofits. Here's the hard truth. Donors aren't ignoring you because they're too busy. They're ignoring you because you haven't given them a compelling reason to engage. Let me say that again. It's not because they're too busy. We're all too busy. All of us are busy. But we make time for the things that are a priority for us. Therefore, they're ignoring you because you haven't given them a compelling reason to engage. I. E. You have not made yourself a priority for them. So today I'm breaking down two problems. One, why you don't have enough donor prospects in your pipeline and two, how you get the donor prospects that you do have to actually respond to you. Before we get started, let's talk about a fundamental truth of human nature. Everyone is in it for themselves. Whenever you send out an email, whenever you're sending out a social media, whenever you send out an appeal or an invitation to a coffee, the first question that people are asking in their minds is what's in it for. For me? What's in it for me? This is not a bad thing. It's just how we're wired. And if I'm going to take out time in my busy schedule, I want to know what is in it for me. Am I going to be part of a community? Am I going to be inspired? Am I going to learn something? I want to know what's in it for me before I give you my most valuable resource, which is time. For those of you who have ever read Dale Carnegie's how to Win Friends and Influence People, which, by the way, if you haven't, I highly recommend it is a cornerstone book. Anyway, as Dale Carnegie reminds us, people don't care about the organizations, they care about themselves. Your job is to show them how supporting your mission makes them feel good, look good, live their values, or tell themselves a story that they believe about themselves. Let's get into it. Number one, the real reason you don't have enough donors. Before we even get into why donors disappear, let's address the elephant in the room. The disappearing elephant in the room. You may not have enough donor prospects in the first place. And let's be clear. It's not because there aren't enough donors out there. It's because not enough of them know that you exist. So a lot of times I talk to nonprofits and they say things like, we just haven't been able to find the people. Like maybe, you know, I think it's a truism that we look at other competitors and we say they have sucked up all the oxygen in the room and they have all the donors. We don't because they're into like, saving units and people who donate to them won't donate to our Saving the Unicorn nonprofit. The truth of the matter is that you are like just a tiny speck in the world. And unless you are getting market share and you're not even close to approaching total addressable market, even if you are a household name like the Red Cross, you are getting a very small percentage of all the people in the world who could donate and have interest. So I think we need to stop telling ourselves this fallacy of I've hit the upper limit of people who could possibly donate for us. The truth is, you haven't even started. I want to share a little bit of a story with the risk of embarrassing someone. I'm working with a client right now and he is just incredible. He's out in la, he's doing incredible work, highly charismatic, and here's the problem. He's not getting donations that he should be getting. He doesn't have enough donors, as he's explained to me. But when I looked at their marketing, I realized they were not showing up anywhere. They had a very small email list. They had no strategy to add people to the list. They had a very small social media following. And the things that they were doing, they weren't communicating often enough. They had no media engagement. They had no regular donor communications. And so if your donors can't see you, how can they possibly support you? And the truth of the matter is, when people meet this Ed, they literally want to throw money at him because he is just that visionary and that charismatic. So the trick here is, how do we get him in front of more eyeballs? I want you to sear this concept into your mind. If you're listening to this and can write this down, please write this down, underline it, put it up on a, post it next to your mirror every morning. Fundraising is marketing. Let me say it again. Fundraising is marketing. For example, you wouldn't open a coffee shop and just hope people magically find it, right? You'd put out ads, you'd get active on social. You'd have a grand opening. You'd have friends and family. You would do whatever it takes to get the word out. Yet ironically, so many nonprofits think that if they just do great work, they, the donors will come. It's like Field of Dreams, right? If you build it, they will come. If you build it and they don't come, it's because they don't know about it. Nobody told them. They will not come if you do not tell them. So here's the fix. Showing up and marketing your mission. I'm going to give you five ideas. 1. Make your email list your number one priority. I have been harping on this for a couple of episodes now because I just think in the world of, like, wonky social media, and I know some of us have some ethical quandaries about social media right now. Go to your email list. Your email list is the conversion mechanism. It is the asset that you own. It is the place where most people will make a decision about whether or not to donate with you or engage with you or have coffee with you. So what I want you to think about is every single event, every donation page, every social media post should funnel to your email list. All roads should lead to your email list. Whether it's, hey, sign up here to find out about upcoming events or sign up here to get a special invitation to something or Sign up here to, I don't know, get a special resource. Our top 10 gardening tips for the spring. Whatever. There should always be a way for people to join your list. And by the way, I just want to note this because this is a personal pet peeve. Join Our newsletter is not a compelling Ask Nobody is going to sign up to join your newsletter. It's like not the 90s where we get excited about another email coming through. You have to remember what's in it for me. You have to give me a compelling reason to sign up for your newsletter. And that is above and beyond Sign up for my newsletter Truth of the matter is my own mother doesn't even sign up for my newsletter. And she's the person who I would expect would sign up first because aside from the fact that she's my mom, there's nothing else in it for her. So let me reiterate this. I know a lot of us spend a lot of time trying to break the algorithm on social to go viral or whatever. And I'm not saying that is not the strategy that won't help you. But I want to focus you in on your social media following is borrowed land. Your email list is the asset that you own. So know that and think about in 2025 strategies to grow your email list. Because your email list is directly correlated to the amount of money that you raise. Let me tell you one story. So one of my clients switched their strategy to focus on email growth instead of their social media and within a year they tripled their donor base. They made their newsletter feel like an exclusive club, sharing behind the scenes impact stories, donor shoutouts and quick video messages from their executive director. And guess what? Those emails turned into donations around the time that the appeal came through. Okay 2 Speaking of social, let's talk about social media. Use social media intentionally. So what does that mean? It means posting consistently so you can't post once a month and expect results. Focus on real impact stories, behind the scenes moments, and actual faces. I think sometimes we like to get into corporate speak, which is silly because we're nonprofits, but make people feel like they're real people behind this and then engage. When people respond to your story comments, they ask questions. That is an entry point to talk to people. So anybody who's sharing, liking commenting, there should be an immediate response from from your nonprofit and that engagement should lead to guess what your email list and then number three create a low lift way for new donors to engage so you can offer small donation options like $5 a month memberships or peer to peer fundraising. You can also host casual events where donors can learn more without pressure. This could look like maybe a fireside chat. It could maybe look like an open house. It could look like a volunteer event. Right? People want an opportunity to be able to suss you out. Before committing, I want you to think about your own behavior. If you're asked for $5, it feels like nothing. But if you're asked for $1,000 out of nowhere, you hesitate by creating low pressure on ramps so donors can get involved without feeling like they're making a major commitment up front. 4. Make the ask crystal clear. Remember, people want to know what's in it for them. A lot of times I get appeals like support our work instead. Could you change it to something like give $25 to send one child to camp this summer? Because remember, I want to tell myself a story about the kind of person that I am. But I also want to know what impact is my money having because I have made my money, I work hard for my money. I want to know that it's going to something that I care about. And I want to know what I'm quote, unquote buying. Like, what unit of change am I buying with my money? And 5. Follow up like a pro. Most people don't donate the very first time they hear about you. Or if they do, it's usually because, I don't know, like my brother asked me to do it. I don't really know anything about you, but here's a donation because I love my brother. So if you're not following up, you're leaving money on the table. What does that mean? Let's use your own behavior as an example. I'm going to assume that maybe you have heard my podcast before. Maybe you heard me on another podcast, or maybe you found me via Google Search, or maybe someone told you about me. Maybe this is your first time here. In which case, welcome. The point is, a lot of you will consume content quietly in the background before you ever have a conversation with me. And this is the same for your donors. A lot of them are just watching, waiting and gathering data before they actually want to make a commitment. What I want to invite you to do is how are you creating high value content that is in service to the donor? Maybe it's you're educating them about something. Maybe you're providing inspiration. Maybe you're providing them a way to join a community. Maybe it's you're allowing them to tell themselves a story about who they believe that they are. But Most people are watching and waiting before they make a commitment. Okay, so let's say you've built up this whole pipeline, right? You have people who you've added to your email list. Here's the second problem. Why are they ghosting you and how to fix it? So often I hear people say that they want to build relationships with donors, but you can't build a relationship with someone who doesn't want to build a relationship with you. And this is a problem that I see a lot of times with people are reaching out to prospects via email for coffee or a meeting or whatever and they're not hearing anything. And it's not necessarily that your donors are not interested, they're just not sufficiently warmed up. So let's think about this scenario. Let's say you do have donors, but they've gone silent. There are no responses, no gifts, no engagement. What's happening? Let's fix this with 10 reasons donors ghost you and what you can do about it. I once worked with a nonprofit leader who was shocked that their donors weren't giving again. When I asked them how often they reached out, they admitted maybe once or twice a year. Here's a deal. If only donors only hear from you when you need something, you're treating them like an atm and nobody likes that. The other thing I just want to flag here is that I think the statistic for first time donors is at only about 20% ever give again. If the only thing that you did with your communications is just made that welcome sequence feel really good. If the only thing you did was to retain those first time donors, you would be ahead of the curve. Because the thing is, you've spent so much time and energy marketing to these new people, you want them to stick around as long as possible. Because it is far less expensive from a time and energy perspective to get someone who's already a donor to give again versus a brand new donor. Let's use some math, because the math maths, let's say it cost me, I don't know, $10 to get a new donor. I'm figuring in marketing, costs, material cost, time, etc. Now if a donor gives me $20, that's fantastic. I have a donor value that is greater than my acquisition cost. But let us say in this case that the donor only gives $5. I've now lost money because I've spent $5 more acquiring that donor. However, because I don't have to spend money to reacquire that donor, if I can keep that donor engaged and over time get them to either repeat their $5 gift or increase their gift. At some point I'm going to them than it costs me to acquire them. But it only happens when you retain donors. Retention is a whole other topic we'll talk about another time. Let me talk about the 10 reasons that donors are ghosting you and how to fix it. 1. You're making it all about you, not about them. See, note at the beginning where nobody cares about you, they care about themselves. So what does that look like? You're sending out emails or communications that say something like we need $50,000 by the end of the year. That's about you. That's focused on the organization. Instead, could you reframe it? Because of you, 200 kids got scholarships this year. Let's keep the momentum going. So the idea here is that donors give because of how it makes them feel, not because of your budget shortfalls or your big plans. 2. You only reach out when you want money, said every parent of a teenager ever. Here's your fix. Send impact updates, invite them to events, or just check in with no ask when you I was thinking about this the other day. I was reading some books about dog training and all the dog trainers say that if you need to reprimand your dog for something that they did bad, you should never call them over to you to reprimand them. You should go over to them because you're then training the dog to not come to you because they associate it with being reprimanded. Similarly here, if you're training your donors to only respond when you need something, or they associate an email from you with asking for money, guess what? They're probably not going to be very excited about getting emails for you over time. However, if they associate hearing from you with a value add. Oh, I know that they have great stories. Oh, I know that this they have a good recipe for me. Then they're more inclined to be engaged. It's just simple human math. Okay, here's a big one. Your emails are boring. I'm going to say it again. Your emails are boring. Your emails are boring. Real talk. But you know me, I'm not one to sugarcoat it. Oftentimes when I get emails from nonprofits, they're long, there's lots of text, the paragraphs are really chunky. And remember, most people are now looking at emails on their phone. So if it's not scrollable, if it's not, if there's not a clear call to action, if it's not remarkable in any way, I'm going to delete it. I'm going to ignore it. I'm probably going to unsubscribe. You have to write like you talk and make sure every email is either useful or inspiring. Keep it short, engaging, and personal. And by the way, while we're on the topic, you all use way too many $1 words. What I mean by that is they did an interesting study where they looked at presidential candidates and by and large, the presidential candidates who ended up winning over and over with the ones that use shorter words. But current administration is a case in point. So one thing you can do is take your emails and run it through Hemingway app, which is an app that simplifies your writing. Don't use multisyllabic words when a simpler one will do. We all know you're very smart. We all know that you want to prove how smart you are. But here's the thing. You can either be right or you can be effective. Choose one. Your messaging is too generic. So those of you out here who are trying to use ChatGPT, you sound like ChatGPT or you sound like a corporate press release. So I think. I don't know when this happened. I think this was like, back in the 90s when nonprofits got this. I don't know, we had this, like, inferiority complex about not being professional. And so we decided that all of our communications had to sound like they were coming from corporate. Guess what? I don't need those TPS reports. Nobody likes corporate speak, and neither should you. As nonprofits, we have the opportunity to lean into our difference. We are grassroots. We're warm, we're personable, we're intimate. Like, we should write like that. We're not Goldman Sachs. We shouldn't pretend like we are writing like Goldman Sachs. The point here is, I'm not trying to dumb it down, but I am saying, like, don't be afraid to add some personality. Don't be afraid to add your own little brand, your pizazz to it, because that is what makes you you. While we're on the topic, one thing that really helped me with my communication style in all of the work I do is the work of Sally Hogshead. I know that's really her name. I have no financial connection to this whatsoever. But this woman called Sally Hogshead wrote a book called how to Fascinate. And it's about how to find your brand avatar and what makes you special. And there are a bunch of different avatars. You could go to her website and take the brand avatar quiz. My Avatar happens to be the Maestro. I won't even tell you what that means. But anyone who's listened to my podcast for any length of time, you could probably guess what the characteristics of the Maestro are. The point I'm trying to make is you are different. Lean into that. Lean into what makes you fascinating and it does not mean sounding like Goldman Sachs. Okay, let's keep going. 5. Your emails feel like a one way street so how often are we sending out emails and we're literally just talking at people, right? Here's our staff update. Here's a news from our fundraiser. It's boring. I know it's called a newsletter, but I'm probably not going to read it. I'm just being on. And by the way, you all are spending a bunch of time out here like creating pretty graphics. Stop. No one wants to read it. In fact, all the pretty graphics will likely land your email into the promotions tab instead. Plain text, short sentences, less is more and ask for a response. So the number one way that you can get your email list to wake up is you ask a question. You must genuinely be curious about asking a question. Hey, what brought you here today? One, two or three? I'm concerned about saving the whales. I'm really concerned about the dwindling unicorn population. Whatever. Ask questions, get their input and make them feel like there's another human on this other side of the email. 6. You're not clear about why you're asking them for coffee and therefore they think it's an ask. How many times have I been approached by nonprofits for coffee? My first thought is you want to ask me for money. So if in fact your intention is to ask them for money, I would go ahead and say this is the intention. But if it's not, if it's truly to learn about them, then be clear. Quote I'd love to get your perspective on the impact of our work. No ask, just a conversation. Or I'd love 17 minutes of your time. 17 is really interesting because it piques curiosity. 17 minutes of your time to get your feedback on Can I buy you a cup of coffee? So be very clear because again, time is my most valuable resource. I want to know that you're not going to waste it. 7. You're not creating low pressure on ramps. Give them easy, no pressure ways to engage before you get to the ask. Because it could well be that someone is just volunteering and that's all they're ever going to do. Or it could be that someone is just really likes your newsletter. But they don't want to donate and they don't want to engage, that's fine. But for those that do want to be a little bit closer, I want you to think about a ladder of engagement. At the lowest rung of the ladder of engagement is okay, I'll sign up for your email. Maybe the next rung is okay, maybe I'll come to an event or a volunteer opportunity. Then the next rung is okay, maybe I'll have a conversation with you. Maybe the next rung is okay, maybe I will. The point here is that there is a continuum that the donor must walk through on their own. And nothing that you can do is going to force them to move faster than they are ready to move. And so the trick here is that you, as the fundraiser, have to imagine, have to know where they are in their continuum of consideration, not where you want them to be. And therefore you create messages and onramps that are right for them, not for you. 8. You haven't created enough value for your donor. This is a big one because a lot of times I'm talking about myself, about my organization, how great I am, and then I ask you for solicitation. That is the equivalent of going on a date with someone who's. Let me tell you about me. Here's my gpa. This is my job, this is how much money I make. You want to get married? Oh no. Remember point number one, people don't care about you, they only care about themselves. What value are you creating for your donor in order to warm them up, to invite them in to an ask. So what does that look like? It looks like perhaps behind the scenes updates, exclusive impact reports, inviting them to small group calls with leadership, anything that makes them feel special. And that's going to be different for each of them, which goes back to the earlier point about in your emails. Tell us the ways in which you'd like to engage in our organization and then just do that, give them more of that. Okay, let's talk about number nine. Your donation process is a pain. A lot of times I am on nonprofit websites, first of all, sometimes I have to hunt for the donation page, which is not great. So I want there always to be something on the upper right hand corner and then when I click on it, it is not a user friendly donation form. It's clunky, it's weird. I'm like not sure where to put information or if I check it out on my mobile, on my phone, the interface is not good. So I want you to go on your donation page and see if it actually hits the mark for usability and ease. And can I fill it out under one minute? If neither those things aren't true, you need to fix your form and then 10, you haven't actually asked what they want. So I am also guilty of this. I was so busy trying to think about what kind of content can I put out that I literally never ask people like, what is it that you want? What do you want to hear about? What moves you? The bottom line here is that when donors feel heard, they stick around. You want your donors to feel seen, heard and valued and they stop ghosting and start giving. So if you're tired of chasing donors and getting ghosted, it's time to change your approach. The more you market, the more donors that you attract, the better you communicate, the stronger your donor relationships become. If this is resonating for you, I urge you, book a phone call. You can go to my website, riawong.com and book a strategy call to walk through some of your biggest roadblocks and what to do about it. Bottom line here is the donors are out there. The money is out there. The question is, are you showing up in a way that makes them want to engage? Let's fix it together. I'll see you next time. Hey fundraisers. Looking to nail those big fundraising asks? Check out my big ask gift program at riawong.com bag say goodbye to uncertainty and hello to confidence with my program. Get expert strategies and personalized support to secure those game changing donations. Don't let fear hold you back. Join me and take your fundraising to new heights. We're enrolling now@riawong.com bag that's riawong.com bag. So if you like big asks and you cannot lie, I'll see you in the program.