There’s a reason you’ve never seen a full picture of me on here! Yeah, I’ve got a long tail. It’s kind of got a “Puff The Magic Dragon” vibe. But I roll with it.
So, in the spirit of my long tail, here’s what I learned from Chris Anderson’s bestseller The Long Tail, and how this applies to your nonprofit!
Number of words: 1071
Read time: 9 minutes
The long tail is the concept that you can sell products to a particular group of people, over time, and that buying fades away, but never dies as long as you can connect with your truest fans online. So you don’t have to blast out with TV, Radio, Billboards etc, and in fact though this is good, it’s also kind of wasteful when you could be online connecting with the people who really want to hear from you.
I wrote a post yesterday on this, so go there to see what else I learned.
6. One product doesn’t fit all
Tailor your appeals to the 7 types of donors, for a start. That means starting to keep track of your dynasts, your communitarians, your socialites, your religious donors, and so on. A business-minded donor is not going to want to see just a story. They’re going to want to see metrics of how your social service nonprofit saves the county money, or how much they can write off on their taxes if they donate their old copier to your charity or NGO. Just because a picture of a sad puppy works on you doesn’t mean other people are going to respond to that. Get yourself ready to tailor your appeals by sending out batches of 150 letters at a time, each tailored to 7 different types of donors.
7. One price doesn’t fit all.
Just as it’s appropriate to ask some donors to give you $10 a month and others to give you $1,000 per month, you know that people all have different levels of ability to give. You need to spend your time with those who have the ability to give the most. Automate your appeals as much as you can, but make sure that each ask takes into account how much a donor has given in the past, and ask them for just a little bit more. If someone has given $10, they can probably afford to give $30. Make the case for why they should give more now.
8. Lose control: Share information
Transparency builds trust at no cost. If you are honest with donors about the financial straits your nonprofit is in, they will respect your honesty. If you are clear about how much money goes to services, how much to administration, even how much goes towards pencils at your nonprofit, people will understand you better, and realize how much you stretch a dollar to help. You know who does this really well? Yep, that’s right, Imamuseum.org! How can you bring this same level of transparency to your nonprofit? Hire a programmer.
9. Think “and” not “or”.
So if you’re doing 3 things right now to get your development program started, how can you do 3 more things? For example, if you’re doing grants, appeals, and e-newsletters, how can you also do an event, get in-kind donations, and a phone-a-thon? Well, the answer is volunteers and interns. But before that, you need to have a plan. Plan out where people will be trained, when they will be trained, and how they will be trained. Then figure out the highest outcomes you want from their efforts. Bring that vision to them and help them turn it into reality. The more people you have working for you, the more you’ll be able to accomplish. And when you think “and” and not “or,” also think about how people prefer to be contacted. Some volunteers may prefer the telephone, but you can also email them to follow up, or text them. Some interns may want you to not contact them at all. You’ve got to find out everyone’s preferences so that you can make their experience as smooth and satisfying for them as it can possibly be.
10. Trust the market to do your job.
You can try to predict what will make people want to give, but the best thing to do is to measure and respond. For example, you could measure which letters have the greatest impact on which individuals, and respond to that. So if you send out a story-driven letter and 10 people respond and 50 don’t, you can mark these 10 people story people, and try another tactic on the other 50 donors. Perhaps the next letter you send has 2 charts in it which track organizational spending and number of people served. Maybe 20 of those non-givers now respond with money. So you can mark them as chart people and move on to the next donors. This could also be your grant writing tactic, your event tactic, etc.
Bonus! 11. Understand the power of free.
Give a sample for free. This means, for example, you could have an open house for your charity. Let people in to see what you do, firsthand. Get a local coffeeshop to donate coffee and tea, a local donut shop to donate day-old donuts, or a local CSA to donate carrots and celery. You can give people a VISCERAL and tactile experience of your mission. Of course you can deluge people with free buttons, free annual reports, free e-newsletters, free podcasts of your executive director yakking it up as well.
What do you think of the lessons from the Long Tail? Can you see another way to apply this to your nonprofit right now? If so, please leave a comment, I’d love to hear what you think!
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