Ted Fickes

The brilliance of creating nonprofit newsletters people want

September 29, 2023 by Ted Fickes

A few weeks ago I asked around for examples of nonprofit newsletters that bring joy. Are there newsletters you love, rely on, even look forward to opening?

I received a few enthusiastic, even joyous (well, that might be pushing it) responses.

And some not so enthusiastic responses. We’ve all seen (and not bothered opening) our share of boring nonprofit newsletters. ?

Regardless, the results offer some insights into effective newsletters and member communications.

[1] Have a point of view. Be relevant.

Seems obvious but doesn’t often happen.

Just because your staff worked on something doesn’t make it relevant.

From our examples, it helps to have a close connection to readers – one that uses content and news to build a relationship and trust. Small groups should have an advantage here.

One colleague shared the newsletter of a local SURJ (Standing Up for Racial Justice) chapter with this note:

we are small and can deliver just the “news” our membership wants. We use the same format and categories every time and always have several relevant items in each – which I believe creates confidence in our audience that it’s worth opening.

In a small group, a few hundred to a few thousand people with a clear purpose, it’s easier to identify relevance. There are well-defined recruitment moments and processes. The mission is clear while member activities are connected to outcomes and (importantly) fundraising. Purpose and theory of change are on display, talked about, and reported on.

Larger organizations have more programs, more staff and a greater need to build and constantly replenish an email list. Recruitment is constant, everywhere and optimized for conversions. The long-term value of a supporter may be calculated but takes a back seat to short-term cost.

Newsletters become a place to promote programs, not meet the interests and needs of supporters.

Here are a few ways to rebalance newsletters – and communications – towards relevance:

Be clear at the start about who you are…

…and what you’re doing and how people fit into change. Put a three bullet list of mission, priorities, outcomes (some combination of these) in your messaging – recruitment, actions, onboarding, fundraising, website, etc.

Cultivate people’s ideas and interests in the onboarding process.

Run short surveys. Give people three action/activity ideas to respond to in a welcome message. Track responses, interests, feedback and which actions are chosen.

The Accidentally Wes Anderson newsletter offers an example of a newsletter (and social media user) survey. Several weeks after subscribing, receiving a welcome series and newsletters you’re invited to take a survey. Here’s a look at the flow.

Survey invite in an email:

A screenshot of an email from Accidentally Wes Anderson that invites readers to take a survey. An old black van is at the top of the image. Text says "Hey, Adventurers!" and describes the purpose of the survey.

Survey front page:

A screenshot of the introduction to a reader survey from Accidentally Wes Anderson. It says "Hey Adventurer! A few things before we start: Just a few minutes to complete, skip any question you want, and you'll get a small gift at the end."

The survey is around 25 questions. It’s long. But the questions aren’t complicated and the offer of a prize at the end is valuable and in keeping with the “quest for adventure” tone of other email and web content.

Post-survey thank you:

Screenshot of the thank you page used for Accidentally Wes Anderson reader survey.

Acknowledge the limits (and promise) of onboarding and engagement opportunities.

Many (most?) people aren’t going to respond to an onboarding survey or feedback campaign. This indirect cultivation won’t excite staff (and consultants) in organizations with metrics focused on fundraising. And that’s okay.

The responses you receive will identify your most enthusiastic new supporters and their interests. This valuable info can feed into your email (newsletter) strategy. This is also an opportunity to test how to increase response. Engage people early and you’re more likely to keep them around.

Show people getting things done.

Supporters like creating results whether you’re doing advocacy, training, direct service or even policy. A colleague shared the Trail News newsletter put out by Washington Trails Association. They said it works because it’s a consistent newsletter that has:

a monthly magazine format, a digest that has “candy” for the reader (like local hikes or events) and blends in accomplishments.

[2] Don’t send to everyone.

This ties into relevance. If you’re a larger organization with 20k, 100k or a million addresses on your list, how do you know everyone wants your newsletter? But that’s what many (most) groups do. Subscribers get newsletters.

Despite our best intentions, many subscribers and supporters aren’t at a newsletter-ready spot in their engagement with our issue or organization. And a pretty general, broad and/or dense newsletter isn’t inviting.

Groups end up with lousy newsletter open and click rates. They conclude newsletters don’t work and either shut it down or (more likely) let it limp along without intervention which damages the whole email program.

Invite supporters to subscribe to your newsletter. Let them see samples that show what they’re getting before subscribing. Create newsletters that are clear, specific and have a purpose.

[3] Be at least a little amazing.

Another colleague shared newsletters from Mobilisation Lab and The Forge saying they worked because they are “scannable/readable, exciting, inspiring.” That’s high praise for communications coming from a movement or nonprofit organization. It’s high praise for any newsletter, really.

Readable, exciting and inspiring are good descriptors of all the favorite newsletters shared with me.

Relevance matters here (see above).

Having something to say is critical. Don’t just make people happy. Push people to think. Tell supporters something new (and/or newsworthy). Have a voice. Be opinionated. As Bonnie Raitt has been known to say: “give them something to talk about…a little mystery to figure out.”

Too often, newsletters equate “interesting” with visuals and graphic design. Splashy or attractive header images get more attention than readable fonts, colors, white space and informative/useful graphics.

Consider the full range of content design, not just logos and images. It’s no coincidence that a colleague used scannable and readable alongside exciting and inspiring to describe their favorite newsletters.

Images and graphics can (ideally should) inform and help tell a story given the brief time you have with your reader. A header serves the story, not just the logo or brand. Here’s a header from the Arkansas Times daily newsletter:

Sidebar: the dark header image of clapping middle age white guys amps up the grim headline. Indeed, who needs info about government corruption?

[4] Be brilliant for those who care. Others will show up.

To sum it up…don’t try to create a newsletter for every reader (or every staff or board member). Be brilliant and passionate for those who care most. Be useful. Give them something to talk about and they will. Others will follow.

5 steps to a super delightful email program

September 1, 2023 by Ted Fickes

Run email like your organization depends on it because, well, it does.

For many (most? all?) groups, email is the primary line of contact between the organization and its supporters, members and prospects.

An email address is usually the first and often the only data you have on a supporter.

You rely on email to:

Inform people about your work.
Distribute articles and updates.
Drive traffic to websites and forms where people can take action, donate, start a P2P campaign, purchase items or event tickets and more.
Establish a relationship and build loyalty.
Request that people take action.
Let supporters know about events.
Send receipts and other transactional notices.
Receive feedback from supporters.

Despite this dependence, nonprofit email performance is lackluster and declining. Here’s some data from the 2023 Benchmarks report put out by M+R.

Nonprofits sent 60 email messages per subscriber in 2022 (SIXTY ?…yeah, that seems like a lot!), including 29 fundraising appeals. Email accounted for 14% of all online revenue.
The average response rate for fundraising email was 0.09%, an 18% decrease compared to 2021.
The average group is losing 17% of its list each year: 9.1% of list members unsubscribed. Another 8% of email addresses became non-deliverable due to bouncing.

People are always going to unsubscribe, abandon email addresses (the main source of bounces) and otherwise cause lists to churn.

But these are real problems: Nearly 1 in 5 email address is lost per year and small response rates are falling. Yet we’re sending everyone more than an email per week.

It’s almost as if what we’re doing isn’t working.

You could say “well, it’s email and people hate email.” And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

But perhaps people simply dislike and tune out BAD email.

We train people, including our staff and leaders, to expect a poor email journey, crisis-only asks for attention, and no downside to ignoring email.

So, can email be better? Can it work? Could we create email that supporters enjoy and use?

An image of handbills and signs pasted to a wall in Nazare, Portugal. Most of the signs are peeling off the wall.

Don’t change the email. Change the system.

I’m going to propose that the way organizations run their email is broken. For most groups, leaders and teams, email (and the email list) is a tool to send stuff out and tell folks what to do or think. Many teams with different interests touch email – communications, digital, organizing, membership and more.

Despite all the attention, there may be nobody responsible for email as a product unto itself.

What if we treated email as product and not a communications tool? By this I mean creating a product team responsible for not just creating emails people ask for but for a group with cross-cutting skills and responsibilities who are dedicated to developing and implementing a deep understanding of what works in email.

You probably realize that the deep decline of print subscriptions and ad revenue means that news companies – everyone from national giants like The Washington Postand The New York Times to local digital news sites like Colorado Sun or LAist – use email, and more specifically newsletters, to deliver stories, build relationships with readers and run membership and fundraising programs.

Email is critical to the success of news organizations. So much so that audience and email directors are roles responsible for the growth and revenue needed to fund editorial roles. Folks like Anjali Iyer at The Washington Post are doing testing and deep analysis of email products and strategies including, be still my heart, the role of onboarding and welcome series.

Newsletters as product

News organizations are investing in newsletters because they are seeing the connection between email and revenue. Email gets into inboxes. And a great email gets read. At news organizations, email subscribers are the main source of funding – similar to nonprofits.

Many news organizations I’ve spoken to report that around 10% of their newsletter subscribers are members and/or donors. They credit a focus on email newsletters as essential to turning web visitors into subscribers and subscribers into members and/or donors. I suspect that few nonprofits are seeing a 10% donor rate among subscribers.

Making the change

Mindset and strategy change for your communications team and their partners in organizing, program and fundraising (and the consulting shops that often do of the the email strategy and implementation).

How do you get to that point?

[1] Approach email like the primary communications, advocacy and fundraising channel that it is

Because email is probably reaching more people more often with more potential information and impact than your website, events, SMS or field organizing.

It’s easy to hate on email and treat it as the necessary evil that, if you could only optimize and A/B test endlessly, will get another 0.2% click rate and save your year end fundraising goals.

But email, more than print, social, text, or online, is intrinsic to not just your supporter relationship (and it’s nurturing) but to your ability to advocate, fundraise and grow the organization.

[2] Bring on an email director

Consider opening up a senior role for someone with deep understanding of email design, development and marketing strategy. Someone who loves to create email that delights readers, meets goals and is constantly learning about the field.

According to the latest M+R Benchmarks report the average nonprofit sent 60 emails per year to each subscriber. Do the math. That’s a lot of email. But very few organizations, if any, have an email director (or similar role) on staff to oversee email excellence and provide deep guidance and understanding on the technical, design, marketing, messaging and other aspects of email products.

[3] Build an email product team

Chances are you have a group of people on different teams (digital, comms, fundraising, programs, etc.) who check in regularly to talk about what emails are coming up and who needs to write something. But do these folks have clear responsibilities for (and expertise in) email ideation, design, testing, content creation, deliverability and reporting?

An organization with an email list in the upper six figures or beyond would benefit from an email team. Consider what a dedicated cross-department email team would look like. Carve off dedicated time so these people can dedicate attention and learning to collaborating with an email director.

[4] Try alternative approaches to email content

Most nonprofits aren’t news organizations with a staff of writers and editors adept at spinning out stories on daily deadlines. And most nonprofit communications teams face internal pressures to produce content written with (even for) internal audiences, not supporters.

Find a partner for your email newsletter – one that excels at content production. This could be a local or state nonprofit news organization, a funder focused on one of your issues or a local nonprofit who is in the field interviewing and creating stories.
Go small. Don’t focus on creating one newsletter for everyone out there. Identify a key, even niche, audience in your membership. Or an audience that’s important but hasn’t been reached. Develop a newsletter specifically for that audience (though knowing that anyone could subscribe). Don’t make it long. Don’t try to cover everything at once. Don’t overdo the design. Just start with good content and see if it gets traction. This is one place where a product team can help you think about organic and paid marketing to reach your internal and/or external audience.

These could be minimally viable email newsletters: a series of state-specific news updates or a general newsletter highlight current actions and blog posts but only sent two contrasting targeted segments of your list (with the intent of learning which segment responds better).

[5] Consistency beats perfection

Supporters need to hear from you regularly. I usually suggest weekly or bi-weekly. Anything less often and folks forget about you and your inbox placement suffers. The inconsistency of the newsletter you’re reading now is an example of not following one’s own advice. ?

The biggest obstacle to consistent publication is writing by committee, not trusting your writers and/or having unclear content creation and editing roles. Get your content flow in order, train a wide variety of folks who can jump in to help write, gather content and create the emails.

Consistently test and report on results. And always be reading other newsletters, asking people in other groups what they’re testing and learning, and checking in on readers.

Photo by Manolo Chrétien on Unsplash.

How content strategy builds relationships and grows revenue

June 20, 2023 by Ted Fickes

We’re looking at how organizations undervalue the first, and often only, thing people coming to them experience – their content. The articles, stories, blog posts, photos, videos, emails, and social posts are all opportunities for connection, not just attention. Here’s why that is and how to think strategically about content for connection.

Every website visit is an opportunity for real connection.

If we start from that point then we want to assume that people are coming to us for a reason. We are answering a question, solving a problem, or providing a service. We assume this person will return (or is coming back to us).

We want to know who this person is so we can ask them to join us or support us. And we also want to better meet their needs.

Our content is the terrain on which people discover and interact with us: blog posts, resources, news articles, case studies, action alerts, social media posts, photos, emails and even podcasts and videos.

Content strategy is has two key parts. First is understanding how to meet people’s needs with your content by making sure people can find and use content. Most content strategy work really focuses on things like search optimization. Too often it ends there.

The second piece of content strategy is relationship and community building. When you know about the person using your content you can meet their needs over time and help them help you by joining, donating, contributing, purchasing, volunteering or any of the other actions people can take.

A drawing of people standing in front of a purple building. The people are passing stars to each other. The person at the end of the line is putting stars on a blue easel.

What if we built for connection first?

Most organizations know how many people visit their site and which pages get the most visits (I bet you two of the top three include the home page, about page, and the careers or team bios page).

Meanwhile, groups spend time and money creating content with few tools for knowing who is reading and using it, the value it provides, and what people are really able to do when it comes to supporting, acting on and engaging with groups.

It’s inexplicable. And there’s a better way.

We can rethink web design, content and even emails and social media to optimize for direct connection. This would mean that we expect every visitor to tell us who they are and, at least implicitly, show us what they’re doing with our content, how they’re using it and what they can do to support its creation and our work.

I don’t actually expect every organization to get contact info for every visitor or be able to track every visitor with personally identifiable data.

But if we want to create content that’s useful to people then we need to know who people are and what they really think. And if we want people to support our group for the long haul then they need the best content, experience and relationship we can provide.

Data is not insight

Today’s organizations don’t have a clear idea who is using, visiting, reading or viewing any of the content on their sites, emails or socials. Most organizations have subscribers (an email address and maybe a name and physical address) or donors (email, name, address). And they have visitors who, unless they graduate to one of the above, are little more than electronic ghosts. Bits of aggregated data.

But wait, we have Google Analytics installed. We know which search terms people use to find our site. We know how many times a form is submitted. And we can see who clicks links in email, comes to our site and

True. But most site analytics are vague and general. They tell you how many people come to a page and, if you’re tracking an ad or email campaign, how they got there.

You don’t know who’s there. You don’t know why they’re there (though perhaps you can guess). And you certainly don’t know what they thought or if they’ll be back. A report saying that visits go up or down offers a data point. But it’s not necessarily actionable.

Content strategy vs the void

Organizations often have an engagement process that looks like:

Many visitors to one or more websites and/or social media accounts.
People click and read or view a second page or click from social to web.
Someone fills out a form (subscribe, action, volunteer, event RSVP, survey). It’s only at this point we discover who the visitor is and we still don’t know if/when they revisit our content.
A visitor becomes a supporter by donating or becoming a member.
A person who attends an online event or training.
Someone you meet at an in-person event.
And the smallest group: sustaining donors, members and/or activists.

A lot of people hit the top of the list once, twice or multiple times. Most never advance past that point. And many that do move on won’t be able to tell us if or how the content is useful to them.

We build content with low expectations if we assume that a nameless visit and click is OK for 95% or more of visits.

We don’t have to approach content – be it web, social, email or audio/video – with the the presumption that “views” are what matter while actions and donations are a separate channel or group of people.

Make connection normal (if not required)

Here’s another look at that engagement process with direct connection as the goal:

Visitors => Frequent visitors => Multi-page visitors => subscribers or registered users => members (and/or donors and/or volunteers)

A connection emphasis could start by optimizing for form completion. Subscribing to an email newsletter is often the only form option.

Donating is another option. Organizations and consultants understandably test and optimize donation forms.

But there are countless other possibilities to present people with forms or even register as site users (a vastly stronger option for long term engagement).

The trick is in creating content that people need and value. And providing a user experience that makes forms simple.

About requiring connection

What if we valued our content enough to require payment for it? For most organizations this is a preposterous thought experiment. “We serve the community. Why would we limit access?” Fact is, most organizations have premium content for high level donors, board members, or task oriented folks like volunteers. We see those people as valuable so we create valuable content for them (and often only for them).

The point is not to restrict content to members or registered users or to set up paywall types of experiences. These are tools in the toolbox, of course.

What does matter, however, is the connection powerful content creates between people and organizations. Too often we invest a lot of time and money in content with little clear strategy. And less clarity about its relationship to revenue, membership or programmatic results.

Great content brings people in and keeps them there. It connects people. Invest in content strategy, not just content, and create systems for measuring the value of that content to your visitors and your organization.

Top image by Ivonne Navarro at The Greats and used via a Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-NC-SA).

What’s trauma got to do with it?

May 11, 2023 by Ted Fickes

Last week Jordan Neely was killed on a New York City subway when a bystander “approached Mr. Neely, put him in a chokehold, and held him until he became limp.” [New York Times]

In Kansas City (Ralph Yarl), New York (Kaylin Gillis), and Atlanta (Heather Roth and Payton Washington) people (notably young people in these examples) have been shot for ringing the wrong doorbell, using the wrong driveway or getting into the wrong car.

There are countless little and big reasons for these events. But in many ways they’re the product of systemic fear and trauma that dehumanizes the people around us.

We’re also living through a pandemic that has killed over a million Americans and continues to have long-term impacts. Climate change is scaling up the reach of natural disasters.

And we live with distraction. Stories about all this. Debates over cause and motive leave little time to focus and little energy with which to be well.

An aside: I write this knowing I’m not mentioning incidents to what happened in the past 10 days in Allen, Texas or Cleveland, Texas or Brownsville, Texas. Those are tragedies. Perhaps greater ones. It’s doubly tragic that we need a language to convey value or gauge impact of these events. How do we write of any of this when there is so much of it?

Recognize the Impact of Trauma

Does it make sense for communities and organizations to better recognize and address the role trauma is playing and will play in lives of their supporters, staff and broader community?

Like it or not, our donors, members and email lists are made up of people constantly struggling with climate disaster, gun violence, inequality and pandemics. There’s a lot of talk about drops in individual giving. Falls (and rises) in giving are most always associated with “the economy.” Perhaps trauma, fear and dehumanization drive people to withdraw from community engagement and membership.

Tying fundraising results and strategies to economic indicators makes sense. But it limits our view of what’s happening and what’s possible.

We can’t only optimize our recruitment, fundraising and testing for those with financial and other forms of security. These audiences will lead us towards policies and politics that favor the fortunate, preserve power and aren’t interested in systemic problems. These are also audiences that may continue to shrink. One can only evade the sources of trauma for so long.

Organizations should also question their role in creating instead of healing trauma. Crisis-driven messaging dominates advocacy and fundraising communications of groups doing wonderful environmental, human rights and social justice work, including those organizing and working alongside communities.

Community Resilience

Our communities, supporters and staff need us to both recognize, solve for and support trauma. That’s a big ask. One far greater than the remit of many (most) nonprofits.

Fortunately, there are models, partners and opportunities to do more of this work and do it better.

The pandemic taught us that organizations can engage in community support beyond our mission.

A team of researchers from the University of California at San Diego and the city of Los Angeles looked at developing trauma resilient communities through community capacity-building in 2021. The team recognized the impact weather disasters and the pandemic had on the ability of communities to feed and shelter people. Over time, these and other events wear down community resiliency.

They found correlation between trauma informed community practices and community health.

We found that capacity-building among community-based partnerships is effective at disseminating trauma-informed education and training, conducting outreach and engagement, linking community members with resources, and increasing help-seeking and social connectedness by community members.

Community capacity to recognize and address trauma will build stronger communities. It may also address fear and our ability to address inequality and justice.

…is community capacity-building a foundational competency that can mitigate the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and flooding or future acts of social injustice?

So why don’t more organizations speak openly about trauma? I think it has such a systemic presence that no group, assuming they acknowledge it at all, sees how they can address it.

Prioritize Novel Community Collaboration

We can debate the causes of inflation and a turn towards austerity-based policies by both parties. But the situation on the ground is that housing, food and job insecurity (or the loss of all three) affects Americans everywhere. Tim Garvin, director of the United Way of Central Massachusetts, recently wrote about the situation in Worcester and the need to remember lessons in community collaboration learned during COVID. The community formed a working group called Worcester Together in March, 2020, and it continues to collaborate:

Worcester Together continues to meet, 1,148 days and counting. It has evolved into a place where observations, news and data are shared, all focused on working together for the good of the community.

Look, I’m no expert on trauma-informed practices. But I do know that offering people resources, support and training to meet their needs best done through community, not individual, practices. And a resilient community, one whose members can rely on and trust one another, is not just able to weather crisis but is also more likely to engage in and support democratic processes.

The rush to community-level innovation we saw in 2020-21 was driven by radical uncertainty. Suddenly, everyone was working remotely. Suddenly, everyone sought ways to provide food and housing assistance. Scott Warren, former CEO of Generation Citizen, wrote about creative collaboration and groups sharing resources for the first time.

But crises wane even if the underlying structures are weakened. Typically, there is little incentive for organizations (or their funders) to invest in or test new collaborations and community building.

I recently spoke to a colleague who spent 18 months piloting sustainable engagement with rural and small community residents who have a social media presence. The goal is to support climate-positive conversation in places that typically only hear and see climate stories from right-leaning TV, radio and social media sources. It’s sensible, not radical, work. But it takes time and isn’t a project that fits neatly into the boxes and sectors into which funders and organizations operate.

Perhaps we’re seeing a shift towards trauma-informed community capacity building. There are efforts to measure community stress and address trauma in educational settings.

But I wonder how (even if) we can prioritize new models of collaboration across disciplines and issues. Can donors, funders and organizations share learning, skills and resources to build community capacity, resilience and relationships to address trauma and instill trust, hope and love instead of fear? If so it may be one way to protect not just our communities but democracy itself.

We all stay. Except maybe the donors. Where are they going?

April 27, 2023 by Ted Fickes

The other day I had a conversation with a colleague who works on building and implementing community software. He asked about my take on community in nonprofits. It was a “why is this interesting to you?” sort of question.

I thought I’d take a minute to share a bit about why this intersection of community, membership and organizations is so important now.

We live alongside trauma, uncertainty and a fraying fabric of norms and expectations. We’ll skip the litany of what’s going on. You all work in it every day.

A wall mural in A mural in Kotti, Berlin, that shows people marching and protesting. One is carrying a sign saying "Wir Bleiben Alle" which translates in English to "We All Stay." — A mural in Kotti, Berlin. “Wir Bleiben Alle” translates to “We All Stay.”

All this change and pain is sometimes good. You want to topple white nationalists and abolish poverty? Fuck yes. Let’s do it. But it’s often painful and, when constant, this work through change is exhausting, isolating and maddening.

Most people have a sense of all that’s going on – and going wrong – and want to address it. But they don’t want to wade into that exhaustion. They give their $50 to charity and sign a petition. But even that can be frustrating. What happens next, they ask? Does anyone else care?

I believe that campaigns, local groups, nonprofits and certainly businesses engaged in building audiences and communities have a much bigger role to play in how people engage in civics, politics and systems change.

As nonprofit leaders – and marketers, community builders, fundraisers and membership directors – we have a responsibility to our organization’s mission and finances.

We also have a responsibility, usually unspoken, to community – those who support our work with money and time as well as the broader community of people who put food on tables, teach us, clean streets, care for children and so many more. Amidst our lists of activists, customers, donors, volunteers, subscribers are people from whom we expect attention and to whom we promise a better world, a happier existence, a cleaner countertop or a healthier pet.

We in fundraising, membership and organizing are the front line of civic engagement, community power and system change. Whether we like it or not we can and should take seriously this space for rebuilding trust, teaching people about their power, and delivering solutions, not just products or promises.

How that’s done – the future of community – is roughly the theme of this blog, newsletter and the work that I do with organizations. Get in touch if this sparks ideas, you have questions or ideas.

Where did they go?

The Chronicle of Philanthropy last week reported that Giving to Nonprofits Fell Nearly 2 Percent in the Last Quarter of 2022. This echoes other reporting on drops in giving to nonprofits.

More important than a small drop in overall giving is the drop in the number of people making donations. Individuals making small gifts saw a sharp decline:

There were fewer donors over all at the end of 2022, but the decline was sharpest for the 83 percent of donors who gave $500 or less. At the end of 2022, 15 percent fewer people gave $100 or less than at the end of 2021. Likewise, the number of people who gave $101 to $500 in the last three months of 2022 declined more than 8 percent from 2021 levels.

Philanthropy News Digest shared the same data in January along with an Independent Sector report that retention was down 4.2% but fundraising overall was up 6.2%.

The reasons for this decline are debatable. Economic pressures loom large. Inflation and corporate profiteering, job loss and pull back on government stimulus has been a shock to the system for people who make those $50, $100 or $250 dollar donations.

Organizations tend to talk about the connection between community and fundraising in either transactional or vague terms. You’re offered access to events, updates or a premium (tote bags, anyone?). You may sign a petition and immediately become a subscriber, member or part of the community.

There’s no doubt that giving rose during COVID. There are a couple reasons for this. One, things were awful. You had more time to look around and what you saw was crisis: death and sickness, businesses closing and jobs lost, and, after a few weeks of coming together, anger about our collective response. Second, people were more engaged in direct aid to their community. In some cases this showed up as giving to mutual aid groups. This was money directed at addressing visible trauma in the community. Other giving went to smaller charities to address hunger, homelessness and disasters.

Donors know that repair isn’t a one-time act

Saying that donors are leaving due to the economy may be correct but it ignores a couple problems:

We often (usually) have no idea why someone gave their first donation.
We don’t acknowledge the emotional investment people are making with their support.

What if a desire to engage in long-term repair of communities was (and is) on people’s mind?

Sociologist Viviana A. Zelizer wrote about the rise of giving in 2021 as a response to collective trauma.

At a time of excruciating social distancing, when quarantine rules separated us from one another, money became a tangible social connector, bridging the physical gap by allowing us to express concern for intimates and strangers. Notice the paradox: cold cash, the ultimate transactional medium, alchemized into a warm social currency, strengthening multiple social bonds and affirming community solidarity.

What Zelizer observed was people’s struggle to cope with the trauma in their community. Our grief heightens our interest in support not just for ourselves but for others who struggle.

But, in a generalized state of isolation (only heightened by COVID), our systems offer few outlets for materializing our empathy and support. We might volunteer or knock on doors. But for many money is easier to come by than time so we donate.

The longreads on grief that filled my feeds in 2020 and 2021 have moved to the background as we seek to normalize living with collective, society-level trauma. Perhaps nothing is more traumatic to society than living through it without acknowledgment.

Organizations who talk about community are missing is the language to talk of community trauma, solidarity and, more productively, the collective work of repair.

This is where community and membership appear. Charity is an act and an entity. But our modern messaging and the structure of our organizations is highly individualized. Giving is a singular act. You are asked to donate. You have given $100. You can have an impact. Organizations position themselves in competition to one another. They brand themselves to set them apart. They speak of their work, their unique process, their wins.

But creating and sustaining impact is a collective effort. That’s the case whether you’re securing food or housing or working for systemic changes to policy, politics or economic structures.

We often position and manage community in either member or organizational terms. I’ve advocated in this space: create value for members if you want them to stay with you over time.

Yet we live in a time of existential crisis – be that climate change, guns, pandemics, white nationalism, war, creeping autocracy or something else. We have video and endless analysis on our phones 24/7 if we choose.

Are people are seeking signs of progress, of repair and solutions? I think so. And they want to play a role in that kind of work. The question before us is how can we engage people in creating community that creates change? What does that look like? What do community, membership and organizing leaders need to prioritize, plan and try?

There’s no one answer. It means investing in community and civic engagement, in media, journalism and democratic and deliberative work. It means building community across interests and policy topics, meaningful communications not just petitions and fundraising, community-based news and voices, collaboration, clarity of purpose, and honesty about how change happens.

About that stupendous fundraising match in your inbox

April 12, 2023 by Ted Fickes

Recently I wrote about why people stay with a group. We looked at relationships, trust and delivering value to people. Keeping people on your list, in your community and donating, buying and engaging isn’t just helpful. Retention is a must. Inactive subscribers are costing you money. And disengaged supporters are telling you something about the quality of your communications, fundraising and overall value.

Conversations and questions about retention and reactivation keep popping up in my feed and among friends. I think it’s sign of economic and political uncertainty.

Folks are taking a hard look at how to optimize their email and other lists. Or they’re being told to by their bosses. It makes sense. Email lists aren’t free to build or maintain. A bigger list is not necessarily going to raise you more money, turn people out to events or develop activists, leaders and supporters. But a bigger list is going to cost more to host and send to. A bigger list may also increase inbox problems (aka more spam) and send the wrong signals about community power to your organizing and fundraising directors.

A barrel of monkeys approach

The world of powerful CRMs, big data and fast internet lets us find, label and reach people with amazing speed and volume. It also leads us to believe that we know people. We have email, name, location and their giving and engagement history. We may get the voter file, census data, buying history and all the sorts of things that come with consumer data files (income, home and car ownership, marital status…it goes on and on).

This isn’t much more than putting colors on monkeys in a barrel if you’re sending countless emails with countless asks for donations, actions, purchases.

The other day a colleague linked to an episode of a podcast for Republican politicos. The Business of Politics Show had a conversation with John Hall of Apex Strategies. Hall is credited with raising over $1.5 billion from 48 million individual donors. There’s perhaps nobody who knows more about shady methods of buying/renting lists and pitching 76X match gifts (an actual pitch in political fundraising) or any number of other lies (that’s what they are) to “subscribers.”

Hall isn’t seeking absolution for past acts. But he made a clear case for the need to shift perspective. Build donor lists, he says, not just big lists. It’s better to have a million subscribers than one but most million subscriber lists are failing to raise money for Republican candidates. Democratic and nonprofit lists are similarly underperforming if they’re optimized for size not community and impact.

Community and Impact

You probably don’t have the time and money to drag around a list that’s 50%, 60% or 75% inactive.

Instead, what does optimizing for community and impact look like. A few ideas:

Be much clearer and more honest about what you expect from community members, subscribers and supporters.

If you need donations then hone in on who gives, why they give, when they give and how they’re being retained over time. Recruit from places where you’ll find donors and have clear budgets and strategies for turning new people into donors.

Likewise for activists, volunteers and other categories of engaged supporters. Bring your communications and content, organizing, education and training staff into the planning for supporter engagement and its metrics.

Be brutally honest about subscriber value. If a new subscriber doesn’t open, click on or donate in the first 4-6 weeks after coming on board perhaps they’re already targets for reactivation. And this is a signal that their origin (list, event, lead gen activity) isn’t working.

You may be able to carry inactive people for months. It’s possible some will re-engage. And a community-driven organization should show some compassion for its community. But understand the costs associated with holding onto them. And recognize the signals that their inaction sends. What can you offer that increases their responsiveness? What obstacles do they face when engaging with you? Are your emails even landing in the inbox (or just spam)?

AI and that barrel of monkeys

John Hall, in the conversation linked above, spoke about the potential for AI to revolutionize how we customize subscriber, donor and supporter engagement. When you carry around a lot of data about supporters it makes sense to give an AI app the responsibility for turning that data into personalized content to motivate donors.

We’ll see a lot of this in coming months. Especially with the 2024 campaign. You can expect nonprofits to use these tools (and consultants and vendors to talk a lot about them).

But the potential for AI to leverage more donations isn’t community. All the data in the world isn’t community. Be clear about what you want with community, what people need, where those people are and how they’re living. Know that and you’ll know how to engage, retain and perhaps use the tech that’s here (and coming).

Why people stay

March 28, 2023 by Ted Fickes

Can we build email, donor and supporter lists with value and trust instead of churning through names?

Most nonprofit (and ecommerce) marketing runs on a model fraught with peril and waste.

There is a constant cycle that’s roughly so:

Get people on an email list via paid or sometimes unpaid methods. Maybe get their eyeballs on Instagram, Facebook or some other platform.
Send those people email. And/or online ads and posts. Send them more email.
Thank them if they give (or buy).
Send them more email and ads.
Keep sending them email and ads.
For those (often the majority) who never do anything you may eventually send them one (or a few) last emails asking if they still want emails. You may or may not be serious about the response.
You take them off your list. Or you don’t. In which case you send more email.
Get (more) people on an email list via paid or sometimes unpaid methods.

Many organizations have built an economy of churn (which could be, but isn’t, a portmanteau of chase and burn). The hope is to replace more names than they lose and make enough off them in the short term to pay for the cost of getting them in the first place.

Many (most?) organizations have supporter relationships that begin, live and end online. This makes it harder to connect to people, build personal relationships, and give people a reason to stick with an organization.

Let’s assume that one can do little, if any, in person or on the ground work with supporters; that we’re constrained to online activities. We can use email, websites, social media and perhaps text messaging, voice mail, print.

Community, fundraising, membership and online organizing folks should understand why people stay with an organization and how to bring this into online experience. And I don’t mean simply mean “engagement.” Clicks, pageviews and videos liked or viewed are engagement. They’re also simple indicators of attention. And attention is not retention.

A photo of ground covered by small rocks. A large rock in the middle has the words Be Here Now written on it.

Trust, value and why people stay

There’s a lot of research out there about why people stay in jobs, in domestic relationships, in their houses.

People often stay because it’s easier than leaving. A 1973 article on Why Employees Stay in their jobs pointed to inertia. Most people stay not because their happy or like the job but because it’s too much trouble to change. Their prospects are uncertain. Having a mediocre job is better than no job at all.

As you may guess, employee inertia doesn’t do much for productivity. This is a 50 year old article. But it seems possible that inertia is still a factor in staying in a job.

Email lists are probably 75-90% inertia people. Sure, those people are “staying” but they’re not helping out. Their data sends the wrong signals. They tell us we could and should have 200,000 subscribers so we busy ourselves (and our money) replacing the 20,000 people who unsubscribe or lapse off the list. And we don’t optimize for the people who want to stay.

Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, often writes about the connection between people, education, careers and the vitality of cities.

In the 2014 article, Why people stay where they are, Florida noted that housing costs, affordability and community economic strength are not, as most people believe, a driving factor in choices to leave or stay in a community. Community quality – things like comfort, safety and sense of belonging – keeps people around (or pushes them away).

Taken together, this would seem to imply that the decision to stay is tied less to quality or affordability of housing itself, and more to the quality of the neighborhood or community. … The main reasons why stayers stay, according to our analysis, revolve around social relationships and quality of place:

The ability to meet people and make friends; the quality of public schools; and the overall physical beauty and quality of a neighborhood. These were much more important than economic factors like the availability of job opportunities or the perception of future economic conditions, which our analysis found not to be statistically associated with why people stay.

We could also look at the oft-asked question: why do people stay in disaster prone cities? Gina Yannitell Reinhardt, a professor at the University of Essex, studies disaster relief and resilience. Reinhardt found that trust in government keeps people in place. Lack of trust pushes people to leave. Trust is won or lost during disasters when people rely most on institutions for support, guidance and safety.

Reinhardt also writes that people stay because “it feels like home.” This is part inertia. But it’s large part based on relationships. People build strong ties to neighbors, businesses, parks and more. If others stay we have social proof that we will maintain these relationships, jobs, customers and friends.

Invest in staying, not coming and going

How do you grow and sustain a community (and your fundraising) if you’re churning through people? You do it by buying and burning through lists. Check all the unread emails in your inbox to see how that’s going. You can do it by not taking people off your email list. That’s bad for deliverability, skews results and decisionmaking, and turns people off.

You can grow multi-channel content: social media platforms, video, messaging apps, even print or audio. This can be a step in the right direction if you don’t recreate the broadcast-only dynamics that are common in email.

Perhaps it’s possible to invest in relationships and retention, not just acquisition. What might this mean?

Look to recruit in high-retention environments

This may mean smaller or more niche audiences and lists. Partner with smaller organizations, online media outlets and influencers. Build relationships and offer value to the partners.

Make the most of your first days and weeks together

Relationships take time. But a good first impression is critical, especially in digital where the background noise is loud and distracting. Onboard new people like your life depends on it.

Create a welcome series. Test it and track it. Invite questions and conversations. Bring member and community voices to the welcome, not just staff or leadership. Make it familiar. Provide social proof.

Bring value to the table

Communicate more than asks for action or money. What would be useful to your people? Provide calendars of events, data about your issues, eye-opening visuals, explainers and FAQs. Provide insights and news, not just alerts. Invite people to a series of webinars or trainings. People remember offers of value (and proof of credibility) even if they don’t attend.

Get to know people

This is hard at scale. But why add people to a supporter list if you have no ability or intention to hear from them or know them? Plus, today’s CRM tools and multiple two-way comms channels make dialog much easier, especially when you start with what’s above. Activists, volunteers and current donors can also scale supporter contact.

Learn about community, trust and value from (and with) other groups and fields

Create networks and opportunities for nonprofit development and membership teams to learn alongside civic community builders.

Collaborate with journalists and digital media sites, all of whom are busy testing ways to find, engage and retain supporters (aka subscribers). See this from Gina Bulla, audience research director at The Atlantic, who is describing research aimed at finding future subscribers (new high-retention environments):

One of the big, important questions we’re focused on right now is: who are our future subscribers? We’ve just executed research to help us identify audiences that may be inclined to subscribe to The Atlantic in the near or not-so-distant future. We’ll use this research to ideate strategies to increase conversion, engagement, and discovery.

This sort of research and approach to audience identification could be useful to nonprofit organizations. [Madeleine White / The Audiencers]

People stay in relationships built on trust, value and passion (sure, it’s possible to love an organization and its cause or a community the same way you might your partner). We can build communications, content and organizing programs built on trust, value and (yes) passion if we choose to.

Inertia also keeps people around. This is a big part of email list size now. But we shouldn’t equate presence and action or an email list with a valued relationship.

Give people stuff they can use

March 4, 2023 by Ted Fickes

In late-2021, Intuit completed its acquisition of the once wee newsletter provider Mailchimp. Intuit paid $12 billion in cash and stock.

Substack announced this week that newsletters hosted by the platform had over 20 million active subscribers and 2 million paid subscriptions.

Some folks think there is money to be made in email.

Given the financial structures needed to host, send and manage email, the culture of email is more commerce than community. Every morning your inbox has 97 new unread messages from companies and candidates that you’ll probably delete or ignore.

This is largely true in the nonprofit sector as well. Our metrics – and benchmarks – focus on response rates, donations and revenue. These metrics are at best awkward proxies for supporter satisfaction and value that email and other communications provide members, donors and others in our networks.

A commerce (or fundraising) role for email is essential for most groups. Nonprofits need money. More than once, I’ve advised organizations to build donation asks into their new subscriber welcome series. People want to give. Get them used to it. But a fundraising focus limits the scope of what’s possible with our content and community strategies.

Many people, including those creating emails in organizations, complain about email. It’s all dollars, doom and dashed hopes.

Candidates: My opponent is a bad dude who will do bad things. I’m good. Donate before tonight’s reporting deadline.

Organizations: The future is at risk. Click here to send an email to your congressional rep. Or click here to make your 5X match donation.

Companies: Everything is on sale. Click now! (person clicking: well, only the purple camo print joggers in size 6 are on sale. WTF?)

Too often we train our community to expect the least from our organizations.

Think bigger about email, content and community

If we expect more from our community could we design content strategies, including email programs, that meet those expectations?

Perhaps our metrics could be optimized for friendship or other relation-driven measures. Does this person volunteer? Does this person come to an event or invite a new supporter to an event? Does this person contribute an idea, photo or comment to a document, web page or report?

What if we viewed our advocacy and fundraising campaigns as products, like a shirt or a book, or services like visiting a restaurant or hiring a plumber? We could invite feedback and reviews. We could ask: “did this event, fundraising campaign or online action meet your expectations?” Or: “Would you recommend this campaign to a friend?”

These ideas are hypothetical. They’re a search for more informative metrics. But this product/service approach seems possible.

Most organizations occasionally send a survey to supporters asking for feedback on newsletters or other communications. But these are one-offs that reach only your most engaged supporters. Surveys don’t offer much insight into the impact or value of your ongoing email and other communications.

Content that helps people get things done

I’m most interested in how organizations are using email and other content to solve problems, meet their needs and otherwise get things done.

Email, especially when combined with hosted assets like video (and charts, maps, etc.), is a great teaching tool. Most organizations have loads of knowledge in their resource libraries, toolkits, and staff member brains. Many groups use webinars or trainings to teach volunteers. But these are events. They require someone to be there to engage in them. We’ve all registered for webinars knowing we won’t make it and will watch later but, realistically, we rarely “watch later.”

The New York Times has grown its email newsletter options. You can get morning or evening updates and email newsletters from your favorite writers or columnists. But the real growth in content (and revenue) has been in non-news email that is useful to people (Cooking and Wirecutter) or entertaining (Games and the Athletic). As Poynter wrote about last November, its about a bundle of information:

…the Times is heavily pushing what it calls internally “the bundle.” That is an all-access product that also includes Games and Cooking verticals, audio, the Wirecutter product information site and now The Athletic, which the Times purchased for $550 million in January.

CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said that the bundle costs roughly 50% more than a news-only digital subscription. Beginning this quarter, she added, the company plans to increase the price of single-product subs to news or other products, hoping to “compel people to take the bundle.”

The New York Times is a newspaper. But most people today call it a “media company” and, well, a media company produces all kinds of media, not just reporting. We can debate the pros/cons here (I have many arguments for and against this) but it seems that:

It’s hard/impossible to fund journalism with subscriptions and advertisements.
It’s hard/impossible to fund nonprofits with donations and/or membership fees. Most organizations need more diverse revenue streams.
People are willing to pay for good information and entertainment which helps fund journalism.
People will pay for info, goods and services they need. Payments to organizations for information, training and other services could help fund programs.
Info/entertainment opens the door to new audiences.
Many (most?) organizations are not centered in a community. Their audience may be local, state, national or global in scope but its most likely virtual in nature. Lead generation limited to specific issues unnecessarily limits growth .

Most organizations aren’t media companies with the content depth or deep pockets of a New York Times. But they don’t need to be. A one off series of emails that dives into the insights from case studies and reports sounds dry (for real) but could have an audience. It may be possible to turn a staff or volunteer training series into a set of online videos paired with emails and other content for a self-paced training series open to broader audiences.

Given the breadth and scale of nonprofits out there the options are endless. I’d love to see a funder or seven experimenting, testing and reporting back on content aimed at audience and revenue growth. And, of course, funding such work.