I read a helpful book this week, entitled If Only You’d Known, You Would Have Raised So Much More, by Tom Ahern (Emerson & Church Publishers, 2019). Ahern is a professional fund-raiser who shares evidence-based, practical tips on what works and doesn’t work in raising monies. Let me share some of his advice, and how I think it may apply to us in the world of Catholic education, with my own experiences included.
Younger people can’t give you much money. They don’t have it. It’s only from the age of 55 up that donors begin to have the disposable income to make sizable gifts. In addition, older persons are much more self-reflective, reviewing their life, interested in their legacy.
It is critical to stay connected with older alumni, past parents and current grandparents. Grandparents’ breakfasts or lunches are worth hosting, though I believe it’s a mistake to do a direct solicitation at the event. At our breakfast, we include a talk from a student about his or her grandparent, and a talk from a grandparent about his or her grandchild, along with some music and a few introductory remarks from me.
At the end, we take “prom” pictures with grandparents and their grandchildren, which we then mail them a few weeks later, with the grandchild writing “I love you” or something similar on back of the picture. In a letter from me that accompanies that picture, I ask them to consider supporting our annual fund, with a return envelop included.
Perhaps more promising, we began what we call a “Guardian Angel” program in the Catholic parishes, supported by area pastors. Once/year, our students speak at the end of Mass, asking older parishioners to become anonymous “Guardian Angels” for students who need financial aid to attend St. Michael. They donate to a fund, which is then used to augment financial aid awards from the school. Recipients are asked to write thank you letters to their donor, though they don’t know who the donor is. This has been a fantastically successful appeal, with gifts totaling over 100K in each of our first three years. And it has “connected” us to older Catholic parishioners, two of whom have made legacy gifts as a result.
If we communicate with older donors, use 14 pt type.
I’ve been thanking (older) folks for thirty years, but I never thought about this! We don’t want our thank you letters to be a source of frustration!
We can’t thank people too many times! Thank people within 48 hours is key, and the more personal, the better.
Perhaps this is intuitive, but my sense is due to staffing issues, we don’t thank people enough in Catholic schools, or that we do so too bureaucratically, through form letters. Our advancement office at St. Michael writes hand written thank you’s for every gift received. Sometimes, we ask volunteers to come in and help us write them. In the case of a larger gift, I call the donors personally and thank them. For donors I don’t know personally, I invite them to let me give them a tour of the school, which helps me build a relationship with them beyond that one time gift.
But be careful, Ahern warns. At Harvard University, they received 254 gifts of a million dollars or more in 2017 (wow!). Of those, 67% made their first gift to Harvard with a gift of less than $100. How the institution treated them for that gift determined if they gave more. We should always thank people with a true spirit of gratitude, regardless of amount— not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it may lead to much larger gifts down the road. Have we done enough to “earn” a second, possibly larger gift?
Never ask people for more money in a thank you letter!
It’s a turn off. However, Ahern believes it’s OK to include a return envelop, without any mention of an ask, and has found that gifts increase when we do so.
“Ask” letters must be constructed carefully. Many recipients never even open the envelope. If they do, they “scan” the letter before they read it (if they read it at all).
So Ahern says the envelop should include some sort of “tease” or “intrigue” that causes persons to be curious enough to open it, especially if that person doesn’t have a previous relationship with us. When readers “scan” the letter, they’re drawn to bulleted points (so avoid long paragraphs), or highlighted words, or one word sentences, or margin notes. And the letter should make the “ask” 4-5 times through out the letter, not just at the end. Ahern does not believe the “one page” letter is sacrosanct—he believes it’s possible to have 2, 3 and 4 page letters if well crafted, if they tell a story, and if they stir an emotional response in the reader.
Our “ask” letters and newsletters should tell a vivid story, with an emphasis on what the DONOR has made possible, not the institution’s success. Use “you” more than “we.”
So rather than focus on what great things our schools are doing, we should focus on what great things the donor’s gift has made possible at our school, with the donor as “hero” of that story.
Emotion trumps statistics in an appeals letter.
Though it’s good to include some high level stats, the emotional response is what we’re after, because emotion stirs people to action. A corollary is that focusing the effect of a donor’s giving on one student, or one family, is more powerful than a generalized, abstract set of numbers. Generalities numb the senses. Let the donor extrapolate the net effect by focusing on one kid or one family who’s been helped by his or her giving.
Experts recommend you ask someone 8 times a year for a cause.
This is rather shocking to me. We send out one annual fund solicitation letter at the beginning of the year, and one to wrap up at the end. Ahern says it’s not close to enough! Though people might complain about being “over-solicited,” Ahern says they’ll give more despite that sentiment, as indicated in all of the data he’s collected.
Donors want to know their gift CHANGED something, or made a difference (especially if it were a large gift).
What did we do with the donors’ money? How did it impact a family? A teacher? The school more generally? If donors become convinced their gift is just used to fund the 'black hole" of administration that sucks out all light, they won’t keep giving. If it’s “seed” money for an exciting new venture they’ll be inclined to continue being generous.
Non-profits should focus on legacy giving.
If you’ve been a Catholic school leader for a while, it’s easy to grow weary of raising money for the annual fund, year after year. We know we need to do it, but it always feels like we’re pushing a rock uphill. One week, at a school I once led, I visited three donors and asked for gifts to the annual fund. They each responded generously, giving us between one and five thousand dollars—a good week, by any standard.
Friday of that same week, I called an older fella who had once given substantially to our annual fund prior to my time as principal, but no longer did so. I invited him to lunch in hopes of repairing the breach. We had a good meal together, and at the end, I asked him if something had happened to hurt our relationship. He seemed reluctant to tell me, but I persisted. “Well,” he said haltingly, “I gave your school $50,000 one year, but all I got back was a tax letter with a generic thank you.” What? I apologized profusely, and asked how we could make that up to him. He said that wouldn’t be necessary—my invitation to lunch and apology were enough. I could tell he was relieved, and I felt good that we had patched things up. As we drove back to the school, he surprised me with this: “I have a million dollar IRA and I’ve committed half of it to my church when I die, but I haven’t known what to do with the other half. I think I’m going to give it to you guys.” Within two weeks, he sent us all the paperwork and a copy of his revised will, naming us as beneficiary.
As a result of a single lunch, he had given us a legacy gift equalling twice our annual fund goal for that year!
Ahern says most appeals would do well to return two times the “ROI” (the “return on investment—total of donations vs. costs). Legacy appeals, in contrast, have the potential to return 10,000 to one. I believe this is THE space all of us in Catholic schools should be working on diligently—particularly heads of school. Let the advancement director run the annual campaigns. We need to be working on legacy giving. Older Catholics, who went to schools run by the sisters are predisposed to “pay it forward.” An 81 year old man who gave us his estate upon his death explained why: “I went to St. Joseph Catholic Elementary School for $5/month. I went to McGill Catholic Institute for $100/year. It’s payback time!”
Ahern gives some practical tips as to how to make legacy appeals. First, he says we should not aim our legacy appeal at the just the wealthiest donors. Rather, we should aim them at those who have been consistent supporters over a consecutive number of years—as in 5 or more. These are the folks that clearly support our mission! And even if not “wealthy,” middle class folks do accrue significant wealth over the course of their life—and may be willing, for example, to give you half the proceeds of the sale of their home, or re-apportion their estate with their now grown and possibly successful children. The #1 reason that most donors don’t put us in their wills? According to Ahern, they were never asked!
Second, he says we should not talk about “planned giving”,” because that implies sophisticated instruments (charitable gift annuities, trusts, etc) which most people don’t understand, and thereby dismiss our initial inquiries. Rather, a “legacy gift” can be a simple matter of changing a will. It’s also important for us to keep track of years of consecutive giving, as as to identify potential legacy givers, which is why it’s also good to notate these people as such in our annual reports. Keep it simple.
We have a parent in our community who is a professional in estate planning. I asked her if someone expressed interest in making a “planned gift,” would she be willing to advise them, gratis, as a service to our school? She was more than happy to do so. So now I add, at the bottom of all legacy appeals, that we have a professional estate planner who would be happy to work with them at no cost if a person needed advice.
Concluding Remarks: I confess that early in my career, I would not have likely read a book like this one. Getting into the "science"of fund-raising feels a little sleazy, like we’re trying to “milk” a few more dollars from people! "After all," I might have said, "I'm an educator!" But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize if we do fund-raising well, I can pay teachers better and help families attend our school who otherwise could not afford it. “Without margin,” the saying goes,” there is no mission." The person who coined that phrase, by the way, was Sr. Irene Kraus, the first president of the Daughters of Charity National Health System.
The key, for me, is to be genuinely grateful—not as a strategy to get more gifts, but because our donors are decent, good people who care about kids! If I listen well, if I let our donors do most of the talking, I can elevate them with my attention and interest in their life, even while earning monies to support our mission--a true "win-win."
