Thursday May 28- collecting email addresses

Hi !

Pappardelle: What’s cookin this week 

In this week’s enews…

• You don’t need ALL the info

• Only collect what you need

• DO NOT DO THIS!!!

• Great post: How to check if your fundraising copy is weak

• Conference for nonprofit consultants

• P.S. Protecting the privacy of the innocent

The solution to last week’s Triple E (enews easter egg): Places where famous Civil War battles took place.

Today I want to discuss with you email. Not composing them but what you do with email addresses. I saw something last week that concerned me and I wanted to share with you.

Let’s dive into the race for collecting ALL the personal info.

Penne: But why?

In a fundraising chat someone asked for suggestions and advice about hosting a meeting for potential donors. A number of people commented: “Make sure to collect everyone’s email address.”

This sounds like smart advice. The fundraiser will want to follow up with attendees and email is a great way to do that.

But I went a little further. I messaged the person who posted and asked them: Collecting emails is a good idea. But why? What will you be doing with those email addresses?

And here’s where things get sticky.

Too many organizations try to collect as much personal information as possible so it can be added to their donor database. But too often that information is collected for the sake of collecting, not for actual use.

And that can create friction with people.

Consider your online donation form. When I perform a donation form analysis, one of the 50+ items I’m looking at is how many fields the form contains.

The more fields = more friction added to the process = fewer people submitting the form = fewer donations.

For example, you can get rid of the Mr./Mrs./Ms. dropdown box. And phone number should not be required- tell me why you need it and I’ll decide whether to give it to you or not.

When you ask people for more and more personal details, they start to wonder what you’re doing with all that data. The last thing you want is for people to become suspicious and not trust you to both safeguard and use their data responsibly.

Should your database include a summary or notes of each visit to donor X? Yes.

Do you need the maiden name of their mother in law? No (unless they bring her into the conversation for concrete purposes).

Do you need the last name of someone signing up to your enews? Nope.

Do you need their Zoom ID or blood type?

My point is that your organization has to consider what it asks for and what you have to have versus what would be nice to know.

Which leads me back to email.

Fusilli: Why you need their email address

I messaged the fundraiser who was hosting the event. She told me she was collecting email addresses so they have them on record.

I pushed back: But what will you do with them? Send them your enews? Start sharing content about your work, impact, stories, data and more? Or will the only time they hear from you be when you have a financial ask?

It’s not a given that people willingly give away their email address. Everyone’s inbox is overflowing. You need to give them a REASON to hand over something as private as their email address.

(Interesting read: Here’s how to avoid inbox burnout from the constant stream of emails)

And this is where we sometimes fall short. People know you want their email address so you can send them asks during the year. But they also wanna know:

What value are you adding to my inbox? Why should I give you a space in my overflowing inbox? Tell me what I get and then let me decide yay or nay.

Lemme show you something:

That used to be the CTA the American Cancer Society used on its website to encourage enewsletter signups. Look at the value they offer:

• We all know someone who has cancer, had cancer and died or survived cancer. We all wanna end cancer. If staying connected will help, I’m onboard.

• I wanna know how close we are to defeating cancer. Research updates? Yes please!

• I wanna avoid cancer. Healthy living tips to help me hopefully avoid a cancer diagnosis? That’s value in my inbox. Sign me up!

(Interesting read: This is my alltime favorite blog post that I wrote. It includes a look at the Fuck Cancer organization and hashtag. Read and enjoy a good laugh!)

Yes it’s a good idea to collect email addresses of attendees at an event. But if you have no email strategy or plan on how to effectively use email to grow and thrive, then you’re just collecting email addresses for the sake of being able to tell the Board that your email list grew by X percent in the last year.

Quality of email list > quantity of email addresses every day.

It’s not the size of the list. It’s how you use it.

Keep that in mind next time you’re collecting email addresses. Have a plan for how to use email to build relationships and connections with subscribers, not just as a vehicle for soliciting donations.

P.S. If you’re using AI to compose your emails and then sending out the AI version, stop it. Just stop it. People can tell it wasn’t composed by a human. And when your communications isn’t authentic… I’ll have more about this in an upcoming enews edition.

Farfalle: Do NOT do this!

Sometimes I need to rant. This is one of those times.

I’ve posted and discussed this graphic from Doctors Without Borders before:

They add this in the footer of every email they send. Yuck.

Last week I got an email from a different organization which contained the following statement below their footer:

“Organization X is proud that an average of 90 cents of every dollar we spend is invested in delivering care and comfort to those in need.”

My reaction:

This drives me nuts.

It’s bad enough that foundations and donors want nonprofits to keep “overhead” low. It’s bad enough we call our staff “overhead” instead of “the vital people needed to run programs, provide services, raise money and get the word out,” thus causing donors to think that their donor dollars should NOT go to salaries/staff, keeping the lights on, paying for materials for programs and more.

To try and raise more we say that 90% or whatever of every dollar donated goes to helping beneficiaries. And that starts the competition of who can go lower. Do I hear 91%? 92?

I understand why some nonprofits do this but putting it out there also says that you don’t pay your staff that well. Ask yourself how many nonprofiteers you know who are underpaid, overworked and underappreciated. Why be proud of that?!

Your employees are not overhead. They are integral to the overall running of the organization and should be treated as such (and yes, raise those salaries dammit!).

Instead the above tells people that staff is overhead and that there’s no need to invest in them.

And then management wonders why nonprofit employees move jobs so often. 🙄 

Stop it!

Rigatoni: A little of this and that

In this section I’m going to share with you great content I’ve picked out that you can learn from.

1. 15 questions to check if your fundraising copy is weak. MUST READ!!! (Nonprofit Pro)

2. Fundraising copy no-no’s (Mark Phillips)

3. How to run a successful fundraising campaign (Causevox)

4. Gratitude do’s and dont’s (The Fundraising Coach)

5. How to use data visualization to tell your story (Kindsight)

Bucatini: Calling all consultants

If you’re a nonprofit consultant, you should check out the Nonprofit Consulting Conference! Early bird rate ($200 off) ends May 31st.

Hear from experienced presenters, learn the strategies needed to succeed, get the resources you need to boost your business and have a chance to meet and build relationships with fellow sector consultants.

Personal recomm: I have attended before and can tell you it’s well worth it!

SOTW (Song of the week): I listened to Far Away From Here by Glass Tiger (a Canadian band that was huge when I was in high school) on an endless loop while composing the enews.

I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks. Have a great weekend!

P.S. How nice of them!