February 2, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Giving donors small tasks to complete brings them a step closer toward making a donation, explained fund-raising experts last week at the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation‘s conference in Washington.
“Always give them something to do,” advised Karen Taggart, manager of fund-raising innovations at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. That was the philosophy behind PETA’s online campaign against Chinese fur farms, which paired donation appeals with a variety of interactive options for supporters such as links to petitions and videos and an opportunity to forward information to friends. “Every time someone clicks on a link, you’ve just increased the likelihood that they’ll do something else for you in the future,” she said. That campaign attracted 1,028 new donors to the organization, said Ms. Taggart.
Fox Chase Cancer Center, in Philadelphia, uses a paper leaf to connect donors with its mission. Each year the center includes the leaf in its year-end mail appeal and asks donors to send it back with the name of a loved one to be hung on a “tree of life” in a ceremony to honor cancer patients and survivors.
Last year, instead of a customary “institutional” appeal, said Fern Sanford, the center’s director of annual giving, the leaf and donation request were accompanied by a letter from the center’s president describing the difficulty of facing holidays after his wife’s death from cancer. And for the first time, the center broadcast the leaf-hanging ceremony on the Internet so that donors who couldn’t attend could still participate.
More than 6 percent of donors who received the leaf appeal provided a gift, as well as thousands of leaves for the ceremony.
