How the right message can change your fundraising overnight

It’s hard to convey just how vitally important a strong message is to making your marketing and fundraising successful. I can harp on it and harp on it, but maybe you still  aren’t convinced. Sure, you might think the idea sounds nice: Find the right message, and you’ll connect with supporters on a whole new level.

But it’s all just words and theory. It’s fuzzy, abstract, and hard to conceptualize. If you haven’t experienced the magic for yourself, you’re probably still skimping on the work that should be going into perfecting your message. You’re very likely to shrug and decide that okay is good enough, ready to move on to more direct actions and concrete steps towards progress.

The other day, though, I thought of an example that I hope can make this idea feel more real to you. With this example, I hope to encourage you to invest a regular effort in continually strengthening and optimizing your message.

Change can happen overnight

In 2016, a nonprofit called The Minnesota Freedom Fund was founded by a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. This organization was a bail fund, formed with the goal of paying off criminal bail and immigration bonds for those who couldn’t afford to do so on their own. The founding philosophy was that cash bail was an unjust system and that “wealth should never determine who is kept in jail.”

At the time, paying off other people’s bail wasn’t exactly the most attractive cause on the market. There were a lot of reasons for this: It’s a very technical, practical way to help the needy and can sound dry when you try to talk about it. It also isn’t the prettiest cause out there. Helping those accused of crimes is more controversial and perhaps tugs less at the heartstrings than delivering food to hungry children or finding homes for cute animals.

I don’t know the details of their fundraising, but I think it’s safe to say that the Minnesota Freedom Fund likely faced some serious communications challenges in trying to attract support to their cause.

By the start of 2020, their funding for an entire year was under $200,000, mostly from donations. They had to be extremely strategic about how to spend those resources effectively. How many people could they help? How should they choose who got priority? What kind of limits should they set on the size of the bail they could afford to pay off?

Then, overnight, everything changed.

In May of that year, the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis saw a huge reaction from the public. Protests against police brutality took place day after day, with many of the protestors swept up by the police each time.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund didn’t advertise or try to use these circumstances to raise money. But someone put their name out there, and suddenly, a lot more people started to find the idea of a bail fund meaningful and valuable.

A lot more people. Within a day, the fund had received about a million dollars in donations. Within four days, that had turned into $20 million. After two weeks, things had slowed down some, which meant that now they were up to $30 million.

They had to immediately scale up how they thought about spending, while still trying to make the most of these donations by utilizing them in a thoughtful way. With more money on hand than they could possibly spend in one city, they eventually contributed to other bail funds and started new initiatives.

It was a huge challenge for a small organization to adjust to their newfound ability to attract donations. But I’m sure that’s a problem a lot of nonprofits would like to have.

What’s the point?

The Minnesota Freedom Fund was the same organization the day before and the day after all that money started coming in. They didn’t change.

What changed was the public perception of their work.

When a message is on target, magic happens. Support comes in, more than you’ll even know what to do with.

Not every message is going to hit as hard as this one did. But it’s still a powerful lesson in what a difference perception can make. With all the potential upside, how is it not worth the effort to keep trying, keep tweaking your message, until you get it right?

If you’re willing to get started, you can check out my article on how to create a message that hits home.

Looking for more direct help? Check out my strategy and messaging service.