Managing Your Checkoffs … Foundation Contributions via Member Renewals

The degree to which people respond to a renewal form checkoff depends first and foremost on the level of awareness and positioning of your Annual Fund. If it's well understood what the Annual Fund does and it's seen as legitimate and unique, then a check-box by itself can be very successful: a service "that needs no introduction" is the only kind that tends to perform well on an automatic marketing vehicle (such as a renewal form that allows no space to provide a proper introduction). If it's not well-understood, consider testing a buckslip with one renewal effort that helps to explain what the Annual Fund has done, and what it could do with more support. Keep it to just one effort for starters and allow some time before evaluating the results.

Form clutter is the enemy of timely response; since the primary objective of your membership renewal is to renew the member, look at past donation performance and consider the tradeoffs before you decide. In the scenario at right, dues revenue is 600x greater than donor revenue. Even if the inclusion of an additional choice led to only 2% or 3% of members to think about it, delay processing, and thus not pay until the next renewal form is sent, I'd skip the check-off.

If many of your renewing members go online to close the deal, you might include an alternative checkoff there if it can be programmed in what remains a very clean, neat Member Application. But if you have to direct them to a second donor screen to complete the transaction, I wouldn't—it's again a distraction from the membership renewal. As an alternative, choose a logical time to mount a dedicated fundraising effort among renewing members, say 4 months into the new membership year for that individual. A dedicated effort will effectively cultivate and fundraise to the prospective donor.

Our fundraising work has shown quite a few charities who generate 15+% of their total direct response funds through "second asks" (i.e. gifts made in response to a solicitation included with the donor acknowledgement/confirmation form for their first gift). So we know that good donors will give frequently, but asking for a gift within seconds of the online member renewal will get a response that generates a small fraction of what you can generate with subsequent targeted efforts. It makes sense to allow sufficient space and time between efforts to cultivate, perhaps suggest and explain other successful fundraising techniques such as matching gifts, restricted fund solicitation, major/planned giving inquiries, and continuity giving through EFT or credit card.

By far the best performance achieved by associations is with forms that are prepopulated with a suggested gift that the renewing member must consciously omit if they don't want to give. Ideally a personalized gift array featuring their highest previous contribution + a small multiple to upgrade them, or a flat amount slightly higher than the historical average gift made by all donors, if you can't do that. If the vast majority of your members are relatively indifferent toward your Annual Fund as a cause, a large proportion of them who currently don’t take the active step of opting into the forms you used in the past also won't take the active step of opting out of making a reasonable donation. You could easily go from 4% of members donating with a $25 average gift to a 40% rate with a $35 average gift. This would be an impressive increase in the proportion who give, but of course it's still not much money: $50,000 with 5000 members for example.

It would be key to go any of these option prepared to address the occasional member complaint. As your members are fundraisers themselves, they should understand the techniques and not be terribly resistant to them. So many good marketing programs are killed in response to kneejerk reactions of just a few individuals; if you address those complaints quickly and in-person, you have an opportunity to turn them around (or at worst, agree to disagree but show good business courtesy) while accepting those few contacts as a cost of doing business and a slight deduction from the otherwise positives of higher participation, more revenue & awareness for your Annual Fund. 

Bottom line, effective association foundation fundraising often begins with managing your checkoffs (not your Checkovs!), consciously and effectively.

-Kevin

Two Kinds of Premiums (Post #2 of 2)

While we discuss the value of premiums in association marketing, it's important to keep in mind that there are actually two kinds. Many of us who think of premiums think purely in terms of back-end premiums, items that are probably in a $3 to $5 per item production range: thank-you gifts for joining or registering for $160 memberships or $495 conferences.

It's also worthwhile to consider front-end premium: items that fall in a very low-cost price range, such as the Habitat for Humanity version at the right. Front-end premia almost always outpull back-end premia, and by a wide margin. This is because they help with the first part of the direct marketing equation (get opened) rather than the second part (read me/take action).

Since there is always a delay in fulfillment and we live in an instant gratification world, the back end item is also less effective because it's only peripherally related to the offer. It helps, but probably won't contribute that much to put prospects over the edge (i.e. 'I'm thinking about joining, but the bag closed the deal').

For these kinds of items, consider items such as a custom-struck token or cling window sticker—a test cell of these items affixed to the reply or inserted in your standard approach might boost open rates sufficiently to generate enough lift in response compared to the control package, and enough to offset the probable 5- to 7-cent incremental cost you incur at rollout quantities.

At CRS I know the former lifted our donor acquisition response rates about 30% when we first tested and remained at that level at rollout, although we continued to test token designs and metal colors/finishes to be sure we had the right one. We also found the lift in response was offset by smaller gifts and somewhat lower renewal rates, but of course in your association, you can determine this through your own testing.

-Kevin

Using Promotional Items in Membership and Other Association Marketing

(Note: this is the first of many posts repurposing some of our contributions to the ASAE, AFP, and DMA listservs. Sorry if this feels like "Deja Vu All Over Again" but it seems like a sensible approach to take what we've learned and shared specific to an association or non-profit's problem, and to put it in what we hope is a more permanent setting!)

Associations generally make little or no use of premiums in their marketing programs, which is unfortunate. When SHRM staff recently asked what's working (tote bags have worked well but they were looking for alternatives), my take was that any association program, particularly large ones, might consider emulating similar- or larger-scale programs on the philanthropic side, and to consider/test items with similar per-unit costs.

The DMA Nonprofit Conferences are a great resource here. I don't attend many after completing my succession ladder as chair of things, then the exec committee and my vice-chair role, but they share comparative results of tests, including response rates and average gifts for tests and programs.

It IS 'TMI' for those of us in associations who have fixed dues levels/offers, but they can inspire many creative ideas regarding back-end premium items for not only membership but also conferences and subscriptions that are often more expensive than the membership.

Some items that have stuck out in my mind over time include umbrellas, tote bags, t-shirts, and more professional-tone items such as personalized mugs and desk paperweights.

As associations we often have to balance 'tasteful' with 'effective,' and these two can have an inverse relationship. You might find yourself choosing items that make sense but don't perform as well as another more tacky option.

In SHRM's case, bags tested well, but they're not sure why... most of the successful premiums I tested into at CRS program didn’t make intuitive sense to me, either. In fact, while searching for an example of my past work, I found this hilarious, very public critique of my work! For any of you doing association marketing and who live in fear of complaints, nothing will help cure you of this like developing the thick hides we often need in the charity world.

 -Kevin