Ep. 125: 5 Reasons Donation Plateaus Happen & How to Fix Them
EPISODE 125
5 Reasons Donation Plateaus Happen & How to Fix Them
About the Episode:
In this episode I want to talk about plateaus – every organization, every business ever has experienced some flavor of a plateau. For a lot of nonprofits, it sounds a little bit like this: Your campaign started strong, donations were rolling in, you are feeling excited because you can just feel the buzz. But then, like clockwork, it just flatlines. Plateaus don’t happen because donors stop caring, they happen because you stop giving them motivation to engage. So we're going to dig into the five reasons why plateaus happen today, and some of my favorite strategies to get you out of the messy middle, get you out of that plateau and close that campaign strong.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Stop speaking at donors and start talking with them: If your messaging feels like a lecture, your donors wills top listening, plus refreshed ideas of how to engage instead
Use your biggest donors to their full potential: Plan ahead, mobilize your Social Street Team™, and fundraise as as team
Check your calls to action: Make sure your CTAs are specific while dialing up urgency and communicating the consequences of inaction
Taking stock of your own energy: You have to be the most bought in person on your campaign to bring everyone else along for the ride
The impact of differentiation: Develop a personal, bold point of view and be unapologetic about your uniqueness in order to stand out from the crowd
Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded? Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Donors are smart y'all and they're tired of being talked to. They crave genuine conversation, not monologues.”
“Trying to run a successful campaign without involving your supporters is like trying to win a relay race with a team of one.”
“You may think you’re using emotionally resonant language, but you're just using the same three adjectives again and again and again, instead of using the language that makes sense for your brand, your voice, and your values.”
“Ask yourself, ‘If you're not the most excited person about your campaign, why should anybody else be?’”
“Watch what happens when you show up with confidence that you’re going to hit your big, bold goal.”
“Blending in is the same as disappearing if your campaign doesn't stand out with its messaging, if it doesn't stand out because of a street team, if it doesn't stand out because of that hype energy, it's already sunk.”
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Christina Edwards 00:31You today, we're talking about plateaus now, every organization, ever, every business, every everything has experienced some flavor of a plateau. And so for a lot of nonprofits, it sounds a little bit like this. Your campaign started strong. Donations were rolling in. You were feeling excited. You could feel the buzz. You could feel like this is working. And then, like clockwork, it just flatlines. I call this sometimes the messy middle, right? But that's that point where you're like, What the heck Wait? Was that? It? Was that the whole thing, and it feels like this stall out. Okay? So tell me, sound familiar? That's what we're gonna dig in to today. Now, plateaus don't happen because people stop caring. Because your donors are like, Oh no, I don't care. It's not for me. They happen because you're not giving them a reason to keep engaging. So we're going to dig into the five reasons why plateaus happen today, and some of my favorite strategies to get you out of the messy middle, get you out of that plateau and close that campaign strong. So let's dig into this idea of hitting a fundraising ceiling. This may happen in your email campaigns, social campaigns could happen in a capital campaign, a direct to mail fundraiser. It's pretty much on the on the menu for any sort of fundraising tactic. So if you're finding that this is something that is happening again and again, number one, you're not alone. Okay, many nonprofits experience this plateau. Sometimes they experience it in a year over year, revenue plateau, or just this campaign stall out where, again, you hit it out of the gate strong, and then you're like, Wait, what happened? Right? So the good news I have for you is they're not permanent, and, in fact, they're a signal that there is something you need to do to pivot your strategy, to re engage, or engage for the first time, your audience, your donors, your followers, your constituents, the people. So you can get out of that plateau, out of that messy middle. Okay, so I want you to think about, imagine for a second, doubling your next campaign without doubling your workload. This is the work that our clients do in my coaching program, the club. So if it sounds impossible, it's actually not. It's not impossible, because so many organizations I work with are doing this. The key here identify. The key here is identifying the hidden barriers that are that are holding your campaign back and overcoming them. So we're going to go through some of those common barriers that I see, starting with the first one, you're speaking at donors and not with them. So donors are smart y'all. They're tired of being talked at. They crave genuine conversation, not monologs. Ooh, does that hit? Not monologs, if your messaging feels like a lecture, expect them to tune out. Now I'm going to give you a real life for instance, which is, I was the recipient of a pitch recently, and this particular pitch was a sales pitch, and it was bad, B, A, D, bad. And it was bad for lots of different reasons, but the reason that is relevant to you is I felt like I was being lectured to. I didn't even feel like I was part of this sales pitch at all. This person pitching me went on and on and on without checking in on my body language, on my cues, on the words I was saying or not saying, to see if I understood, had questions. They just kept going. And donors are the same way. No one likes to be droned on, on, on and on and on, right? And no one likes to feel like this hierarchy of you're the organization and you're going to ask them for money, and this is how it's going to go. So you're speaking at donors, not with them, and that's like a recipe for high churn and low engagement in your campaigns. So here's the fix, shift to collaborative storytelling. How do you do that, making donors partners, not bystanders? How can you think. About this. How can you make donors partners and not bystanders? Now here's like a nuance. You're not going to make your donor a board member, a committee member. That's not what I mean. But you want to involve donors in the narrative, in the stories that you're telling, highlighting their role. And remember when we did the investor series on the podcast, this is a great time to highlight their role as an investor or a seeder of change seed, like planting the seeds of change. You donor, you follower, you are part of our seed round, right for this program, you're pro, you're seeding this change. So you want to think about what are some ways that I can tactically stop speaking at donors and with them. So this may look in the wild as using social media, polls, Q and A sessions, live streams, feedback forms to invite donor participation, not in an extractionary way, but in a collaborative way, personalizing communication. I received a email or a direct mail piece, and I couldn't believe it, because it was such it was. It was a expensive direct mail piece that I received. And in it, they had on the outer envelope, my name Christina Edwards, my address. They had all of the right things, air quotes that you're supposed to have. And then when I went to read the letter, which was front and back, two pages, it was kind of long, it said dear friend. I was like, friend. Now this was a cold outreach. They I was not a past or current donor. I was like, you know my name because you put it on the you put it on the envelope, and then they just went ahead and called befriend, no. Personalized, personalized, personalized. Okay, it really felt very transactional at that point. So what can you do? Start to audit your current messaging and look at where are some ways that I'm can replace monologs with dialogs, where are some ways that I can implement a donor survey, even if it's just a Q A button on Instagram, or a poll or something like that, highlighting donor impact, showing with regular updates that connect the donor to their contribution with tangible results. Okay, so really going speaking at donors, not with them, and that's why sometimes I'll say to my clients who are nervous about a major donor meeting, about that meeting, and about what to say, and I'm like, You should not be presenting to them like a teacher who is lecturing in a college class. They should not be in the audience just taking in your slides. This should be a two way conversation. You should be listening. You should be asking great questions, so you really want to make sure it's a two way conversation. All right. Reason number two, you're not using your biggest supporters to their full potential. Here's what I mean. Maybe you're trying to run a successful campaign without involving your supporters. Hang on,
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I'm trying
Christina Edwards 08:08
to run a successful campaign without involving your supporters is like trying to win a relay race with a with a team of one, right? It's exhausting. It's impossible to scale. So remember your biggest fans, volunteers, donors, influencers, community members. They actually want to help, but you need to give them the baton. You need to make them easy. This is where a social street team, partnering with influencers and ambassadors online changes everything. That's the method that I've created. We teach it inside my coaching program, the club, where we give you the entire method, the entire scripts, the entire process to build your street team. So the fix here is actually activating, mobilizing your street team made up of loyal supporters, champions and online influencers who are eager to amplify your mission and fundraise. This is how you turn fans into advocates. And I teach a process, a three phase campaign process. So if we're talking about the messy middle, and you know the messy middle for you is the middle of the campaign when donations and engagements tend to stall out, y'all plan for it, when maybe you want to mobilize your street team, then plan ahead. It's like when my kids come home from school, I know they're hangry, and it's like the 100th time that they come home from school. I need to have expect this, right? What's my plan here? I can move up dinner. I can plan for a snack. I can plan to to stop somewhere on the way home, like this is a solvable problem, but not planning for it, and then being pissed off that they're hungry every time they come home, right? That's when we get into that, that we're behind the eight ball there, right? We're behind it, and we're reactionary. Reactionary there. So I want you to go, Okay, if this is a predictable part of my campaign, whether it's the midpoint, whether it's slow to close, what are some ways that I could mobilize my history team, or what are some other ways, and we'll keep going, some ways that you can engage and move through that plateau to finish strong. I
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now,
Christina Edwards 10:27
to give you an example, I worked with a client who started their first street team. They had 10 members in their street team, mixed up of online influencers and your average folks, your ambassadors, your volunteers, and they doubled their campaign year over year, their fundraiser campaign with 10 people. You do not need hundreds of people, but you need advocates. When you look at $100 million organization like Charity Water, you can see people, influencers, street teamers, advocates have been a huge part of their growth and their success. They are not 100 year old organization. They're relatively young for their massive footprint, their massive impact. The a huge tipping point for them is involving their community. All right. Reason number three, lack of urgency and clear call to action. So what am I seeing? I'm seeing vague appeals that lead to vague results. If your call to action doesn't make donors set up, grab their phone and act now. Don't be surprised that they don't. Okay. So vague appeals are vague, and vague calls to action are when you say things like make a difference, things that are just not they are nonprofit speak, and they are very vague and they are very just sterile. They're not, I'm not exciting. So think about some ways that you can dial up urgency and dial up your compelling calls to action, maybe stating what you aim to achieve, and by when really making it time, bound to increase the urgency, communicate the consequences of inaction. This is some version of what story brand. Their framework is called negative stakes. What is the cost of waiting? What is the cost of inaction that can be a helpful way to tell one angle of the story using emotionally resonant language. This is a big one, because I think you'll think you're using emotionally resonant language, but you're just using the same like three adjectives like make an impact again and again and again, instead of using the language that makes sense for your brand, your voice, your values, tapping into the values and emotions of your donors, your clients, your service services, Your programs, like the people within your organization, okay, a client of mine inside the purpose and profit club recently shared her fundraising page, and we encourage all of our clients to do this before they actually launch. So she shared it in our community group and asked me for feedback. And one of the things I loved about hers that I haven't seen much of is they had a countdown timer. So we see this a lot in the for profit world. So it's a countdown timer that until the campaign closes. So for example, if the campaign was two weeks long, then it would say, like, 14 days. Or it really would say 13 days, you know, 12 hours and 57 minutes. And so it was a countdown timer. You may have a donor match that you could use a countdown timer, or for for folks for year end, their countdown timer could be December 31 so it's not just about that one tactic, but that's an example of what urgency and urgency that is believable and doesn't feel made up looks like in the wild. Okay, reason number four is a big one. Get ready. Your team isn't bought in and it shows so if you're not the most Let me redo that and fix my hair. I if you're not the most excited person about your campaign, why should anybody else be think about that the energy, the excitement, the enthusiasm, the confidence, the courage you bring is can date contagious, and I'd rather it be contagious for good, not for bad. So if you're coming to me and you're saying things like, gosh, it's like pulling teeth to get my board to do anything, or my board barely ever fundraises, or it's really hard to get buy in for my ED or from my comms person on this. Right? Ask yourself, what's my energy like when I'm showing up and presenting it to him, to them, what is it like? And there may be an opportunity there for you to regroup and step into the next campaign that you do as the hype person, as the team unifier. And if you've never showed up this way before, that's okay. Like, do it. Now, try it. Now, think about how as this idea of like camp counselor energy for me, that I feel like is really, really helpful. But when a camp counselor is trying to get, like, a group of eight year olds from maybe one area to another area, and maybe that area, let's just say, is not an exciting area, like maybe it's after lunch and they have to clean up or do something not exciting, bringing that count camp counselor energy is going to get that task number one done quicker. You're going to get more buy in, and everyone is going to enjoy the process more. Maybe you add, like, if I was going to do that, maybe I'd say, let's see how much we can do in three minutes. I'm gonna put the stopwatch on my phone, ready, set go the first one to finish, start doing jumping jacks, just to add something silly to it. Now, that's a kid example. But where can you bring that? Like, this is gonna be fun. Cruise Ship director, energy to your fundraising, because Watch, watch. What happens if you show up with confidence like we're going to hit this, this bold goal. We're going to do this like we've never done it before. We're going to be more audacious, more fun. We're mobilizing our street team. Your board is going to go. How can I help? What can I do? Put me in coach? What do you need me for? So really, really important to think about, where can I get the board off the bench, where can I ask them, and where can i and this is part of that plateau piece. Okay, so maybe your campaign started 10 days ago. Now you're experiencing a plateau, a lull, yeah, you need to reignite. You need to bring them back in again with that cruise ship director energy, because everybody went back to their normal stuff, especially your board, especially other staff who are not in charge of fundraising, bring them back in. Bring them collectively like center them back in on the big bold goal and make it fun. Make it fun. Celebrate every win. It doesn't have to be the win of hitting the big goal. It can be the win of a board member starting or finishing their peer fundraiser, a street team or going on Instagram live with you, like there's so many opportunities to be that hype person and for that to have a huge ripple effect, or just not using it. Okay, all right. Reason number five, another tough love. One Y'all ready? Too much noise, not enough differentiation. So think about this in the sea of sameness with other nonprofits, other missions, who serve the same cause you do, or serve a similar cause, area or similar to similar, similar, similar community. Blending in is the same as disappearing if your campaign doesn't stand out with its messaging, if it doesn't stand out because of a street team, if it doesn't stand out because of that hype energy, it's already sunk right? And no wonder it feels that way. So what's the remedy here? What's the solution developing a bold point of view. This is the work we do on the club. Is we undo all that perfection, put everybody in a box with best practices that that so many nonprofits are stuck in, that sounds like an ominous brand and isn't human, isn't one to one, isn't personal, isn't sticky, isn't loyal, loyalty building. Okay, so you really want to think about, where can we develop a personal, bold point of view, being unapologetic about your uniqueness, and you can do this in a couple of different ways, leaning into what makes your organization different. Because certainly, even if your organization serves food insecure population in your town, there's probably another one that does that too. What makes you different? I want to know the answer to that, and I want to know it again, and I want to know it from a different point of view and again and again. Okay, branding your campaign. Please don't call your spring fundraiser, spring fundraiser. Don't call your Giving Tuesday fundraiser. Giving Tuesday campaign. NO. Brand it. Give it a memorable name, a theme, something again, that sticks with donors and sparks curiosity people want to be part of a movement, whether they want to be part of social change, whether they want to be part of a movement that is a legacy building one, people want to be a part of something bigger. And when you brand something as Giving Tuesday fundraiser or spring fundraiser, you're missing out on that whole piece of the identity. That alignment that's really, really important for their philanthropic goals. Really important. Don't skip that tab, that part of your campaign. Hang on. So I want you to think about where are some places that we can identify are what makes us unique, our organization, our mission, our program or service, really making sure you're crafting a compelling narrative around that and that is fully differentiated from other organizations. Where can you be more creative than you are today. Maybe that's with visuals, videos, infographics, stats, interactive content. I mean, Canva is there for you. Even if you're not a graphic designer, there's so many easy templates you can pull for things like this, okay, to differentiate you, the really essential piece with these five, hang on, whatever you do that the really essential part of why these five very common mistakes are keeping organizations plateaued in The middle of the campaign are all solvable. They're all solvable. The first is to identify that it's happening. And if you don't know that it's happening, just watch yourself on your year end fundraising sprint, your next spring campaign, and watch it so you may be running it for a week or 30 days, or something like that. And watch the midpoint. It's typically in the middle, but not always. Sometimes we see it go out really, really strong, and then it stalls out at the end. So you want to have in your back pocket a strategy for that, and that strategy is a couple different prongs. That strategy is about speaking with donors and speaking with donors. And that strategy means speaking with donors, not at them, right? Having that two way conversation, starting to create that conversation, if it doesn't already exist in your email content, in your social content, in any online fundraising, activating your street team. So that may mean that you need to start building it. If you don't know how to build a street team, or if you your street team has stalled out where it's at, you're not compounding it, because these are not one and done ambassadors. I highly recommend getting on the wait list for my coaching program, the purpose and profit club. This is the work we do here. This is how, literally, our clients unlock another 50k in funding, or they double their next fundraising campaign. That's the power of ending fundraising silos, where you're the only one fundraising, versus having a team alongside of you, of influencers and ambassadors lacking urgency and clear calls to action. So I see this come up in a lot of different places. I see it in email, especially where you have this beautiful story, you're telling this great impact story, testimonial down there at the very, very bottom is a call to action. Make a difference. I'm not excited by that. No one's excited by that. Heck, half of your half of your audience, didn't even scroll to the bottom. So you need to dial up the call to action so that it is unapologetic. If you're fundraising, your audience should know you're actively fundraising, and when you're not actively fundraising, great, that's when you're nurturing in your storytelling. Imagine it like a throttle, right? That it ebbs and flows and it stops and starts. So you shouldn't be in a constant, constant hamster wheel where you're constantly fundraising. 24/7, that is not it, and that it's like urgent, urgent call to action, but instead, that it has nice peaks and valleys, and that I as as your subscriber follower donor, know, oh, they're fundraising now, and I see what they're fundraising for, and I see why they're fundraising, and I see that there's team buy in because I just got an email from their board, or I got a really great video message, right? So bringing in your staff, your board, the people in and around your organization, to be as fired up as you are. And if you're not fired up about it, that's your first step. Get fired up about it. The last piece, making sure that you are differentiated. What makes your organization and and your this particular campaign different? Highly recommend that you revisit all of the names of your fundraisers as you go into 2025 and say, Are these little boring? Do these need to be different? Is it clear in the name, who they're for, what this is about? Would people get excited about this? If the answers to those questions are no, totally fine. Now we need to turn up the volume and hit that boldness with just the name of the fundraiser. That is like the first step. That's like the appetizer, right? To get somebody to care, to get interested, to warm them up so that eventually they take action. All right, I will see you next time. As always, I am here. If you want to reach out to me, you can come find me on LinkedIn or at splendid consulting on Instagram. I would love to hear what's resonating with you and what's what you're working on this month in let me do that last part. And I would love to know what your next fundraising campaign is and where you need the most help, whether it's the theme, whether it's that kind of messy middle or closing it out and finishing it strong, I'll see you next time bye.