Missions to Movements
Digital marketing and social media trends seem to change every day. It can be hard to know where to spend your time, energy, and money to make an impact. Each Wednesday, join Dana Snyder, speaker, digital strategist for nonprofits, and CEO and Founder of Positive Equation, as she interviews guests sharing real-world marketing case studies from organizations making a positive impact in the world and short-form episodes with actionable social media tips to implement right away. Whether you’re looking to enhance your social media strategies, grow your recurring giving efforts, or just hear some great advice to feel inspired, this is the podcast for you. Let’s turn your mission into a movement! www.positiveequation.com Instagram: @positivequation
Missions to Movements
The Secret to Successful Fundraising Appeals: How Language Can Make or Break Your Campaign with Dr. Emilie Socash
Why do some fundraising appeals succeed while others fall flat?
It all comes down to the power of language.
Dr. Emilie Socash, the visionary founder and CEO of the Nonprofit Help Center, is here to share groundbreaking findings from her research, including why donors are MORE generous when messaging emphasizes preventing negative outcomes.
We break down the psychological contrasts between promotion-focused and prevention-focused approaches, drawing from an eye-opening experiment involving 225 high-income adults.
Prevention-focused individuals are 53% more likely to increase their donations when they receive messages tailored to their motivational orientation!
Later, we go through Emilie’s incredibly actionable “Mad Libs” exercise to A/B test, analyze, and refine your appeals.
This episode is FILLED with impactful advice. Get ready to furiously take notes and have your pen and paper ready.
Resources & Links
Connect with Emilie on LinkedIn and learn more about the Nonprofit Help Center on their website, where they host hundreds of micro-learning courses.
Check out the free resource Emilie talked about in today’s episode: How To Say It And Speak Their Language (with promotion and prevention language examples!)
Join The Sustainers, my Slack community for nonprofit professionals growing and scaling a recurring giving program.
Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you.
Givebutter is the easiest all-in-one nonprofit fundraising software that helps you raise more. Have you heard about Givebutter Plus? Get advanced workflows and deeper donor insights. Start a free 30-day trial at givebutter.com/plus.
How can you leverage Giving Tuesday to turn donors into recurring ambassadors? But how do you make that ask? Don’t miss my on-demand webinar replay with DonorBox.
Take advantage of DonorPerfect’s FREE End of Year Playbook to create the best multi-channel engagements.
Bloomerang is the complete donor volunteer and fundraising management solution. Deliver a better giving experience so you can raise more funds.
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Regulatory focus is this theory that all of us pursue our goals in a way that is either in pursuit of pleasure or in avoidance of pain. We did a standard A-B letter test. Half the people got a letter that had very promotion-focused language and the other half got a very prevention-focused language letter. So first I thought that those people who were naturally promotion-oriented would give more money than those who were prevention-oriented. On two and a half of my hypotheses I was wrong. When a prevention-focused person got a prevention-focused letter, their increase to their gift was about 53% larger than that of promotion-focused people getting a promotion-focused letter. What this tells us why this is so fascinating is that our prevention-focused language typically gets a higher gift, typically gets a higher gift.
Speaker 2:This show highlights the digital strategies of organizations making a positive impact in the world. Ready to learn the latest trends, actionable tips and the real stories from behind the feed, let's transform your mission into a movement. Do you know how important words are? Words? It's huge in the work that we do, right?
Speaker 2:Listener, today I am with Dr Emily Sokash. She is the founder and CEO of the Nonprofit Help Center and we're going to be talking all about words, because she has a doctorate in words is basically how I'm going to explain it. Emily's going to go into way more eloquent detail than that, but this is going to be a really dynamic conversation, because words are something that we embody literally every single day, personally, professionally, and how does it affect how people see us, how they engage with us and how we want to be seen and interpreted really? So, emily, I am so excited for you to be here with our audience today and I always like to ask kind of a fun background question as we dive in and what is like the non-Google-able background of how you got to where you are today, of running your own business?
Speaker 1:I love that you put in the questions like this kind of made up verby word of Google-able, because like that already is like speaking to me. So I think it's a really insightful question. We have like our whole like LinkedIn profile and all the ways that we show up online. But for me, how I got to starting my own business and then running it for the last six years or so, it kind of was this stair-step experience that I had where, if you look at my LinkedIn profile and then think of Emily in that year, I was like I am at the apex of my professional experience. I was like I'm a development director, so I've arrived. And then I was a foundation director. I've really arrived and I've done so many cool things within the nonprofit sector, for which I am super grateful for.
Speaker 1:But in my last position as the executive director of this community-based organization that was supporting other community organizations, I had this light bulb go off. I was like organizations. I had this light bulb go off that I was like I really like working with a variety of leaders, a variety of organizations and just kind of spreading the way that I support around to the people and this simple mind shift from working within one cause one non-profit to many causes, many non-profits. That's how the Nonprofit Help Center was born and in the first couple years of operation I really brought that focus into more focus to really put that emphasis on creating tools and trainings that support everyone in the nonprofit sector, with the goal of helping them build up their leadership and also stay in the sector.
Speaker 1:And we do that in a lot of ways through my company, which I'll share later in our time together today. But really there was this one moment when I was an executive director that I call upon frequently. It was budget time. So I'm sure that a lot of your audience can relate, a lot of your audience can relate, and I was looking at this very limited number on my training and development, professional development line and I felt like it was like the hunger games where it was like who would be chosen, who would not be chosen, who can represent who's going to bring back?
Speaker 1:And for me, that aggravation became a motivation where my winding journey was all about making it possible that everybody within a nonprofit has equitable access to quality professional development. And so that's really the stuff that you don't see and the why on all of my Googleable stuff, you know, and outside of my professional journey, part of what has really kind of been, I guess, my modus operandi is that you know I have two young adults at home that I parent, who of course I want them to find their why I do these epic travel adventures with my husband and you know I've got a couple of dogs and a tortoise kicking around in my St Pete Florida home.
Speaker 1:And of course, as you can see here, I'm a big word nerd, and so I know we're going to spend a lot of time.
Speaker 2:You guys have a wall full of books, everyone, a beautiful wall of books beside her with the like picturesque ladder that you see in movies, that you can. I could picture you just like standing up and going, ah, like a cross.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, that does happen in this home.
Speaker 2:Yes, it does, I love it. I love it. I actually have a totally off the cuff question here. Speaking of that, you have young adults at home in the work that you do, in working with fundraisers and development teams and Edie's and anybody who has taken any of your courses services, products. How do you see the next generation of fundraisers coming about? Because I've recently been talking to a couple of friends of mine in the space and they just feel like the younger generation is not interested in how we're currently? I don't know if selling the job description is the right word, but, like portraying the work that's done, how do you see it changing in the next, like 10, 15 years?
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. So I think we're looking 10 to 15 months out, honestly, with the changing dynamic. So, while I can't offer an academic or researched answer to that question, I can tell you just anecdotally, like what I see. I see my daughters connect deeply and differently with the people and the things that they care about. You know, while I, as a late 40 something woman, might connect in a certain way with my friends, my family, the things that I care about in the community, I might connect in one way, they connect in a very different way. That is not wrong, it's refreshing and it's different.
Speaker 2:And so what does that look like? What do you think are those differences?
Speaker 1:different, and so what does that look like? Like what do you think are those differences? There's a sense of constant contact with the things that they care about, so if they're interested in. We had a very robust discussion about the fall election recently and each of them had their own way of really discovering what the landscape looks like, what each of the candidates that are up for office look like. For both of them, this is their first presidential election that they get to vote in.
Speaker 1:Oh, exciting, which is very exciting, and, being a part of our civic process, I'm very proud to see how they've taken that so personally. But looking at how they have consumed content about candidates, how they have connected with other young people who are eager to get active in the process, so a lot of it looks like in the moment social media, and I think that we have a lot of opportunities as nonprofits to tell our story in that way, and I think that it's really a bit of identity when it comes to, hey, I see myself in this organization, this cause, this thing, and so there's a lot of opportunity, I think, for us over the next few years within the nonprofit sector to really do some of that reflective storytelling to help our young people identify how their identity fits within the cause that we are working so hard for.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love everything that you're saying. This is like so perfectly aligned with. So I teach a five-step framework in my monthly giving mastermind program. I'm building successful monthly giving programs and step three is all about calling the believers and that's all about the identity how we see ourselves in the impact work that's happening with the organization, why we feel called to give and to participate or volunteer or share with somebody, about why we're in this movement.
Speaker 2:And what you do have a doctorate around is around words and one of the key components of calling the believers actually a very large chunk of it is around copywriting and the importance of the words that we use, not just once they've become a donor in emails, a donor in emails, not just beforehand in emails, but also on the website landing page that is calling somebody in in that moment and telling that story. I mean, there are obviously words in everything that we do and your work was specifically focused on the language we use in donor appeals and how to motivate or does it not motivate somebody to give? Just based on the philosophical frame, Can you break down what your studies and research focused on and what you found?
Speaker 1:I could go like for hours with workshop time on how all of my research worked and really get into the nitty gritty, but we're going to keep it really short today. We're going to keep it pretty high level and really bite-sizeable. If I can create a verb on the heels of Googleable, I think bite-sizeable would be the one I would choose. So in my research, I wanted to really find a way to bridge together my love for language, to bridge together my love for language, my fascination with how donors make decisions and this psychological concept called regulatory focus, and so this regulatory focus. I won't go too deep on it, but I think it's a pretty relatable psychological concept. So, in a nutshell, regulatory focus is this theory that all of us pursue our goals in a way that is either in pursuit of pleasure or in avoidance of pain. Right, you've heard of this we all as thinking creatures it's not just humans, but as thinking creatures on this planet. We want to pursue pleasure and we want to avoid pain. Planet, we want to pursue pleasure and we want to avoid pain. And so a simple example might be let's say that you and I both have this goal of getting healthy by the end of the year, and I might pursue this goal by walking more, eating a little bit healthier, maybe meditating at least five minutes a day, and I'm going to take this approach with this lens of this is in service to a long life of mobility, good cognitive health, just feeling good and like low stress. And this approach we can call this promotion, because it aligns with the promotion of pleasure, and this mental frame is all about possibility, opportunity, like what is the good future that I am moving towards. So that's called promotion. On the other end of this spectrum we have prevention. So you might pursue this same goal getting healthy by the end of the year by walking no less than 10,000 steps a day. Or you're going to cut out carbs, or you're going to avoid stressful scenarios and situations, and your lens might be I'm doing all of this to prevent disease later in my life. I want to keep my weight within a healthy range and ideally I don't want to die young. So all of this, you're still pursuing the same goal, but your lens is more prevention focused. You're trying to prevent future pain.
Speaker 1:So I find that very fascinating and sometimes at this point, somebody who one of my listeners or one of my you know workshop attendees might say but aren't these really the same thing? And yes, but no. And the reason why no is because we are wired to approach our goals in different ways and promotion and prevention each fire up different parts of our brain, yeah, and this causes us to take different actions and to make different decisions. So in my doctoral research I got really curious. If we could know where someone falls on that prevention promotion spectrum, how could we then discover how the language that we use with them would affect their giving decisions? Super interesting, right? And so what I did was I designed this experiment with about 225 people.
Speaker 1:We did just that. So the first step of the experiment they did this 10 question survey that determined how promotion or prevention oriented they were. Step two they were given this scenario. They said hey, you last year gave a gift of $750 to this hunger-focused, hunger prevention-focused organization and you've now received a letter asking for continued support. So steps one and two same for everybody. And then at this point we bifurcated. We did a standard A-B letter test. Half the people got a letter that had very promotion-focused language and the other half got a very prevention-focused language letter.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you with me so far? Yep, totally with you. Can you give examples of, maybe, what some of those different languages were in each of those emails? I certainly can.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to share with you just the opening paragraph for the promotion letter and then I'll read to you the prevention letter. So it's two sentences. This is the promotion letter that was received from the and these are both fictitious, so apologies if these names already exist out there. From the Hunger Free Foundation. Dear friend, first and foremost, thank you so much for your last contribution of $750 to the Hunger Free Foundation. We all want to ensure that everyone has enough to eat and, with your support, we have been able to quickly ramp up our efforts to reach more families who are experiencing food insecurity. Okay, that's the first paragraph for our promotion letter.
Speaker 1:Now, when we do prevention, the organization is titled End Hunger. Now, Remember, prevention is all about preventing future pain. So we want to end hunger. Dear friend, first and foremost, thank you so much for your last contribution of $750 to End Hunger. Now, we all want to end hunger for good and, with your support, we have been able to work diligently to discover and serve all families who are experiencing food insecurity. It varies slight and subtle differences. Now I would ask which one speaks to you more.
Speaker 2:The first one.
Speaker 1:The first one right Now, which one do you think would speak to the vast majority of donors?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's good. I don't know. I'm very curious.
Speaker 1:You have me like on the edge of my seat Right right, so let me break down for you how it all kind of came to pass. So this took a couple months where I collected all of the folks who were participating and it's probably worth mentioning that these were all American adults who responded to this survey. It was an online experiment responded to this survey. It was an online experiment. All of them had a household income of at least $100,000. And that was just to kind of level out the demographics of who I was actually accessing. I didn't want to get 18 year olds who were college students.
Speaker 1:I wanted, you know, folks who were out working in the world. So my hypothesis I had three hypotheses with this in the world. So my hypothesis I had three hypotheses with this. So first, I thought that those people who were naturally promotion-oriented would give more money than those who were prevention-oriented. And this was based on some other research in the field that links up generous behaviors with promotion orientation. So I was kind of leaning into some other research. The second hypothesis was that promotion focused letters, like the one that you picked out, as that one spoke to me that those letters would also get higher gifts, higher repeat gifts. And then my third hypothesis was that when somebody who has fit gets a letter, so that means that their regulatory focus is promotion and they get a promotion language letter that they would give the most money. Or that prevention person with prevention language letter that they would give the most money, more so than any of the others. So here's where the experiment gets really interesting, because on two and a half of my hypotheses I was wrong and this, I think, is where we can really get actionable.
Speaker 1:So promotion focused people on average gave a gift that was about 8% smaller than those who are prevention focused. So that hypothesis was not supportive. So that means that somebody who is like me I'm all about getting healthy by envisioning this bright, wonderful future of cognitive health fitness my general orientation would indicate that I would give an increase that was 8% smaller. Then, on the letter side of things, the language that was promotion focused raised about 1% less than the prevention focus letter. So that's kind of an insignificant amount, but it does tell us that on the whole that that doesn't particularly the language doesn't particularly matter for everyone as a general homogenous group. But here's where the most interesting part is. So when a prevention-focused person got a prevention-focused letter, their increase to their gift was about 53% larger than that of promotion-focused people. Getting a promotion-focused letter, Wow, Promotion focused people getting a promotion focused letter Wow, wow, right, so like even for non-psychologists in the group.
Speaker 2:what this tells us, why this is so fascinating, is that our prevention focused language typically gets a higher gift and you know it's interesting that I'm thinking about it and I'm just trying to look like I think in my head through websites that I have given towards. It is a little bit of that Like you have the ability to do something to stop this right Versus the more there is like a little bit of like the positive hope spin, but it definitely has a more like we need you in order to like make this happen, right.
Speaker 1:We need to feed those hungry kids, and so I'll share with you the second paragraph of my two sample letters. And I'm going to start with prevention, because I think that this was where we start to see oh wait, we can see why the vast majority of people would have a very positive response to this. So on the prevention letter I wrote as community members, we share an obligation to eliminate the worry that homebound seniors have when faced with an empty pantry, that school-aged children feel when a weekend without meals approaches, and that families of all walks share when dinner table time is a reminder of their empty bellies. Ugh, like, take my money.
Speaker 2:How can you not want Visually see all that.
Speaker 1:You can see all of that Now. Let's compare contrast. We'll do the yin to the yang of that On the promotion side. So this is where we're visualizing this wonderful future that you, as a donor, can make possible. Second paragraph of that letter said in our ideal vision, a vision we know you share, we see a world in which homebound seniors have doorstep delivery of the week's food, a world in which school-aged children see weekend time as a time of comfort rather than empty bellies, and a world in which families of all walks see the dinner table as a place of abundance, not scarcity. So it's well-written and I like it.
Speaker 1:And you like it right, that's okay, it still got a strong response. Still did. But if we are able to know our audience or alternatively, in future research, what we could do is we could look at envelope primes in order to prime a little bit of prevention thinking. Then we can really go into that prevention side.
Speaker 2:So question on how can we know which way is going to move them, other than, of course, you can do your own A-B testing with like email platforms and technically you can A-B test websites and have a certain amount of traffic go to different pages, because for here, you did a survey to understand which one were they going to be the prevention or the promotion side. Do you have any other suggestions in how organizations can figure out which language direction is going to make sense for it, because I'm assuming it's not a one size fits all either.
Speaker 1:It's definitely not, and one of my big takeaways is something we just talked about, which is you're never wrong with leaning a little bit more towards the prevention, and in a moment I'll share my screen with a chart comparing and I'll share these out with you, dana, so that you also can have that ripple out to your listeners. Awesome. But really leaning towards prevention-focused language is never a bad thing, and we'll talk about what that means in just a moment. But some other things that our organizations can be mindful of really relate to having a sense of our environmental context, knowing where our organization and our cause sit in the community and sit in the world at any given time, because, fun fact, regulatory focus can be situational. And so what that means? Well, it sounds a little bit academic.
Speaker 1:Think about a parent at the park with their small child. A parent who normally is all about explore, abundance, future possibility, lots of positive vibes, right. But that kid starts running towards a walkway where maybe another child is riding their bike, right. Parent immediately goes into prevention focus. Stop, don't go any farther, watch out for that. We're going entirely into the prevention of pain, right. So those sorts of incidents are happening in our communities that we can be mindful of as well, of incidents are happening in our communities that we can be mindful of as well. Things like related to our local advocacy and policy efforts, things related to research that's happening in our particular cause, things related to human interest, stories that came up on the news, that tell the story of one that we can ride the coattails of.
Speaker 1:Yep, I was just thinking of cultural moments, yeah exactly those are opportunities for our organization to shape the language that we're using, particularly in our fundraising appeals, to talk and layer on how we want to prevent a future bad occurrence or the future thing we're trying to solve.
Speaker 2:So good. I love all of this. Listener, if you're just like writing down so many notes and diving in, I promise like the transcript of this will be available for you to go back to, but this is one. Share this with your team, cause I think this is a before you. I'm trying to think about how can somebody like tactically make sure they're doing like this self-check before emails, before campaigns, just having this lens like what do you normally recommend with clients like that are physically going through this process?
Speaker 1:So something that I find fun and this may or may not speak to others, but something I find fun is doing a little bit of like a Mad Libs inventory of an appeal that you've written, or maybe you have two versions of it and you want to do some analysis. Let me see if I can share.
Speaker 2:I am a huge fan of Mad Libs. I love that you just said that. What a fun exercise.
Speaker 1:Why not make it fun, right? So let's see, are you?
Speaker 2:seeing my chart right now I am. Will you talk through what you're sharing right now?
Speaker 1:Definitely so. This is a two column table where, on the left hand side, we're looking at a list of words that are related to promotion orientation. On our right hand side, we have a list of words that are related to prevention orientation. And so, going back to that, mad libs, take the letter, take the appeal or take a recent appeal that you did maybe the last two if you want to get into some really great analysis, take two colors of highlighters and look for these words or related language. Okay, so we have a blue highlighter and a pink highlighter. Go through and you're going to give yourself a really easy visual snapshot of wow, this letter was 75% more prevention and the response was great or not great. And if you track, a couple of your campaigns.
Speaker 1:You can do it with emails, you can do it with mail letters, you can do it with your social media campaigns.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, your website. With your website and look at how balanced it is so I love this, Just to give some color to what we're looking at visually. So on the left-hand side, under some promotion language, just to give some words examples, there's advance possibility, arrival, advocacy, lift, raise, support. On the other side, with avoidance, we have delay, avoid, withdraw, flee, hide, limit, stop.
Speaker 1:You can definitely feel the difference of the two columns and the categories you can definitely feel the difference of the two columns and the categories Exactly, and so I'll be sure to share with you that list in a more digestible format, because what we were looking at was actually my doctoral paper, which is not light reading it really is not. But that chart, I do have it in another format for you.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Oh my gosh, this is fascinating. I love that exercise and I'm a very visual learner, and so if you see a page full of blue or a page full of pink with those highlighter notes, you know the direction that you're going.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly, and then we can really fine tune to do A-B testing to really say, oh wow, this letter was more blues versus pink or more pinks whatever the colors that you can look within your desk drawer and see how it does. Now, if you are a one-person shop, this might sound overwhelming. This could sound like a little bit too much analysis. So I would encourage our small shops to just take one step. On the next message that you are sending out, I suggest either a mailed communication or an email communication, because that is a one-to-one relationship with your donor versus social media. Of other factors that come into play in terms of the algorithm, if your message is being shown, other people's impressions can really affect how your donor relates to the information. But take an email or take a mailed appeal just one and just jot down what was the response, what were my surprises.
Speaker 2:Were my predictions correct? And then take a look at how much did it lean into prevention or promotion? Love that. And actually coming up on Giving Tuesday, that could be a really interesting time to, if you're going to do direct mail or online, to have two different letters that go out and see if one makes a difference and if you see, have a different QR code or link for each of those and see if one performs better than the other. This is beautiful. I am the listeners are too so grateful for that. Research takes a lot of time. Going through a doctorate takes a lot of time and energy and effort. So grateful that you have all the work that you've done on the brand side, of course, and the individual foundation nonprofit work and then now sharing your gifts and research with everyone at large is incredible and we are so grateful and thankful. So really appreciate you coming on the show. How can people find you? How can they work with you?
Speaker 1:So, the best place to reach me is through my website, nonprofithelpcentercom, and also check us out on LinkedIn. My team and I are pretty active on Nonprofit Help Center and we have an amazing array of resources out there available for nonprofit professionals, regardless of your role. So development program, executive leadership, all the things through a learning platform called the Merit Nonprofit Professional Development Platform, and you will find hundreds of micro learning courses. So if you liked what we were talking about today and if you're all about kind of changing up how you do what you do, then do check out Merit and all of the classes that we offer, because there's a lot of good stuff in there Amazing, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, I want to ask you from listeners is there anything that we can help you with that you would like to ask for help or support on?
Speaker 1:I would always love to hear from our friends in the nonprofit sector what do you want to learn next when you look three to six months down the road? What is it that you keep coming back to on? I wish that I knew this, or I wish I knew how to do this, or I wish that I could get a little bit better about this thing? Yeah, I would love to hear all of those and all of those little bits and bytes of feedback always play into the new learning and development training programs that we offer, and I'm sure it's the same with you. We love hearing from all the folks who are out there in the sector doing the work. How can we help you, help our communities?
Speaker 2:Beautiful, awesome. If they want to share that feedback, linkedin the best place. Send me a message Always. Okay, beautiful, you heard it. Head on over to LinkedIn, emily. Thank you again so much for all of the work that you do, grateful for your time. Thank you so much for having me. Can you tell I love talking all things digital? Thank you so much for having me. Can you tell I love talking all things digital. To make this show better, I'd be so grateful for your feedback. Leave a review, take a screenshot of this episode, share it on Instagram stories and tag positive equation with one E so I can reshare and connect with you.
