For a lot of cultural organisations, their starting point for visitor or audience donations is a handful of donation boxes or buckets dotted around the place, with signs that say something inspiring, like “donations welcome” or “please donate”.

Don’t all rush for your coins at once…

If this sounds depressingly familiar, or if you’re keen to review individual giving in your organisation, here are nine steps I use to help organisations develop supporter journeys that actually get people to give:

Focus on a specific target audience – the most successful fundraising messaging doesn’t try to appeal to everybody. Having a specific audience in mind means you can target your message and your offer based on their specific relationship with your organisation – their shared likes, dislikes, values, motivations and experiences. For a lot of cultural organisations, your primary target audience will be the people who walk through your doors every day.

Understand their motivations – people give to different organisations for different reasons at different times. You need to understand what is most likely to motivate people to take action to support your organisation or project. In particular, you need to be clear whether your target audience has a transactional motivation (giving because they are going to get something back) or a philanthropic one (giving to solve a problem, or because they love what you do and want to help you do more of it). (A lot of arts fundraising incorrectly assumes that people will only give if they are going to get something in return, which leads to organisations rushing to set up a Friends or membership scheme.)

Craft an attractive proposition – I always encourage organisations to think of their ‘ask’ as an invitation. Look for the overlap between your funding need and your target audience’s motivation, and use this to find the right invitation. For example, are you inviting them to fight for something? To save something? To join something? To fix something? To be part of something? To believe in something? Remember – the offer or invitation doesn’t need to be a package of tangible benefits or rewards. Don’t force people with a philanthropic motivation to have a transactional relationship with you.

Katch their attention – at any given moment, approximately 99.999% of your target audience are thinking about something other than you and your fundraising message. You need to change that before you can compel them to act. Consider what are you going to say or do to hook their attention and draw them in. Part of this means being bold and unashamed about your need for support. Don’t hide your message in the dark, unexplored corners of your venue/website/newsletter.

Tell a story – having caught their attention you now need to compel them to take action. Stories are a brilliant tool for bringing the need for your work to life. Consider – who or what does the potential donor care about, and/or empathise with? What is their goal? What stands in the way of them achieving it? How can the donor help them overcome this barrier? What emotion do you need them to feel at the point you ask for a gift? Remember – while you might use complete case studies to show the difference your work can make, you also don’t want the potential donor to feel there is no room for them. Leave space for them to be a Helping Hero. After all, you are asking the donor to help write the story’s ending.

Remove barriers to giving – having compelled someone to take action you need to make it as easy as possible for them to give. What channels make it easy for them to give in that moment? How can you reduce the mental and physical effort required to make the gift?

Use SUPER thanking – make donors feel valued and respected by ensuring your thank yous are speedy, unique, passionate, engaging and repeated.

Make them see the impact – having given the donor the chance to help write the ending to your story, you now need to show them what’s changed as a result of their gift. Showing that their support made a difference can help pave the way to talking about their next gift.

Prepare to ask again – encouraging existing supporters to give again is far more efficient than having to constantly recruit new donors. When the time is right, present people with a new invitation that aligns your needs with the donor’s motivations and drivers. And one final tip – don’t fall in to the trap of assuming you need to wait a year before asking again. Memberships might work on the basis of annual renewal dates but philanthropic gifts don’t have to.

Now, if only there was a handy acronym to remember all that…

A Poundland monstrosity.

That was how my partner first described the Christmas light display I’d secretly hung up on the front of our house.

And, though I didn’t want to admit it, she was right. The bright neon star, reindeer and icicles that were now illuminating half our street suddenly looked a lot more garish than they had in the shop.

No wonder there were still so many left on the shelf…

When I’d bought them I was just thinking about how much our kids would love seeing them, and had hoped that they might spread some festive cheer to our part of the street. But, as I stood there staring at the blinding mass of white and purple LEDs, I was starting to worry that I’d made a huge mistake.

The next day I bumped into our neighbour. I was about to apologise for bringing down the neighbourhood when he called out:

“Love the lights! I’m not normally a fan of Christmas lights but they look good. In fact, our daughter keeps asking if we can have some, too”.

Half an hour later and I’m up a step ladder hanging up a matching set of icicle lights on next-door’s house.

And that evening, as my youngest shouted out with excitement at the sight of Rudolph and his bright red nose beaming down from our bedroom window, my worries (and heart) melted.

So, why am I telling you this, and how am I going to bring it back to fundraising?

Our Christmas lights aren’t going to win any prizes for style, taste or design. However, they’ve achieved what they were supposed to – putting smiles on peoples’ faces.

When we’re creating fundraising materials (e.g brochures, posters, emails, websites, proposals etc) we often make design choices based on what we think looks good, rather than on what is going to help us achieve our objectives.

But there are times when the pursuit of “beauty” ends up doing more harm than good, holding us back from what the brochure/poster/email/website/proposal is trying to achieve.

For example:

• Block justified text looks nice on the page, but the uneven spacing between words makes it harder to read, while the straight edges on both sides of the text increase the chances of people skipping lines. This is particularly true when people are skim-reading. Whether we like it or not, our audience are most likely to be skimmers and scanners so by using the “uglier” left-justified text we can make it easier for them to read.
• Having buttons, links and headings all in our organisation’s decreed colour looks visually pleasing (and will keep you in the good books of your organisation’s ‘Brand Enforcer’). However, a number of tests have shown that using a highly-contrasting colour for your Call to Action will result in it getting noticed more, and receiving more clicks.
• It might look nicer to finish each page with a finished sentence (or, even more “beautiful”, a finished paragraph). However, as fundraising copywriter extraordinaire Lisa Sargent says, “A completed sentence is a stop sign for your brain”. Having sentences that run over the page forces the reader to turn over, increasing the chances they’ll keep reading.
• In a similar vein, getting everything on to one page might make it look tidier, but if that means you have to shrink the font, minimise the margins and eradicate any white space on the page you’re going to destroy the accessibility and readability. And it doesn’t matter how compelling your message is if people can’t read it.

Remember – “aesthetic beauty” is not a meaningful KPI in fundraising.

Your design choices need to be driven by what you’re trying to achieve.

What makes your target audience more likely to take notice?

What makes them more likely to engage with the key parts of your message?

And what makes them more likely to take action?

So, next time someone tries to get you to change something because their way will “look nicer”, consider whether the change could end up doing more harm than good. And, if you don’t know, look for a way to test it.

That way, you can make ‘effective’, rather ‘aesthetic’ your (bright neon) guiding star.

I don’t think I’ve ever looked more smug than I did last Friday.

After a day going back and forth trying to find the right name for one of our new consultancy services I’d finally hit the jackpot.

It had the lot. A smart analogy. Some clever word play. A witty twist on two well-known acronyms.

Staring at it on the page stirred feelings of pride I haven’t felt since the birth of my kids.

There was just one problem.

When I showed it to a group of fundraisers, not one of them had the foggiest idea what the name alluded to or what the service was we were actually offering.

That smug look vanished as I realised what had happened.

I’d been so distracted by “clever” I’d taken my eye off the single most important thing I needed to achieve – to clearly show my target audience why this service was right for them.

I’d fallen victim to the Curse of Clever.

The Curse of Clever is where we become so wedded to an idea because of its novelty or cleverness that we will move heaven and earth to make the idea work, even if it means sacrificing clarity and functionality.

(If you’ve ever have been at a conference where someone has started talking about “The 32 Ps of Corporate Partnerships”, where each P has got more and more tenuous as the speaker desperately tried to find a synonym for what they were actually trying to say, you’ll know what I mean.)

“Clever” ideas can come from a range of places. Linguistic tricks (such as puns, wordplay, alliteration and acronyms that spell a word), quirky design choices, linking to current events or notable people and events from our organisation’s past – all can turn into cursed ideas that distract us from our primary aim if we hold them too tightly.

And this curse doesn’t just affect our copywriting.

“Clever” ideas can influence how we structure appeals, the names we give to different membership schemes and even the amounts we ask for (looking at you, anniversary campaigns that use multiples of the year as the suggested donation amounts, despite them having no connection to the amount you need or your donor’s giving habits).

Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for these techniques and devices. Done well, they can be effective ways of helping you engage and inspire your target audience. But, to do so, they need to remain the humble servant to your message. As soon as your “clever idea” starts calling the shots you’re in trouble.

Because here’s the thing – clever is only clever if it works.

Your goal is to get your message across to your target audience in a way that catches their attention, inspires them and motivates them to act.

So, if you feel yourself becoming the hostage of a “clever idea”, stop and test it against the following questions:

• Does this idea help or hinder us to catch the attention of our target audience?
• Does it help or hinder us to build trust, rapport and connection with our target audience?
• Does it help or hinder us to achieve the desired emotional response in our target audience?
• Does it help or hinder our target audience’s understanding of why our work is needed?
• Does it help or hinder our target audience’s understanding of what we’re asking them to do and why this is right for them?
• Does it help or hinder our target audience to give?
• Does it help or hinder our target audience to remember our message? (NB Acronyms don’t automatically make things easier to remember. They only become more memorable after repeat use. To begin with they’re usually harder to understand as your audience struggles to remember what each letter stands for).

If the idea is helping more than hindering, proceed (but on the understanding you will jettison the idea if it stops being helpful, or if a better one comes along).

But if the idea is holding you back, perhaps it’s not such a clever idea after all.

Marina Jones, Deputy Development Director at English National Opera has just returned from a supporter trip, taking donors to the opera in San Francisco. On a night off during the trip she went to a drag show. In this guest blog she shares some reflections on what a drag show can teach fundraisers.

When the show starts the first thing the hosts of the show ask is ‘What’s the first rule of drag?’

The answer – “Tip your artists, dancers, servers and hosts”.

This ‘pre’-suasion or priming is setting the scene right from the start, and for the rest of the night – you will be asked to contribute.

Giving is expected, normal, encouraged and celebrated. The message is, if you care about the art form and want to enjoy it you need to be part of funding it and making it happen. Your support has a direct impact on the work you see on stage. Donors want to see the impact of their gift – seeing the impact live on stage makes it immediate.

Often in the arts we can shy away from articulating the ‘art for arts sake’ or for the pure enjoyment but a drag show connects immediately and says to you ‘if you want this it costs money and you need to give to make it happen’. Sometimes fundraisers also delay asking, missing out on the opportunity when people are feeling and experiencing all the emotions of connecting with our art forms.

At a drag show, there is no fear of asking and making it clear that funds are needed.

Now, a bit of background if it’s a while since you went to drag show or have yet to go … Tipping your artists involves putting dollar bills into whatever their fabulous outfits they are wearing.

If there are barriers to giving people won’t do it – it needs to be easy and friction free. If there are obstacles to making the gift it creates friction. Overcoming this friction uses too much brain power so we don’t do it. Your brain moves from the intuitive and automatic system one to system two and your rational brain kicks in and stops you completing the action.

So make it easy to give – anticipate the friction points and barriers that your donors have in that giving journey. Have they got what they need to donate?  For example, at the drag show you need a dollar bill to tip but you only have a $20. No problem – they have thought of that! The hosts come out and offer change – so you can change that $20 for twenty $1 dollar bills so you can easily make your contributions directly to the artists.

By thinking about what your donors need you are helping them give by making it easy for them.

An additional bonus of having lots of dollar bills is that it makes it easy to make repeat gifts to a preferred artist or many artists.

Each time you give a gift your brain gets a hit of the happy chemicals (dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins). By making it easy and encouraging more gifts you are making people happier.

We are motivated to do what others are doing. Repeatedly seeing people make donations establishes giving as socially normal and encourages others to participate.

Every time a note is given the crowd cheers and celebrates the donation. Each contribution is celebrated. Celebrate that your donors are choosing to voluntarily give you to you to make the world better.

In an increasingly cashless society the lack of cash should not be a barrier to being able to contribute. So adapt – even drag queens use QR codes!

As well as giving directly to the artist or by QR code there is also a collection bucket. This means you can give whatever way makes you feel comfortable. Whether you choose to give publicly or more privately, all gifts are cheered!

Don’t shy away from asking again and again and reiterating your need for support. There are repeated asks throughout the show. The audience have been primed with the need for support and that they will be asked from the first moment the hosts walked out onto stage. Keep asking – you need the money.

You have an audience who care about your art form and what you are doing. It is part of their identity. Celebrate it, celebrate them and give them the opportunity to celebrate their identity.

Remember – people want to give!

Thanks to Marina for sharing these tips with us!

If you’ve got a blog, tips or suggestions you want to share with arts and culture fundraisers please get in touch with David by emailing David.Burgess@ApolloFundraising.com

First published on Flight of the Fundraiser – 29th January 2019

First published on UK Fundraising on 10th January 2019. Updated 24th February 2026

How has your week been?

No, seriously. How would you answer that question?

And, more importantly, how quickly did it take you to come up with an answer?

30 minutes? An hour? I mean, going back over the last 7 days/168 hours/10,080 minutes of your life, analysing the good bits and bad bits and then weighing them up to come to a balanced conclusion must have taken you some time?

But, of course, you didn’t do that, did you? You came to an answer nearly immediately.

So, what has this unremarkable observation got to do with fundraising? And, in particular, how could it help us increase the impact of our Thank Yous?

When it comes to remembering and assessing our experiences it’s safe to say humans aren’t particularly rigorous in their evaluation methodology. Take this example, shared by Daniel Kahneman in “The Riddle of Experience versus Memory”:

In the podcast, Kahneman recalls a conversation with one of his students who had been listening to a recording of a piece of classical music. At the end of the recording there was “a dreadful screeching noise”. The student wasn’t happy, passionately telling Kahneman “it ruined the whole experience”.

Kahneman points out that this statement can’t be accurate. The screech wasn’t until the end of the recording. By the time the unpleasant noise occurred the student had already enjoyed an incredible performance. However, when it came to recalling his experience the quality of the performance counted for nothing. The student’s perception of the whole experience was solely defined by one negative moment.

While this might seem irrational, Kahneman attributes this to the fact that, when it comes to remembering and evaluating experiences, we have “Two Selves”.

The first is the Experiencing Self. This is the self that lives in the present. It perceives each of the detailed individual moments that make up the whole experience. The student’s Experiencing Self listened to every note of the recording and could, if encouraged, recall that detail.

The second is the Remembering Self. This is the self we use to summarise all of those individual moments, converting our detailed experience into a simple story. This enables us to make an immediate judgement when we are asked to reflect on past events (such as when someone pops up in our inbox asking how our week has been).

Entrusting this task to your Remembering Self is a lot quicker and easier for your brain than relying on your Experiencing Self to go back and assess every single moment before you can reach an answer. In Kahneman’s story it is the student’s Remembering Self that has created the damning review of the recording.

The Two Selves are not equal partners. As Kahneman says, when it comes to evaluating past experiences, the Remembering Self is the one that makes decisions.

And, thanks to a number of mental shortcuts, it does so at great speed.

One of the shortcuts our Remembering Self relies on is considering how we felt at two key points:

• The point in the experience when we had the strongest feeling (the peak). (This could be a positive, pleasurable feeling, or a negative, painful one.)
• The end of the experience

The Remembering Self considers the average of our feelings at these two moments. In the case of the student, the screech was both the end point and the peak – the student experienced a strong feeling of anger and disgust that outweighed any delight he had felt during the performance. This explains why this one negative moment was so instrumental in defining his memory of the experience.

I’m glad you asked. You see, I think this phenomenon helps to explain one of fundraising’s great mysteries – why so many donors complain about not being thanked when the vast majority of fundraisers say they religiously thank every donor for every gift.

When fundraisers create thanking processes and supporter/donor journeys they do so with the Experiencing Self in mind. So, they might come up with a process that includes:

• Sending an automated receipt following the donation
• Sending a follow-up letter, thanking the supporter for the donation
• Subscribing the supporter to a regular newsletter
• Segregating future mailings so they include a line acknowledging their previous support
• Sending a physical or digital copy of the annual report at the end of the year

There is nothing wrong with any of these approaches – they all have a role to play. However, this entire approach is based on the idea that each interaction has a cumulative effect and that the donor’s experience and satisfaction will increase with each new touchpoint. As we’ve seen, that would be true if the Experiencing Self was in charge.

But it’s not.

And, with no pleasure-boosting peak or end to engage the more influential Remembering Self, the experience becomes forgettable (or, worse, defined by some other pain point within the donation journey).

As we’ve seen above, if we want the Remembering Self to take note, we need to plan for the supporter’s experience to have a positive peak and an excellent end. The good news is that your Thank You has the potential to fulfil both of these roles.

As fundraisers, we don’t tend to think of donations as having endings. We talk about our relationships with supporters as being ongoing and long-term. However, the reality is that many supporters (especially first-time donors and impulse givers) will view the experience of making a donation as being a self-contained action. For your supporter’s Remembering Self at least, the Thank You marks the end point. So, if we can provide the supporter with a positive peak at this point it will have a disproportionate impact on how they remember their experience of making a gift.

So, what makes a positive peak?

When it comes to peaks we can think of the Remembering Self as being a bit like a car dashboard camera. When things are going normally, or as expected, the Remembering Self sits inactive in the background. It only starts to record when something significant or unexpected happens.

All of the touchpoints in the example above can be described as normal – they follow the script for what someone might expect when they make a donation. They probably expect to receive confirmation their donation has been completed. They probably expect to receive a basic thank you. They probably expect to receive further marketing from the charity. On the face of it there is nothing unexpected there for the supporter. So there is no need for the Remembering Self to get involved.

If we want our Thank Yous to be remembered we need to add something unexpected to the mix.

Something out of the ordinary.

Something worth remembering.

In their book The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath give some great tips for creating memorable moments, including these suggestions for creating positive peaks:

• Boost sensory appeal – create an element of theatre that maximises the impact on the senses and emotions.
• Raise the stakes – “up the ante” for supporters. For example, create a sense of pressure through competitions, games or public commitment
• Break the script – “defy [your supporter’s] expectation of how an experience will unfold”

When it comes to fundraising, peaks that strengthen the connection between the supporter and the beneficiaries, charity and/or fundraiser can be particularly effective. For example, the actors in a theatre company I worked with years ago had a tradition of wearing stripy socks during performances. They realised that sending stripy socks to donors was a powerful way of signalling that those supporters were part of the family. This simple act of initiation breaks the script and boosts the sensory appeal in a way that is relevant for that organisation.

One particularly memorable Thank You email from MAG (Mines Advisory Group) included three recipes that had been shared from MAG team members working around the world. As well as breaking the script, this simple act helped to create a bond between the supporter, the MAG team and the beneficiaries. It humanised people on each side of the relationship and gave an insight to their life. It also tapped into that powerful ritual that occurs when we share a meal together.

​Importantly, creating a positive peak doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of money. The simplest of touches can elevate a moment to become a memorable peak. More important than having a huge budget is having a fundraiser with the imagination and the drive to break the mould. Someone prepared to look beyond the status quo, to take responsibility for creating peaks for their supporters and to fight internally for the importance of defying supporters’ expectations.

So, what unforgettable peaks will you conjure up to elevate your donors’ experiences?

Seen some great experiences of unforgettable peaks? I’d love to hear about them! Get in touch to share some of your most memorable examples.

For “Part Two – The Curse of Embarrassment”, click here

For “Part Three – The Curse of Boring”, click here

For “Part One – The Curse of Knowledge”, click here

For “Part Three – The Curse of Boring”, click here

For “Part One – The Curse of Knowledge”, click here

For “Part Two – The Curse of Embarrassment”, click here