Unlock the Power of the Mighty Fundraising Offer

Happy Friday, Friends!

Today on #FundraisingFriday we're taking a deep dive into one of the unsung heroes of nonprofit fundraising: the humble but mighty fundraising offer.?

If you're new to fundraising, you might be wondering:

"What in the world is a fundraising offer?"

At the most basic level, a fundraising offer is a promise you make to potential givers about what will happen when they make a gift.

It's the bridge between a giver's desire to make a difference and the concrete impact their gift can create.

A fundraising offer is your way of saying:

"Here's how you can make a difference, and here's what your gift will achieve."

How do fundraising offers work?

A good fundraising offer takes your big mission and distills it down into bite-sized, actionable chunks.?

In order to be effective, a compelling fundraising offer needs to include:

• A solvable problem: An offer should address a specific problem that givers can readily understand, and that can be solved by a gift.
• A clear solution: An offer should also contain a straightforward solution that clearly explains how a gift will directly address the problem at hand.
• A cost that makes financial sense: The cost of the solution should make financial sense in the mind of a giver. It needs to align with their expectations (and budget) and feel like a worthwhile investment.
• Urgency: An offer should convey a sense of urgency. It should motivate givers to take immediate action, highlighting the importance of solving the problem now rather than waiting until later.

Here are some examples:

• Providing Clean Water: Your gift of $100 can give one person clean drinking water for life.
• Fighting Hunger: Your gift of $500 can feed a family struggling to make ends meet in your community for an entire month.
• Education Access: Your gift of $1500 can provide textbooks for a classroom of students.
• Medical Treatment: Your gift of $200 can provide life-saving medical treatment to one child.

Fundraising offers create clarity and focus by zooming in on specific issues, making it easier for people to understand the difference they can make.?

When you write a compelling fundraising offer, you empower givers by showing them how their gifts matter.

You help them see how they can be agents of change by making the abstract tangible and showing them the immediate impact of their giving,

By making the abstract tangible and showing the immediate impact of a gift, you help people see how they can be agents of change.

Good fundraising offers do something else important, too.

They help shrink your problem by breaking down complex and overwhelming issues into smaller, more manageable chunks.

Instead of asking people to solve an entire giant hairy overwhelming problem (solving world hunger), a fundraising offer focuses on one single and hyper-specific solution (feeding one hungry person today).?

When you shrink the problem, you make it feel more solvable, relatable, and immediate to givers.

Here's what shrinking the problem looks like from our previous examples:

• Providing Clean Water: Instead of asking people to "solve the global water crisis," focus on a specific project like "providing clean drinking water to one community or one school or one person."?
• Fighting Hunger: Instead of tackling "world hunger," break it down to "feeding one family struggling to make ends meet in your community for a month."?
• Education Access: Rather than addressing "education inequality," concentrate on "providing textbooks for a classroom of students in one school."?
• Medical Treatment: Instead of asking people to "cure cancer," invite them to help "one child recover from cancer."

In addition to helping shrink your problem, fundraising offers accomplish a range of other critical goals too:

• Inspire Action: They prompt people to take action by presenting a specific need and a solution they can be part of.
• Drive Giving: Offers make giving more attractive by showcasing the concrete impact of a gift.
• Boost Engagement: They foster a sense of community among givers, making them feel like they're part of something bigger.

Fundraising offers are a win-win for givers and nonprofits.?When done well, an offer can make giving more meaningful and fulfilling by helping people see the direct impact of their generosity. Good fundraising offers also help nonprofits communicate their mission more effectively, inspire generosity, and raise more funds to support the work.

To craft your fundraising offer, follow these steps:

1. Identify the Problem: Clearly define the issue you aim to address. Whether it's hunger, illiteracy, or homelessness, spell it out in the most simple, easy-to-understand way possible. What specific challenge do you want to tackle? Make sure you present the problem in a way that is easy to understand, and that can be easily solved with a gift.
2. Propose a Solution: Offer a clear solution or action that people can take to address the problem. Describe how a gift will make a difference. Once again, make sure you present the solution in a way that is easy to understand.
3. Share the Cost: Specify the amount required to support the cause. What's the cost involved in making this change? Be transparent about the cost of doing one simple, tangible thing. Transparency builds trust.
4. Create Urgency: Highlight why action is needed now. Urgent needs tend to inspire immediate action. People need to see that taking action now is crucial.

That's it. It really is that simple.

While the humble fundraising offer often goes unnoticed, it's a powerful tool that can radically impact your fundraising efforts by helping you turn your abstract mission into tangible solutions, while also making seemingly insurmountable problems more manageable.?

When you create compelling offers that shrink complex problems into manageable solutions, you'll empower givers to become agents of change.

You'll help people see that their gifts matter – that they can make a tangible impact on the world.

And you'll inspire and drive a whole lot of generosity and action in the process.

Sound like fun?

Do those things consistently enough over time, and you just might change the world.