12 reflections and shares from ’21 - part 1
To our dear friends and colleagues.
To say our posting has been sporadic would be an underwhelming understatement.
However, I’m sure not a one of you has been thinking - ‘I sure wish John and Jen would post more’. (Yes, you can come at me if I’m wrong!)
So, it’s one of those, sorry, not sorry scenarios.
We are just moving through the last of the holiday reminder’s or year ends and into the thinking and storytelling that will go into the new year appeals. We are looking ahead to a new year with lots of look forward to but I thought over the course of the next few weeks I could share some of the things we have been up to over here at AOG HQ with a couple key take aways that might come in handy for you.
12 reflections and shares from ’21 - part 1
Dale’s mail.
Back in the spring I took a look at Dale’s mail.
Dale is my mother in law but she is also your donor. Going through her mailbox and listening to her thoughts and reflections on her giving is always informative and often alarming.
First, Dale is a woman. And someone, somewhere is making the decision that she is not. She gets a lot of mail that refers to her as “Mr.”
There is one organization that she’s called numerous times to change it back to “Mrs.” and they say they will and they don’t. She decided that even though it was an org she liked a lot, she wasn’t going to give to them, even though she wanted to.
Second, 60% of the appeals she received early this fall were #10 envelopes. But 0% of them look personal at all. Not even close.
Lastly, I can’t share with you all of Dale’s written notes about the organizations that are asking her; how often they are asking her; what she thinks of the things she gets from you, but donors like her DO think about these things. Some positive, a lot quite negative.
I strongly urge you to look at your fundraising and the fundraising of other organizations - ideally from her perspective. Get on as many lists as you can. Look at it all. Look at the reply forms you get back in your office from donors like her. Honor the shaky writing.
Traveling. Just differently.
Travel, up until the pandemic, was a large part of my work life. Not as much as some of my colleagues, but still. So while traveling for work and presentations hasn’t happened at all this year, I was still able to appear on screens in Canada, USA, UK, Ireland, Norway and New Zealand (and who knows where else?).
We did sessions about legacy fundraising, writing and design, vulnerability and emotions in direct response and the design and strategy of how all of this fundraising stuff works.
The “in-person” 2022 speaking calendar is starting to fill (YAY!) but if this is something you would love to chat to us more about - just check out more information about that on our speaking page: https://agentsofgood.org/speaking
Tik Tok.
Ok. Ok. Hear me out.
I have 3 reasons you should check out Tik Tok.
Will you find your next new donor there? Well, you might. 47% of all users are aged 10-29, 41% are aged 30-49 and 11% are 50+. I don’t expect you will find donors like Dale (see above) there anytime soon HOWEVER… in the last 2 years, the number of adults using Tik Tok has grown 5.5 times. In the US, females out number the men 2:1. And no, I haven’t done a fulsome sweep to see how many charities are even trying to use the channel to fundraise or engage with donors. Tik Tok is more than dancing teens. (Here is a great article telling you about some orgs who are using the platform https://reasondigital.com/blog/tiktok-for-charities/)
I know a lot of my favorite fundraisers and people are on Tik Tok (and most of them seem to mostly like my reaction videos) but a couple of them are making interesting fundraising content. Check out: https://www.tiktok.com/@charitydad?lang=en, https://www.tiktok.com/@fundraising4innovation?lang=en, https://www.tiktok.com/@nazarethnetworks?lang=en, https://www.tiktok.com/@cindywagman?lang=en and https://www.tiktok.com/@toastfundraiser?lang=en
If you are falling behind on thanking and receipting donors, or your website is falling apart at it’s CMS seams… no.. do not rush to Tik Tok to make more people aware at how boring your organization is. The idea is to show up, have some fun, show them you are a collective of humans trying to do some good in this world. Authenticity and fun will rule the day.
Are you on Tik tok and doing something interesting with it? TELL ME! And follow me (https://www.tiktok.com/@johnlepp861?lang=en) for nice nature video’s too!
In the days and weeks to come, I’ll share (hopefully) 9 more reflections on some of the stuff that has been keeping us busy this year!