Clear + Direct: A Petrus Development Show Episode on Year-End Appeals

Join us as Andrew and Rhen share a plan of action for successful year-end appeal letters.  They answer all of the important questions:  who, what, when, and why!  

Show Notes:  

As Andrew shares early in this episode, 30 percent of nonprofit giving is done in December.  For this reason, your end-of-year appeal letter could be a major winner for your organization.  Listen as Andrew and Rhen discuss ways to make your end-of-year appeal planning as fruitful as possible.  If you take nothing else from this episode, remember this:  a clear and direct ask is the most important part of the appeal letter.  

In this episode, Andrew and Rhen answer the following questions:

• Why are end-of-year appeals so important?
  
  
• Are direct mail appeals worth the effort and expense?  Can I stick to email for a year-end appeal?
  
  
• Who should receive our year-end appeal?  When should end-of-year appeals be sent?
  
  
• What should be in the appeal letter itself?   What are some strategies for making our appeal letter more successful?

Do you need help getting started with your end-of-year appeal letter?  If so, click HERE for our editable Canva templates that you can customize to meet your organization's needs! 

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

0207.64
Host:
Okay. Well, howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Petrus Development Show. I am Rhen Hoehn from Petrus Development. Joining me today is Andrew Robison. How's it going, Andrew?

0217.21
AROB:
It's going great, Rhen. And I can't help but notice that you started this by saying howdy, which I know is not your normal greeting. So something that I am doing is affecting your speech, which is great.

0225.62
Host:
It's totally rubbed off on me.

0230.97
AROB:
So I love hearing the howdy. Excuse me. And I'm sure our listeners have just come to accept it as part of my vernacular now.

0240.42
Host:
I think so. Yeah. Aren't you supposed to reply howdy? Isn't that how that works?

0244.01
AROB:
In my emails.

0245.81
Host:
Oh, when I say howdy, aren't you supposed to say howdy back?

0248.32
AROB:
Oh yeah. I mean, I normally would have, except I had to go into this explanation of how I was excited.

0253.82
Host:
There we go. Well, howdy, Andrew.

0255.89
AROB:
Howdy, Rhen!

0257.18
Host:
All right. So, last night, as we're recording this, last night was Halloween.

0304.07
AROB:
Yeah.

0304.67
Host:
Took the kids out. My kids have gotten to the age where they dress as things. I don't know what they're all - Minecraft characters. I don't know what any of these things are. But last night, it was the first night that it snowed here.

0317.16
AROB:
Okay.

0317.25
Host:
And so we had the leaves falling. It was snowing slash raining, kind of nasty and cold.

0321.87
AROB:
Yeah.

0321.96
Host:
I went and got coffee on my way home from Mass with my wife this morning. I got my pumpkin flavored coffee and my Christmas themed cup.

0325.74
AROB:
Hey, look at you!

0329.54
Host:
So it's kind of that transition time to the end of the year, right?

0330.80
AROB:
Yeah, yeah.

0333.48
Host:
Time to start preparing for Christmas, time for Advent, for the end of the year. So we want to talk a little bit about end of year appeals with this episode here, and dig into those because it's coming up fast. You gotta be - if you're not already preparing your end of year appeal, you should be, right?

0347.54
AROB:
Right.

0348.04
Host:
And so let's dig a little bit into those and best practices, kind of what you need to know, what you need to do to have your end of year appeal perform well. Sound good to you?

0358.13
AROB:
That sounds great. Yeah, I think that's a good topic.

0400.76
Host:
Great, so I guess before we go too far into it, why are end of year appeals so important? And why should I feel that they should be kind of the cornerstone of your annual communications plan? Why would you say that is?

0416.00
AROB:
So if you look at giving across the nonprofit sector, 30% of all gifts are made in the month of December. So we've got 12 months and yet a third of all gifts come in in that final 30 days.

0429.14
AROB:
And so when you say it should be the cornerstone, it's definitely an important appeal. It's definitely an important time because that's when your donors are wanting to give, right?

0440.94
AROB:
The two questions - I've probably said this on this podcast a hundred times - two questions that your donor has to answer before they'll give is: why should I give to you, and why should I give to you now?

0450.89
AROB:
And while the end of the year has a number of reasons why people want to give, they want to get their giving in before the end of the year for their taxes, they are seeing the bell ringers out when they're out shopping and they're in a spirit of generosity, they're talking about the needy in church and through the homilies. Whatever the reasons are, people want to give and they are accustomed to giving in the final month of the year. And so we as nonprofits should accommodate that by providing them with ample opportunities. Does that make sense?

0528.61
Host:
Makes a lot of sense to me. So the number one question that comes up when we start working with organizations is: should I be mailing out an appeal letter? Can I just do email? It's a lot cheaper that way. What's your feedback there?

0541.91
AROB:
Yeah, so in my opinion, do both. So people that read your direct mail - we've probably talked about this on the podcast as well - direct mail has had its ups and downs over the years, mostly in perception. I feel like if you look at statistics, it has stayed consistently beneficial to organizations as a way of driving dollars, but perception of it has gone up and down, right?

0606.49
Host:
Right.

0612.61
AROB:
And so whatever you perceive direct mail is doing in terms of "people aren't giving through the mail anymore, they're not checking their mail, they're not mailing checks," the dollars don't indicate that.

0622.88
AROB:
The dollars indicate that people still give through direct mail. Now on the flip side, there are younger generations of philanthropists who do not give, who do not mail checks. And so when they get something in the mail, they will then go to the website on their laptop or on their phone and give. So 30% of all gifts that are generated through a direct mail appeal...

0652.68
AROB:
...come in online. Okay. So tying that together, if we're going to reach as many people as we can in ways that they want to, ways that they are then prepared to respond with a gift, then we should do both direct mail and email, knowing that some people will mail checks and other people will go online and make their gifts.

0716.27
Host:
Excellent. So let's keep going through some kind of the basic tenets of this year.

0722.89
AROB:
Great.

0723.18
Host:
Who should your end of the year appeal be sent to? Should you send it to specific portions of your list? Should you send it to everybody? No matter what, even if they've given already this year, what's your best advice there?

0733.44
AROB:
Yeah, and when you said - I like the way you said that, you know, the end of the year appeal is kind of your cornerstone. There are ways to segment your list, meaning exclude certain people from certain mailings. I don't think that your end of year appeal should exclude anybody. I think your end of year appeal is - if you're gonna send one appeal to everybody, make it your end of year appeal for the reasons that we've talked about. So everybody gets your end of year appeal, both mail, email, and even social media, right? Like putting links on Facebook about "it's time to give, please..."

0810.34
AROB:
...here's the appeal, whether it's a PDF download or whether it's just a link. And so do it to everybody, and that gives you the best chance of having a good return on that end of year appeal.

0823.67
Host:
Definitely. I know there's some people that feel strongly that you should exclude certain groups from appeals, like monthly givers, for example. Like, "Oh, they're already giving every month."

0831.06
Host:
Why would I send them an appeal? In my experience, I've found that a lot of my monthly donors have been some of my biggest year-end one-time donors as well.

0839.66
AROB:
Yeah.

0840.48
Host:
If somebody's thinking about making a charitable gift at the end of the year, they're probably going to give it to organizations they already like, right? And if they're giving monthly to you, they probably like you.

0850.79
Host:
And so if you send them that appeal, you may see some big gifts come back in. And so definitely don't exclude those groups or really anybody from this appeal, I would say.

0900.03
AROB:
Yeah. I mean, I would say that if you're going to - the one segment, very small segment of your list that you might want to exclude from your end of year appeal would be the handful of individuals who have an active pending major gift solicitation out there.

0918.20
Host:
Yeah, that makes sense.

0918.31
AROB:
So if you have asked, you know, John and Stacey for $100,000 for a project, and they say, "Ren, I love this. I love this project. We got to talk about it. We're going to talk with our advisor. It's the end of the year. We want to make a gift. We'll do something..." and whatever their response is, right? They're thinking about it.

0942.58
Host:
Yeah, that makes sense.

0942.95
AROB:
Yeah, like I'm fine with cutting those people out of the end of the year appeal. But that's a very small slice of the population. I'm with you - monthly donors are going to be generous at the end of the year. Your planned giving donors are going to be generous at the end of the year. They've made these gifts and these commitments because they love you and they love the work you're doing. And so giving them an opportunity at the end of the year is never, in my experience, has never done any damage.

1010.95
Host:
That makes a lot of sense to me. So we're talking about this. It's early November still. You think about end of the year, it still feels a little bit far away, but when should these appeals be sent, do you think?

1022.01
AROB:
So this is actually a really good question. And I started my fundraising career in a great development shop that had a good program, good calendar, good schedule. So to me, getting your appeal out the week after Thanksgiving was just how everything - how we did it every year, every organization, that was how it is. But I'm amazed at how many nonprofits, whether faith-based or not, that don't have - that have never heard that and don't think that it's important to get their appeal out early. And the appeal will go out right before Christmas, or in some cases, even right after Christmas. And what that means is, you know, in terms of results - and then the response is, "Yeah, we don't really ever get a good response from an end of year appeal." So my first question is, well, when is it going out? You want to get it out early. The reason for that is there's a number of reasons. One, because it's such a popular time, there are a lot of nonprofits that are mailing...

1121.05
AROB:
...that are emailing, that are asking for gifts. And so from your donor's perspective, it'd be great to be on the front end of that list of requests, right?

1131.71
AROB:
So that's just kind of practical.

1131.74
Host:
Exactly.

1133.80
AROB:
But then the other reason is that if you do it properly - send your appeal out right after Thanksgiving, do a Christmas card to your most likely donors, a Christmas email around December 10th or 12th somewhere around there - that's a reminder and a trigger for the people that got the appeal. And then the end of year email sequence will be kind of the final reminder.

1202.24
AROB:
Getting out early gives you opportunity for four or five weeks of reminders to them to make that gift.

1224.98
Host:
Yeah, so I worked at the campus ministry at Michigan Tech for a long time. And when I got there, there hadn't been a whole lot of fundraising going on, but they had sent out an appeal every year for lots of years. And we had the records from the last 10 or 11 appeals before I started there. So we had some good numbers and I plotted them up. They had mailed, like you said, all over the place.

1243.51
Host:
Anywhere from November up until early January, which seems crazy to me.

1247.93
Host:
And we plotted it out - what's the mail date of each letter and what's the approximate amount each letter raised? And it was a direct correlation. The earlier it went out, the more it raised every time.

1257.23
Host:
And I think there is a cutoff to that. I think you want to avoid your mail arriving Thanksgiving week in the U.S. because you get all kinds of flyers and stuff in the mail. And in election years like this, you don't want to be getting in people's mailbox right before an election. My wife and I just had 18 political flyers come in the last five days. Oh my gosh!

1313.98
AROB:
Nice. Well, you're in a swing state. Nobody sends anything to Texas, so yeah.

1318.02
Host:
I guess not. Yeah. But you know your donors - who knows where they are. But yeah, it's easy to lose a piece of mail in there, right?

1326.71
Host:
There's lots of competition, but most of the rest of the next couple of months outside of those two weeks, you're pretty safe. And so I think aiming for after Thanksgiving, or if you're in Canada, you know, the second half of November, you're pretty safe.

1339.05
Host:
Thanksgiving happens in October in Canada. It's not quite the same thing as in the U.S. Right. So there is still kind of some Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all those things going on. So it's a little bit noisy, but yeah, right after Thanksgiving in the U.S. is pretty much the perfect time to be mailing.

1352.89
Host:
And the thing that... go ahead, I'll let you go.

1353.10
AROB:
I agree. Let me throw one thing in. Yeah. So, are we going to talk about working with a print house at some point?

1401.67
Host:
That's exactly where I was going next.

1402.84
AROB:
Okay. You go for it.

1405.48
Host:
So I was going to say is that those print shops, if you're using somebody to print and/or mail for you, they're doing all these mailings for everybody this time of year.

1413.58
Host:
It's their busiest time. So you got to be ahead of the game, right? They're going to take a lot of Thanksgiving week off because it's a holiday and they'll have a heavier workload. So you really got to get ahead of it. I know, and maybe this isn't a big deal in other states, but here, the deer hunting opener is November 15th.

1430.37
Host:
We always had a rule in the office - nobody's going hunting unless the appeal is to the mail house! So it was motivational for the whole team to get that done and out early so we could be out of the office.

1440.12
AROB:
Yeah. And when you work with a print house, the best relationships I have ever had with print houses - which it sounds funny if you're new to this - find a good print house, whether it's local or national...

1454.92
AROB:
...and develop a relationship with them because that will be vital to correct your mistakes at some point or to give you a leg up on your mailings. But communicate with your print house early. Like, so it's not a bad thing now, first of November, to send a note or to call your print house and say, "We'd like this to be when our mailer gets out."

1521.21
AROB:
"This is when we'll be sending it to you. What do you need from us now to kind of get on your list and to make it happen?" And if they don't need anything now, then that's fine. But at least then you're getting in the queue. You're giving them a heads up. It may be that they realize, "Oh wait, yeah, send it in this date 'cause we're going to be hunting" or whatever it is. But developing that relationship is going to be really helpful.

1552.73
Host:
Great. So let's talk about what should be in the letter itself. It's easy to say, all right, send out an appeal. Is that just saying, "Hey, please send us money"? How would you structure that appeal? How would you approach creating an appeal letter if you haven't done one before?

1606.71
AROB:
Yeah. So just practically speaking, appeal letters are different than newsletters. Newsletters are, you know, four, six, eight pages, a lot of pictures, captions, text stories. An appeal letter is very simple. It can be one page. It can be two pages, meaning front and back. It doesn't have to be long. I like to include a picture because a big block of text always is kind of a turnoff for me. So I like to include a picture of something...

1636.20
AROB:
...that ideally relates to the story. But this is your chance to really talk about impacts, right? It's the end of the year, you're talking about what your organization does, what they accomplish. So put an impact story in there. It can be about an individual, it can be about a family. The more you can dial in your impact stories, meaning large groups, family, individual...

1703.03
AROB:
...the individual is always going to kind of connect more - or the reader is going to connect more with the individual in that impact story than they will with a group. So kind of dialing in and start - you can have a message that is thematic for the year or for the season, whether that's Advent, whether it's something else - greeting, and then kind of get right into it.

[1725.65]
AROB:
Tell the impact story and then close with a clear and direct ask. You want to ask for support if you have the records, and you can ask for a specific amount that is either connected to or in some way tied to what they've given previously. That's great. If you can't, then make a very clear direct ask: "Please support with a financial gift before the end of the year."

[1750.94]
Host:
Exactly. So to summarize that: tell a story of the impact you're making, show how if the donor donates, you can do more of that impact to make that difference in the world, right?

[1800.54]
AROB:
Yeah.

[1800.74]
Host:
I think that's important. You said a clear ask. You don't want to assume that they're going to infer that you're asking them to make a gift, right? Even though it seems like it should be obvious, you want to make it super clear what you're asking for and then give them a way to make the gift.

[1810.79]
AROB:
Yeah, a lot of people that are in nonprofit work or that run nonprofits and maybe don't have a background in fundraising, they're kind of constantly waging this internal battle about, "Well, I don't want to ask too much and I don't want to be too pushy, and I don't want to... I want to tell my supporters about the work we're doing and if they want to support, they'll support." Right, and there is some element of truth to that.

[1838.77]
AROB:
There's also an element of truth that if you don't ask your supporters for a gift, a financial gift, they won't make it on their own. And so having a clear ask—"Please consider an end-of-year gift to support our work so that we can accomplish more in the coming years"—whatever it is, however you frame that, make it clear. And if you can personalize it, if you have the data to do that, then that's always going to make it a little bit better.

[1903.23]
Host:
Exactly. Even a small amount of personalization, right? In a campus ministry setting, we would do three versions of each appeal letter: one to alumni, one to parents of students, and one to everybody else, which we just kind of called supporters or friends. And it was literally one or two words in the opening paragraph, you know, "Thanks to you" or "the parents of students," and then kind of one couple words in the ask, you know, "give to support students like your child and their peers." Just kind of tweaking a little bit of language made it feel really personal, like you're writing it to them, not just to the broader community that includes everybody.

[1937.79]
AROB:
Yep. And then you always want to include a PS after the signature, right? Because the reader will read the first line, they'll read anything that's bold, and then they'll read the PS.

[1942.32]
Host:
Yes, yes.

[1947.03]
AROB:
And then if they are interested, they'll go back and they'll read the whole thing or they'll skim it, but have something in there that is an attention grabber in the PS because it will be read.

[1958.73]
Host:
Exactly. So what are some ways—are there any ways that we can maybe augment the ask that we're making, kind of make more powerful asks or get some better results there?

[2007.52]
AROB:
Yeah, I would say there's three fairly simple strategies that I've used and recommend to others. One is a matching component, right? So people always love that when their gift comes in, then somebody else is giving as well. So a match tied to your year-end appeal can generate additional gifts.

[2028.33]
AROB:
But it also is an opportunity—we've talked about this in our Giving Days podcast—that it gives you a chance to go and ask for another major gift. So your letter somewhere in there says, "We've got a generous donor that's giving $10,000. Your gift will be doubled if you respond. Please be generous." So that's one: a matching component.

[2051.24]
AROB:
A second way that I've used in a lot of situations is a wish list. So a wish list is basically a listing of somewhere around 10 or 12 items that people can buy for your organization.

[2109.46]
AROB:
And there's—I've done this multiple times with a lot of success and there are a lot of benefits to it. A couple of just sort of rules about it: you don't want too many.

[2120.02]
AROB:
So 10 or 12 is a good number. You want them to be in a span of prices. So if you need, say, a hundred hymnals that are $12 apiece, then put hymnals at $12 needing a hundred, all the way up to—the sweet spot is in that $100 to $200 range.

[2143.07]
AROB:
A couple of items, and then I like to put one, maybe two, but one kind of big-ticket item. So $1,500, $2,000—if we got this, we would buy this. What that does is put in people's minds the real cost of running and operating your organization, your ministry. And then the other rule—sorry, I'm kind of laboring this—but one other rule is don't make it all items.

[2212.07]
AROB:
So I mentioned the hymnal, maybe the security system on the high-price item.

[2217.63]
AROB:
Well, then, I worked for a place and we did a feeding ministry, and we figured out the cost for a week of feeding ministry was $170.

[2228.62]
AROB:
So we put $170, 52 weeks. That was the most popular item. So that's just basically unrestricted cash that is funding our organization.

[2235.97]
AROB:
Okay. So that's a wish list that can also support and augment your appeal. And then the last one is pulling out your LYBUNTS and your SYBUNTS and putting them in hand-addressed envelopes. So I would say those three fairly simple strategies can make a big difference.

[2254.73]
Host:
Yeah, so that last one, it's people who've given in the past but haven't given this year. And if you just take the time to hand address or pay your print house to hand address the envelopes, you're going to get a higher open rate from those, right? They're people that are interested because they've given in the past, it's worth a little bit extra cost.

[2310.19]
Host:
I know I worked with a big print house and they had hired a team of ladies who would come in every so often and hand address envelopes for them from a list. So we would send them a few hundred of our LYBUNTS and SYBUNTS and other kind of high-priority people to hand address those envelopes. You just get a higher open rate and read rate on those because it feels more personalized—it is more personalized for those recipients.

[2331.64]
AROB:
Absolutely. Yeah, it's great.

[2333.91]
Host:
Great, and I love the wish list too. One thing I mentioned—you kind of said it in there—but you don't have to, it doesn't have to be new things you're asking for, right? It can be things you're already doing and just put a price on it. For us, you helped me implement a wish list in our appeal and it doubled the return over appeal.

[2349.08]
Host:
From one year to the next when we added that wish list. So it was massive. It was tens of thousands of dollars difference when we did that. And most of the gifts that came in weren't actually restricted to the things on the wish list. Most people checked "Greatest Need" for you.

[2402.31]
Host:
But I think showing them the things that their money was going toward helped them visualize, "Oh, I'm not just giving it to this black box here where they're hopefully doing good things for students."

[2410.86]
Host:
It was, "Oh, this is exactly what they're doing." And it was the same for us. Donuts After Mass every Sunday was the number one item every time. People like to feed poor college students, I guess, right?

[2422.45]
AROB:
Yeah, and then a wish list is nice because on the flip side, donor stewardship is always important. How do you thank your donors? A wish list gives you a very tactical way of helping. So I remember one client I was working with, they wanted to put—they had a number of classrooms and they needed crucifixes, right?

[2439.97]
AROB:
I don't know, $18 per crucifix or $25 per crucifix. And so they had 10, they sold all 10. They actually sold probably about 20, right? And then they had to go back and say, "Thank you very much." And people were very understanding. But they took pictures of those crucifixes and they either handed the picture, printed out and gave it to the donor if they saw them, or they mailed it.

[2501.74]
AROB:
And people love to see the crucifix in the classroom. So it gives you a very practical and easy way to then thank your donors after the fact, which always instills more trust and more desire to continue to support, which is good.

[2519.71]
Host:
Love it. Great. I know we can keep going on about this topic. Any kind of last words or thoughts you want to throw in about year-end appeals here?

[2527.42]
AROB:
I would say not specifically about year-end appeals, but I probably talked about it before. The best thing that you can do for your communications/development program outside of just going and sitting down and asking people for gifts...

[2542.64]
AROB:
Is to get yourself in your communications into that rhythm of communicate and—not communicate—inform and ask. If you can get into that rhythm where you're informing your donors about what the work is that you're doing, what the impact is, that's through newsletters, that's through blogs, that's through podcasts, whatever it is.

[2602.21]
AROB:
Informing them and then following up after the fact with an ask, very specific appeal that says, "Here's what we're doing, please consider a gift." That rhythm repeated over and over throughout the course of the year, year after year, you will see your appeal numbers go up. They will rise because people—they kind of break the two concerns, right? The one concern is we've got a lot of people who know what we're doing and are never generous cause we never ask them.

[2631.73]
AROB:
Or the people that are irritated because "I only hear from that organization when they're asking me for money." So getting into that rhythm of informing them and then asking them accomplishes both, and you can develop, you can build a really strong development program just based on that rhythm.

[2648.57]
Host:
Love it. Great. So as we wrap up here, if you want help getting started developing an appeal letter, we actually have some editable Canva templates where you can just go in there, put it onto your own Canva account and have a template ready to design out for your appeal letter. And it also has newsletter templates, if you're looking to design an appeal letter for the future too. If you go to petrusdevelopment.com/155, you will be able to access a document that gives you links to all of those editable templates for free. So PetrusDevelopment.com/155, because this is episode 155 of the Petrus Development Show.

[2725.50]
AROB:
Yeah, and just a quick testimonial. I'm working with a client right now, Red Sea Catholic Apostolate here in Bryan, Texas. And they had not—they had done newsletters in the past, but not with a process and a system. And so working with the communications director, I said, "Let's do a newsletter." We put a calendar together. And she said, "OK, what's it have to look like?" And I said, "Boom, here's your template." So she looked through it. We started with a six—we kind of cut it down to a four-page newsletter. And it was just simple.

[2755.63]
AROB:
Drop the picture in, drop the copy in, and we got the newsletter done in, I mean, less than a week. It was pretty amazing from never having done one, using the template, got it done in a week, and now it's about to go to the print house.

[2806.89]
AROB:
So definitely recommend using the templates.

[2810.20]
AROB:
Go to that website, petrusdevelopment.com/155 and get your editable Canva templates.

[2816.63]
Host:
Great. I think that's all we've got for today. So thank you for joining us, Andrew.

[2820.48]
AROB:
Absolutely. My pleasure. Love talking about year-end giving.

[2823.47]
Host:
All right. Have a great one.

[2824.53]
AROB:
All right. Bye.