I want to give you a little insight into a campaign I did for a Great Dane rescue this week so that you can learn from the decisions I made.
Here’s the story…
I wrote an 8-page fundraising letter to raise money for a Great Danee rescue that I work with.
This was all pro-bono on my end.
So I’m not getting paid to write the letter.
I just love dogs (especially Great Danes) so I want to help them out.
Last year was the first time I did a letter like this for the rescue, and it raised nearly $16,000 to a list of about 100 people.
So it was a huge win for them.
Since the campaign was successful, the plan this year was to simply repeat it (with a few minor tweaks).
So I want to break down a few of the big decisions I made about the letter…
And about the campaign…
So you can see how my mind works…
We only focused on donors over $100
This letter was only sent to previous donors who have donated more than $100.
So the donor list from the past three years was compiled and we mailed all the names who donated more than $100.
Basically the reason behind this is that it’s an expensive mailing, so we don’t want to be targeting $10 donors with it.
Removing mega-donors from the list
We removed one “mega donor” from the list who gives a big $10,000 donation each year.
The rescue owner has a 1-on-1 relationship with this donor and they cultivate the donation each year through that, so no need to send her a letter and risk pissing her off.
We kept donors on the list who already donated in 2020
A big point here, we kept people on the list who already made a donation this year.
And we did this for a specific reason…
Last year there was a woman who donated $4,000 in March, and when she got our letter in December she donated another $6,000.
So we’re hoping to see more of that from the donors who already donated this year.
We upgraded the envelope to USPS priority
Last year we sent the letter in a plain #10 envelope.
But this year I wanted it to stand out a little more.
So we upgraded to a USPS priority envelope.
This costs a little more, but I think it will produce better results due to it standing out and looking more professional.
We gave them two ways to donate
One of the things I learned very quickly is that the more ways you give them to donate, the more money you’ll bring in.
So we offered donors the option of donating online and also by check.
From the numbers last year, a sizable number of people wrote checks for their donations so this is a must-have option.
And to make it easy on the check writers, we included a pre-stamped and pre-addressed envelope to send their donation to the rescue.
This is an important lesson – the less work they have to do, like trying to find a stamp, the better.
You want to make it as EASY as possible for them to donate.
How we changed the letter for 2020
For the actual fundraising letter we used the same letter as we did last year with a few changes to it.
We switched out the heartbreaking story of a dog named Rylee at the beginning and replaced it with a new heartbreaking story about a dog nameed Brian.
I think the new one might be even better.
Basically Brian’s owner was a real piece of shit who left him and two other dogs in a house and abandoned them.
They were all alone for close to 45 days with no food, water or anyone looking after them.
This house was out in the country so there was no one around to help them.
The other two dogs in the house ended up dying of starvation after about a month.
But Brian was saved at the last minute when a sheriff’s deputy was looking around the house and heard Brian whimpering inside.
The deputy rushed him to a vet, and the vets were able to stabilize him.
He was hanging on for dear life, weighing just 74 lbs (when he should have weighed about 160).
After a week or so of vet care, Brian was transferred to Harlequin Haven (the rescue Im writing for) and they found him a loving home where he’s now living like a king and is pampered to death.
It’s a pretty emotional story.
And one that will grab any dog-lover, so we went with that for the new lead on the letter.
Addressing 2020 and COVID
The second big change we made to the letter was addressing all the chaos in 2020.
Due to COVID more people than ever were dumping their dogs and getting rid of them (mostly due to financial issues).
So the rescue was taking care of more dogs than usual.
Which meant they were spending more money than usual.
So we used this as the reason why we were asking for a donation.
One of the keys with donations is that you have to have a reason WHY you’re asking for a donation,
And this was a pretty easy one to use.
The rescue was burning through funds due to COVID, and they have more dogs than ever coming their way.
So they need more funds to help these dogs.
When to mail the letter?
This is a big, big decision when mailing stuff around the holidays.
If you’re too close to Thanksgiving or Christmas your letter will never get read.
However you still need to be close enough to the end of the year that you get all those end-of-year donors looking for tax write offs.
So there’s only a small window to send this.
I settled on Dec 8th and 9th.
So that means we mailed these letters last Friday, and they’ll be hitting mailboxes tomorrow and Wednesday (at least thats the goal).
This is important for a few reasons…
You don’t want the letter arriving on Monday when people have a ton to do.
You also don’t want it arriving on Friday or Saturday when people are in “weekend mode”.
The sweet spot is Tuesday or Wednesday.
So that’s what were shooting for.
Although with all the issues the mail is having these days, who knows if that will happen.
How much money we asked them to donate
This part was interesting…
Cause the donors ranged from $100 to $6000.
Ideally you’d want to segment these…
And have a special package for the people who donate $1000 or more.
But I didn’t have time to do that, so good enough is good enough.
But we made sure to address this in the copy.
We said multiple times “whether you donate $100, $500, $5,000 or even $10,000 we appreciate your generosity and your big heart”
So we’re seeding the idea that we’re expecting them to send a big donation.
We’re not looking for $10 donations.
And judging by the donations from last year, this worked.
Cause almost all of the donations were large donations.
This is an important point.
Cause if you don’t let them know how much you want them to donate, they won’t know how much to give.
Someone with the ability to give $5,000 might give $100.
So it’s important to let them know what you’re expecting.
—–
I can’t really think of anything else to add to this.
Overall I think the letter is gonna do grat.
I’ll share more of the copy in the letter with you this week in my emails…
And then I’ll share the results as well once those start coming in.
BTW a big shoutout to Rob Palmer who helped me with the copy on this.
I had a million things on my plate and asked if anyone wanted to help with this (pro-bono).
Rob stepped up and knocked it out of the park.
So kudos to him.
Hopefully you got some good marketing nuggets out of this.
And learned a little something from how I think…
If you like reading my emails and you want to chip-in and help either of the dog rescues that I work with you can do that here and here.
I’m sure they’d appreciate the love.
Talk soon,
– Justin
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