Ep. 124: 3 Questions Every Donor Asks Before They Give
EPISODE 124
3 Questions Every Donor Asks Before They Give
About the Episode:
Today I’m sharing the the three questions every donor asks—whether they say them out loud or not—before they decide to give. Understanding these questions is a game-changer for creating campaigns, writing appeals, and connecting with donors.
If you’ve ever felt stuck crafting the “perfect” ask or struggling to connect with your audience, this episode will give you the tools to create messaging that resonates and inspires action. Tune in, and let’s answer those three questions together!
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why donors want to feel like partners, not heroes—and how this mindset shift changes everything
The importance of showing the long-term impact of donors' gift, not just the immediate results
How to build trust with donors by being authentic, relatable, and human
Why having a strong street team and endorsement from others is so powerful in building credibility
Tips for avoiding “emergency-only” fundraising and creating a sustainable message of change
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:
“Think about your donors as strategic partners, investors in change.”
“Donors want to know the tangible impact of their gift.”
“Different people have different philanthropic goals and interests.”
“Showing the future messaging not only helps get people from the maybe into making the donation but also stays with them and has that retention piece.”
“Stop selling immediate outcomes in isolation.”
“To build trust very quickly is to have a great donation tool.”
“What trust looks like is that there's a human behind the organization”
“Don't treat your donors like children, like toddlers - don't lie to them.”
“Having a street team is such a great way to answer the trust question.”
Episode Resources:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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*Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Christina Edwards 00:17Hello, friends, today we're digging into the three questions every donor asks before they give. And here's the thing about these three questions, the donor, your prospect, your lead, your ideal client, is asking these things internally, whether they realize it or not. So we're getting a little meta today, and it's really important that you understand their experience so you can roll out the red carpet for them and optimize it as best you can. If you're listening to this in real time, it's right before the holidays, and I want to offer that it's not too late to make these slight changes with your messaging or with your frequency or with any sort of outreach. You're not too late, if you're listening to this in the future, after the holidays, it's a great place to start and refresh your strategy at the top of the year.
All right, so three questions that every donor asks before they give. So here's the the All right. Question number one, why should I care? Yeah, if that sounds like a little bit of like an E question, stay with me, because everyone is being inundated basically 24/7 if we're not, you know, sleeping, and we're not, and we're away from a screen, maybe, maybe we have some peace. But the average person, the average consumer, is being inundated with marketing messaging all of the time, whether it's TV, whether it's on their phone, whether it's on a listening device, like a podcast or some other thing. Think about even going for a walk in your neighborhood. You're likely gonna see something a billboard. You're gonna see something pasted like a I'm thinking about a poster that's pasted to a telephone pole. Marketing message, right? Even lost cat is a marketing message, right? Trying to get my attention. So the average person is being inundated with all of these messages and trying to make a decision, should I care? Is this for me? And we want to make sure that your content, your appeals, your campaigns, answer this very simple but straightforward question, why should I care? donors, We don't want to position donors, let me say it this way, as the hero. I shifted my framework for positioning the donor as the hero A while ago, and I highly recommend you do too. I like to consider the donor as the partner versus sort of the white savior complex that sometimes is rampant still in the nonprofit sector. So think about your prospects, your donors as partners, strategic partners, investors in change. When I put on this idea of them as an investor, I actually think it helps inform the pitch. It informs the story. It informs everything in a much easier way, versus making it very, very transactional, or how do I get their money right? So speaking of that, stop treating them so transactionally. Stop treating them like they are the one and only, you know, die on this hill solution, and instead inviting them into to the process as whether it's a guide, a partner or a collaborator, you can pick a word that works well for you here, okay, and that's different, because that's not saying to the donor in so many words. Without this, every without your gift, everything stops. Because when we use language like that for for a campaign where we're asking somebody to give $25 that doesn't feel true, right? If I don't give $25 everything falls apart. Like that actually doesn't feel true. So how could you position your ask about somebody to a prospect giving a gift of $25 so that they are a partner, a collaborator in change? Okay, so that's the flip the script that I want you to think about doing. How can I do that? Right? I so when you think of your donors as investors in this share, shared vision, not as one off consumers just buying a product, right? You're engaging with them. You're creating connection in them. There's transparency, and then they're proud to be part of something bigger than themselves. That's why somebody gives $25 they are not, you know, wearing rose colored glasses that think, well, my $25 gift. Is going to solve the hunger crisis everywhere or even in my community, right? No, they know that they're smart, right? But what they're saying is, my $25 gift is part of the ripple. Ripple Effect is part of wider, lasting change. That's the shift. And I think when we treat people like that, then they see that we're telling the truth. We're not lying. It's almost like sometimes, some of the some of the things we say to children and toddlers, where I'm actually thinking about, I was at the dentist A while back, and it was morning, and there was a child, maybe, I don't know, under 10, checking out, and the child had clearly had some work done and, like, had some maybe cavities filled, things like that. And the parents were there checking them out, and the child was like, Can we go to McDonald's? The parent said, Oh, McDonald's is closed right now. No, it can't go to McDonald's, right? The little, teeny, tiny, micro lives. We tell the children, listen, McDonald's is 24/7 right? But what they were saying is, we're just not going to McDonald's right? Now, it's not in the cards, right? But at some point, there is a tipping point where your audience is going to call bullshit on that. Your audience is going to be like McDonald's is open. My $25 gift isn't making or breaking this. So what is it doing instead? Why should I still care? Yeah, you with me? Okay, I'm thinking about a client who I worked with who refined her pitch from what we just talked about, from being like, it's all so dependent on you, dear donor at any level, to do you want to be part of this change? Do you want to be part of this movement? And here's where you're here's what happens when you say yes, here's where your money will go. Here's what's possible. They're excited. They're excited when you paint that picture, that enthusiasm is infectious, and they were a yes to the tune of $25,000 gift multiple times.
All right. Question number two, that every donor asks before they give, remember, these are subconscious. Some people may be asking them out loud. Some people are asking them in their brains and not even realizing that that's the decision tree their brain is going through while when they make the decision to scroll away, walk away, say no at the checkout, open their wallet, say yes, write a check, all of those things. Okay, taking the action question Question number two, will my gift make a difference? Now, y'all, I know y'all love using the language. Make a difference, right? Make a difference. Your gift will make a difference. You're telling them that, donate today. Your gift will make a difference. But they're actually asking themselves, will my gift make a difference? And how do you want to answer that Yes. Donors want to know the tangible impact of their gift, but let's dig a little bit deeper. Okay, so it's not just necessarily about saying $50 does x $50 feeds a family for a week. Donors are actually asking, Is this one and done, or what is the ripple effect? What is the causal change? What is the ripple effect my investment will create? What this is a big one. What legacy Am I leaving? How does this gift tie into the bigger picture of the causes, emissions or my own personal values that I care about? Right? They're asking those pieces, whether or not they realize it or not. So like, let's kind of drill in a little bit more of what this looks like in practice. So let's use a cat rescue as an example. So you may say, okay, $50 will help feed a rescued cat for a week, right? But what if we actually drill into this a little bit more? And maybe what's important to your prospect is this idea of $50 not only feeding a cat but being part of a bigger solution. Maybe they live in a community that has a lot of feral cats, right? Maybe they live in a community where they're just seeing like so the kitten population increase increase, and they want to see kitties have homes. They want to see change, right? And so showing them and explaining to them that that $50 gift, that $25 gift is actually helping the overall kitten population. Because when you think about like, spay or neutered, like it literally one one spay helps to control the population. Yeah. So really, painting that picture of this isn't a one time gift. In this sense, you're part of a bigger movement, and you want to tell them what that movement is, don't assume they know what the movement is, right? Don't assume that they know that piece. And right next to this ideology is this idea of legacy. So different people have different philanthropic goals, okay, and different interests. Many people think about their legacy and they think. About the world they want to leave behind, or the world they want to see, right? I think about my legacy of, like, what do I hope is true in like, 40 years or 50 years, right? What does that version look like? What do I hope when I'm a old lady, like, what do I hope that that that world looks like? And how does my $50 gift to an organization help make that possible. Not every organization in the world is going to fit into that bucket of like, my own hopes, my own dreams for legacy. So when you think about your audience, whether it's a cat rescue, whether it's an organization that serves homelessness, whether it's maybe environmental issues you really want to drill into like somebody who gives towards climate change is really thinking about legacy. They're really thinking about legacy. And I would argue that you could tell them some flavor of we get it a $50 gift is not going to solve the climate change crisis. However, here's what you're laying the runway for. Here's how you're joining the movement. Now we're not devaluing their gift. We're showing them a greater gift. Like it's almost like, what if we Positive? Positive that, and we said, If you gave $50 today, and 10 of your friends gave $50 today, here's what that collective change would warrant. Here's what that collective change would do. And you could have an entire movement, an entire fundraising campaign, an entire social campaign that talked about collective change and why it's so important that you're not siloed out as donors as advocates, as volunteers, and that instead, you are part of a collective change, a collective movement. I would there's something there, especially for my environmental people. Hmm, yeah, so here's an example of what it might look like in the wild. So instead of focusing only solely on short term needs, you want to build that into like a shared vision. So you may say something like your contribution now helps or your contribution helps reduce hunger now and dismantle food deserts in our community over the next five years. I love the word dismantle, right? It's like, Ooh, I see what I'm doing. I see the stair step of like, what one thing happens today and how that helps to catalyze the next five years, right? So showing that future messaging not only helps get people from the maybe into action, into making the donation, but actually stay with you and have that retention piece. Okay, so remember to stop selling immediate outcomes in isolation. Isolation. Donors are tired of quick fixes. And here's the thing, I'm going to give you a real life story. There is a Facebook group that I'm in in my like neighborhood ish, and there is a very grassroots nonprofit organization, and they serve, let's see, they serve a population of mothers who are experiencing homelessness. So single moms who are experiencing homelessness, it's super duper grassroots. And here's the problem that I see that they are stuck in, which is they are always 911 urgently fundraising for one specific mother that is going to be evicted right now today. And they need $642 for it. And then next week, they need $742 for a different thing, and then three days from then, they need $300 and it's a little bit of like crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis versus it feels like they're constantly plugging a leaky bucket. They're constantly in triage. Now I look at an organization like that, and they're only talking about urgent, urgent, immediate, and I don't know that they have the programming support, wrap around services infrastructure, anything to actually support these moms beyond a night, a week, maybe, or something like that, because it seems so urgent that they're running out of funding so so quickly that I'm not confident in that investment, because I see them so quick to fundraise again. Okay? You don't want your donors experiencing that. You don't want your donors experiencing that, you want them to go, here's $800 I'm going to clear this for you, clear the wait list for you, and feel confident that there is a cushion in place of the organization, so that there is not always this frantic, frenetic or emergency fundraising happening. Okay, so watch what you're saying, like, go back and you can look at if you're like, Ooh, I might be doing that. It's not that there is no time for emergency fundraising. For example, the fires in Maui, that's emergency fundraising. Earthquake in Haiti, emergency fundraising, floods, emergency fundraising. There's like, climate related ones. There's all sorts of reasons why you would on a Tuesday, wake up and go, damn. I hadn't expected this emergency fundraiser time, but you want to be very careful that you're not like next Tuesday, emergency fundraiser, emergency fundraiser, because those are when we see incredibly high churn, incredibly high churn in your donors, because they're not with you in the long haul. Because how many times can you go to somebody for an emergency fundraiser? You with me? So really thinking about the action they will take today and what that will create in the next three to five years, and telling them that and telling them that again, you
all right. Question number three, this is a big one. Every question three questions that every donor asks before they give. Question number three, do I trust you? Do I trust you? Here's what no one tells you. Trust isn't built with a guide star, transparency, seal or polished, perfect branding. It is built when you're willing to show up authentically and unapologetically, flaws, urgency and all. So what do I mean? I mean that, yes, you want your website to look like it's from this decade. You want to make sure that your mobile donation tool is processed for as little friction as possible. You want to have a guide star, seal of transparency. But that's not exactly what consumers are looking for when, if my neighbor sends me a text right now and says, Hey, will you give to my nonprofit? I'm going to do a little bit of vetting, right there, then and there, right? I'm gonna there's gonna be a decision tree, and one of the things I'm gonna make is, Is this legitimate? Is this a legit organization, or do I think that my $50 is gonna be one and done, right? Do I really think, do I believe them? Do I believe them? And so some of the ways that you're going to show trust. You're going to build trust very quickly is having a great donation tool. That's one two. Do you see how I use neighbor as an example? Endorsement, if my neighbor sends me a text today, if I know and like her, which I do, that endorsement is going to carry a lot of weight. Footnote, this is why we talk about a social street team. The power of leveraging influencers and ambassadors online to fundraise. This is what I teach in the purpose and profit club. My group coaching program, you can always hop on our wait list. We will open up enrollment early next year. So I highly recommend getting on the wait list for early access. But that's the power. That's the power of an endorsement. It immediately says, I trust this organization, Christina. Will you make a donation today? So you want to think about, what are some other ways? What are some other markers that I can build trust with? So a street team is great, making sure that you do have an updated 990s and that it's in candid and in guide stories, in some of those appropriate non profit places. But really what trust looks like for me is that there's a human behind the organization. So I think about like Becky from the adventure project. She writes amazing emails, she writes great social posts, and I believe her. I trust her, because she is, as Laura Belgrade would say, who was a guest on the podcast, she's flossom. She is flawed and awesome. She is a fully formed human who is not perfect. She's going to write emails that sound like they were written from her. She's going to fundraise like she means it all in her heart and soul, into it her team, too. So you want to think about, how can I show up, not so much as a sterile, ominous brand, and more like the staffer, the executive director, the human, the person behind the organization. And you want to show up that way on email, you want to show up that way on social. You want to show up that way in your one to one meetings and outreach. And what's kind of funny is I'm giving you these marching orders of how to show up as yourself versus how to show up as an ominous brand. And it would make more sense that it would be like, well, of course, just show up as you. But I actually think that you have to do a lot of undoing of this other version over here that so many organizations have been taught to do. It's like the formality, the best practices that it has to go 1234, A, B, C, D versus human to human, calling somebody today and saying, Glenda, how are you, you know, what I thought of you on my walk. I'm just going to call you breaking the rules right of cultivation, or sending an email that says, you know, I had an ED. This is true. Uh, messaged me this morning that I work with a client, and he is like, telling me how his weekend went. And he's like, You know what? I kind of, I kind of messed my back up trying to get this Christmas tree up the stairs. And I'm like, flawsome, human, real, relatable, 100% I'm like, that's the beginning of an email, by the way, and there's a way that you can write, whether it's an email, what's a phone call, any sort of outreach, in a way that ties it back into your mission, if people will trust you 10x more when you show them who you are, the facets of who you are. Caveat being, do you need to vent in an email? No. Do you need to act unprofessional air quotes in an email. No, we just want to know like the people behind the mission, the people in the mission. We want to get to know them. And when people get to know them, that trust is magic. And so many organizations, I'm thinking about Kathy, who's inside the club. People know her so well as the ED, when she fundraises, when she tells a story, I'm already in I already know her, I know her voice, I know her passion, and so much more trust and believability. It makes it so much easier to fundraise, so much easier to fundraise you.
So if you're ready to stop using the outdated rule book and start building donor movements online, in person, with influencers, with ambassadors becoming a bold, audacious fundraiser that actually has people drawn to you. Okay, this is the work we do in my coaching program. You can hop on the list to join the club and get early access when we open up enrollment, but in the meantime, I want you to think about now and in the next few months, what can you do to answer those questions, the three questions that every donor is asking before they give. So you want to make sure before you send out another email, before you create another fundraising campaign, before you send out that appeal, before you have that phone a thon or text a THON. Answer those questions. Why should I care? Why should the donor care? Why should the prospect care? Think about them. Think about their motivation, their interests, their values, their legacy, whatever, and everyone's gonna be a little bit different. But people are in buckets, right? And think about those and say, oh, what? Sentence, paragraph, video, something do I could I have? Could I add to this? To answer that question, will my gift make our difference? Remember, don't treat them like children. Don't treat them like toddlers. Don't lie to them. Don't tell them that their $50 gift is going to solve every problem in the world. But tell them about the movement they'll be a part of, or tell them about the legacy they're creating, or tell them how the aspirational version of the next three to five years of your nonprofits growth that they're now going to be part of, right? And the third question, do I trust you? What are some ways that you can add credibility and add those endorsements and add that experience of trust starts with showing the humanity. It starts with making sure you have a frictionless, as frictionless as possible donation experience. And having a street team. A street team is such a great way to answer the trust question. Okay, I am cheering for you. I'm rooting for you. And as always, thank you for tuning into the podcast, and I would love it if you would leave us a review. You can scroll down on your podcast app, and you can click the five stars and leave us a review. Tell us what you're loving about the podcast, and you're always welcome to come find me on Instagram at splendid consulting and tell me maybe a question you have or an episode you would like me to cover an episode topic. I'll see you next time bye.