Let’s face it. Inconsistent and unpredictable fundraising revenue is a problem for many non-profits.

In my ten plus years of fundraising and working with dozens of clients, the most common obstacle they face is not committing to enough regular direct response fundraising campaigns. Essentially this means they aren’t asking enough and doing so in an effective manner. Let me unpack this a bit more.

Direct response fundraising campaigns are campaigns that are designed to get immediate responses from donors. These kinds of campaigns happen in mediums like mail, email, phone or TV. What makes direct response fundraising different from grant writing or major gifts is that you are asking for an immediate gift and there is a clear way to make that gift within minutes. Additionally, direct response fundraising has a number of inputs and outputs that are thoroughly measured.

In this article, you’ll learn more about the benefits of developing direct response fundraising campaigns as well as the basics of running successful campaigns.

Why Consistently Send Direct Response Fundraising Campaigns?

Like any fundraising tactic, direct response fundraising can be a lot of work. Let’s talk about the benefits that make it worth your while.

● Money can come in quick – Unlike the gift cycle for a major gift or a grant review process, money from direct response fundraising can come in quick! If you send a fundraising email, you’ll receive donations within minutes and most of the revenue from that appeal will arrive within 48 hours. When direct mail lands in mail boxes, you’ll likely start to see gifts within a week.
● Develops consistent donor giving behavior – One of the keys to building a loyal donor base and raising more money over time is developing consistent donor giving behavior. Whatever mediums you choose to use for direct response, donors will get used to receiving them and donating through that medium. Consistency in this case becomes your BFF.
● Data that helps you improve over time – Direct response fundraising is a treasure trove of data that can help you improve your results over time. With each campaign you run, you’ll learn more about your donors, your prospects, and what’s working (or not) in your strategy.
● Ultimately, asking more will likely mean more money – If the top three points haven’t sold you on the benefits of direct response fundraising, I’ll end with this. Ultimately, asking more will likely mean more money. One of the basic tenets of fundraising is that if you don’t ask, you likely won’t receive. Asking once a year in December is great. But what would happen if you asked at another time during the year, or even two more times? Chances are you’d have some repeat donors (yay for retention!) and more revenue in the door.

How Frequently Should You Run Fundraising Campaigns?

The answer to this will depend on your organization’s capacity and resources. Every direct response fundraising campaign (even ones that just use one channel) takes time.

If you’re brand new to direct response fundraising, my advice is to run one campaign. Start with one and then focus a good amount of time debriefing your experience. What went really well? What didn’t go so well? What took more time or money than you expected? What could you do differently? From there, give yourself a good 3 to 4 months before running your next campaign so you have adequate time for stewardship and campaign planning.

If you’re currently running direct response fundraising campaigns, my advice is aim for three to four campaigns per year. One of those campaigns will likely be your year-end fundraising campaign. From there you can develop additional campaigns around programs, initiatives, awareness days, etc.

Developing Your Direct Response Fundraising Campaign

Now, let’s talk about how you can develop your direct response fundraising campaign. When I work on direct response fundraising campaigns with clients, here’s the exact process I use to develop the campaign concept and begin executing.

1. Identify relevance and urgency – I start with this because it is the foundation of a good fundraising appeal. No matter how you ask, it needs to be crystal clear to your donors that the ask is relevant and urgent. I think about this as helping donors understand why something matters and what it matters in this moment.

   If you consider year-end fundraising, the relevance is the spirit of the holiday season and the urgency is often the tax year deadline.

   Another example for you. A domestic violence shelter may choose to run a campaign on International Women’s Day, which naturally ties into their work with women and the urgency could be expanding a program to serve more women.

2. Build Your Call to Action – Ahead of campaigns as a part of the campaign brief, I like to build my calls to action. At this point it’s likely going to be a brainstorm, but it will be very helpful to keep the project on message.

   Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and write out as many calls to action as you can think of for your relevance and urgency. If it helps, you can think about these as the text that will be hyperlinked in an email or text that’s bolded in the direct mail letter.

3. Identify Stories – The third piece to developing the concept for your direct response fundraising campaign is to identify stories that you’ll use in the campaign. These stories should make sense with your relevance, urgency and call to action.

4. Determine which channels you’ll use – Next we’re going to pivot into planning the roll out of the campaign. This begins with determining which channels you’ll use for asking. These could include:

   ● Mail
   ● Email
   ● Phone
   ● TV
   ● Radio

   Pick channels that have historically worked well for your campaigns. However, if you’re brand new to direct response fundraising, I’d recommend mail or email.

5. Build your campaign timelines – Your next step is to build your timeline for your campaign. It can be helpful to start with the drop date for your campaign. This will be the date you send out mail, the day an email is sent, the day a phone campaign begins, etc. From there, work backwards with what needs to happen. Here are some common steps in the process:

   ● Brief development
   ● Copywriting
   ● Preparing the data file
   ● QA of the data file
   ● Design and layout
   ● QA of live layout
   ● Print
   ● Schedule and send

6. Get to work on writing and production – Once you’ve got your timeline mapped out, you’re ready to roll into writing and production. This is where the work and magic happens. Schedule blocks of time in your calendar to get it done. Ask for help or outsource if you can.

Running more direct response fundraising campaigns each year can buoy your organization’s fundraising revenue. Start from where you are and incrementally add new campaigns to your annual fundraising plan. Learn from each campaign you run and continuously improve your direct response fundraising strategy.