It’s December, and that means the end of Q4, and that means Giving Tuesday, and that also means a barrage of calls, emails, texts, and snail mail asking for money. I find that all so, well, 20th century, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why it’s the same year after year.
Yes, some organizations have acclimated and “kept up with the times”. They’ve altered their fundraising programs to allow for changes in communications, technology, finance, demographics, and for a population that is part “old school” and part not.
But for many others (most?), they’re still in the dark ages of philanthropic pitching.
Here are some examples:
Year-end snail mail. The amount of snail mail that I receive is still astonishing, and it just makes me sad to think of the amount of money wasted and landfill impacted by the hundreds of envelopes I get — mostly from organizations that I have never donated to and wouldn’t ever donate to. Some still have the “return address labels” included (what will I do with those, when I only snail mail a few times a year?) Some have a shopping bag or a t-shirt. Some have stickers. Sometimes the stickers are very nice, but they still won’t make me donate to an organization that I just am not interested in. The response rates on snail mail solicitations have been steadily decreasing — especially in a letter-sized envelope with my name pre-printed with a bar code. Not even remotely appealing. (This is not to say that snail mailing people “of a certain demographic” who have donated to you in the past is a bad idea — it actually can work well works well, but only via that and other specific criteria.)
Year-end email solicitations. These are fine conceptually, and will often work for me during the year if I know of the organization, although the end of the year desperation in many of them is a total put-off. If something happens in the world and it happens to be in Q4 and requires a special effort for an unbudgeted program need, I totally get it. But if it’s just because “it’s the end of the year, and you should donate!”, I’m so not impressed. Does the organization think that I’m in the “holiday spirit”, and therefore will give them money now instead of later? Do they not realize that I’m intensely focused on getting gifts out to friends and family, trying to get a few days away with my husband and kids, and that these pushes just add to my holiday stress? Do they not realize that I have a Donor Advised Fund, and don’t care about end of the year tax issues (which are, for many, moot now anyway.) More importantly, do they think I’m so short-sighted that I won’t notice when I get an email on January 2nd telling me that they need to start out the year with some big donations — or else? (Trust me, they will come.) (Note: I love the folks that suggest that the end of the year is to say thank you to those who donated during the year. Great idea!)
Year-end text messages. Texts are great, in fundraising, for reminders and notifications about last-minute needs or memberships running out, but at the end of the year, they’re just annoying. Fundraisers should realize that I’m also getting texts from lots of friends saying nice things, and also from retailers wanting me to buy stuff RIGHT NOW, and the solicitations for organizations just because it’s year end are perceived by me, and I assume by other donors, as just an annoyance by an organization that doesn’t care a whit about the December craziness.
The second biggest annoyance of all of this is that the push is about the organization meeting their budgets for the year, not about me and my current needs and desires. Yes, I want to help lots of organizations, and I recognize that most of them are populated with honest, hard-working people who are pushing like crazy because end of the year donations make the most money for them. However, there are two problems with that. End of the year donations are becoming less relevant for most donors, because of the aforementioned tax changes (for the smaller gifts) and because of the immense growth of Donor Advised Funds, which removes timing from the equation.
The biggest annoyance, though, is that so many organizations just don’t care to spend the money or time to parse and/or target their lists. Not only does this waste money — it also annoys donors who will conflate the organization’s name with “junk mail”. How can that be a good thing? The “snail mail” section above describes my frustration, as a donor, with end of the year snail mailing, but the solution is one that every single article I’ve read in the last year talks about — don’t send snail mail to people who have no history with your organization. Just don’t. It doesn’t work, it’s a waste of money, and it makes me feel sorry for the poor person who works hard on putting together that “mass” mailing — only to realize later that it was a waste of time.
To the organizations that are using a consolidated approach to broad-based fundraising, utilizing highly targeted lists, leveraging multiple modes of communication, and realizing that donors are not so much December givers anymore — kudos. To the rest, please get with the times!
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- Lisa