My Fundraising "Secret"

Hello, my motivated mentees.

‘Tis I, your Artful Mentor, once more. I know you didn’t expect to hear from me so soon again, so I am calling this message 9-a. Some weeks you just have great luck, eh?

One of you had a question today: “What’s your secret for raising so much money so far?” This is a very profound question. I don’t think I have been asked anything so profound since the day a man staggered the remaining few feet to the top of the mountain I was standing on and said “Oh great Mystical Guru. I have traveled all this way to seek you. Can you please tell me the meaning of life?” My reply then was “Beat’s me. I just got here myself and was admiring the view.”

Fortunately (or maybe not) for you, this time I do have a clear answer. Let’s examine this. First, I hasten to say while I have passed my minimum fundraising, I am not a Virginia Rock Star, unlike one of you. Also, I have done pretty well raising money for each of my first three events, but each time at the pasta party when the leading fund-raisers are announced, there are people who have raised truly staggering amounts of money. So everything is relative. That being said, here are the steps I have taken the last couple of times that have worked pretty well.

Everything I have raised so far, just under $4,400, has come from my email campaign and letter campaign. In years past, I have gotten large assistance from a couple of out of state friends doing fund raising for me, but that has not happened to date this year and may not. I also have added nice chunks with bake sales and silent auctions, and hope to use these soon too. But so far, it is just my solicitations. Now many of you are doing really well with very original fund raisers, things that are more clever than the things I do. I am amazed when I hear some of the cool things many of you have going on to bring in the dough for LLS.

Of the donations so far, roughly 90% have either come from on-line donations or checks sent me as a result of online solicitations. I sent out one USPS mailing that ended up bringing in maybe $400, and I will not do another mailing because the cost is high relative to the reward. So my focus is and will be on the email side of things.

Everyone I know that I have an email address for gets on my email list. The only exceptions are former and current TNT participants, then I give them the option because some of them may have trouble sleeping at night and reading my campaign emails can help with that. If you are family or a close friend, you get emails. If you are a casual friend, you get an email. If I got your email address from someone else, you get an email. If I know you directly or indirectly from work, you get an email. If you had the misfortune to give me a business card, you get an email. If you are a neighbor, you get an email. I make very few exceptions to all this, knowing that many people will never donate. Because every time I do this I get many donations from people I barely know, because they are not donating to me – they are donating to the cause of curing cancer.

I personalize the message. As a lymphoma survivor, it is easy for me, because I am trying to give back in gratitude for survival. What if I had never had cancer? I would use the story of relatives, friends or the team’s patient honorees. Almost everyone is affected by cancer. I am reminded by this when people donate and say “thank you for doing this, my niece (or aunt, or mom, or friend, or brother – need I go on) had cancer.”

Then I send out frequent reminders. Every 2 – 3 weeks a brand new reminder goes out, totally written from scratch. I always have a theme to it, and I always word it as a thank you to those who donated and an update about how I am doing. The theme could be almost anything – something I read about regarding cancer, someone I learned of, something from my experience or a friend’s experience, something from training and how it related to the mission. Or often it is a “Q and A” type of thing. Often I try to use some humor (we can debate this of course). This year, with the presidential election, I took a totally different tack – I ran most of my emails as aspects of a campaign: kicking off the campaign, a press conference, an attack ad, and so forth. I even had "campaign buttons" created by a friend. Now that the election is over, I will still use that theme to some extent but not as exclusively.

If you go to this area of my blog, you will see every note I have sent to potential donors for this campaign and for my last one (Arizona a year ago):

http://racn4acure.blogspot.com/search/label/note%20to%20donors

Maybe some of these will be useful or have ideas, and if so feel free to use them. Everyone has their own style and own approach. Since I am doing this for the 4th time in the last 5 years, essentially to many of the same people, I need to try to vary things a bit. Plus even in one year, if I sent the same thing over and over, no one would read it. Hopefully, by being original enough, some people at least will read enough of it to get inspired to donate.

My next note (update to donors) will go out next week, probably Monday night. Why is this important to keep sending them out? Because people have good intentions but if they don’t donate immediately, then my email will be buried alive - screaming, sobbing, and gasping for air - in their inbox. Every time I send an update, I get 6-10 donations. That is why I send an update every few weeks.

So that is the basic gist of it:

1. Everyone (virtually) I know gets on my list
2. I send frequent and original updates – but I always subtly ask again for a donation IF you haven’t already done so.

Ask, ask, ask – without bugging people. And in the same note, thank those again who have donated already. Make it clear you are not asking them to donate again.

Well, this is long enough, but I wanted to get it all out there for you, because it has worked pretty well for me going on four campaigns now.
GO TEAM!
Art