3 Ways Your Donors Think
by Karen Fabean
To get insights on PAC fundraising, I’m an avid follower of non-profit professional fundraisers. Katya Andresen is someone every PAC professional should get to know. Recently, she wrote a column in Fundraising Success magazine entitled “You talk, donor’s listen...but what is it they’re hearing? Probably not what you think.”
There are some good nuggets in her article for those of us in the PAC world.
Andresen’s basic premise is that what we aim to communicate often isn’t what people actually hear and think. Everyone has their mental screens and means for processing information. She likens our minds to a “kitchen gadget that can slice, dice, chop and transform everything it touches.” You might send a communication about, say a tasty carrot, but someone in your target audience may turn your message into a stack of “julienned strips.”
As a PAC fundraiser, this is a problem. It means we must do a better job of understanding how donors’ minds work, if we want them to receive and accept our messages as they are intended.
Using Andresen’s recommendations as a guide, here are a couple of thoughts:
Communicate on a human scale—which means presenting the issues and examples used to convey the value of the PAC on a more personal basis. If you tell a potential donor that “energy legislation this year could save our country $300 billion dollars over 10 years,” he may think “boy, that’s a ton of money. Wonder what’s for dinner?” The point is, the bigger the scale you communicate, the smaller the impact you will have on your audience. How many of us break down the impact of issues facing our organizations and are able to communicate its effect on one person, one business unit, one product? Katya says communicating on a human or smaller scale causes people to see the possibilities if they will take action.
Stick to the truths, not the myths, about PACs—we all are prone to want to try to clear up misconceptions that people have about PACs. But, evidently there’s research showing the myth vs. fact approach just perpetuates the myth. A perfect example is:
Myth: PACs buy lawmakers’ votes.
Fact: PACs are limited by law from giving no more than $5,000 per election, per candidate. Our PAC supports candidates for political office who share our basic philosophy and values on the business issues that affect us.
If we tell a potential donor this myth vs. fact, she may think—buy votes? Wait, there’s no way I want to be associated with that! Stick with the facts and present them in a credible way.
Give them a reason to believe they can make a difference. People give money to causes in which they think they can affect change. If your message is about a bitterly partisan Congress and huge policy issues that are far from resolution, it’s not much of a motivator to make people give to the PAC. One donation won’t solve those problems, so why give in the first place? The key is to give your donors a reason to believe their contribution actually makes an impact.
Stay tuned.
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