Online Fundraising Secrets

Learn the latest tactics for attracting website visitors and raising money online with compelling webpages, irresistible email appeals and engaging email newsletters in this eight-part course taught by telephone.

• Date: Eight Thursdays in a row:
     February 7, 14, 21, 28
     March 6, 13, 20, 27
     Can't make every session? No problem. Each session is
     recorded for your convenience so you can listen to it by phone,
     anytime, day or night, from anywhere, free, for up to six days
     following each session. You won't miss a thing.
• Time: 2 pm Eastern Time
• Length: Each session is 90 minutes and includes time for questions
• Location: Anywhere you are that has a phone
• Presenter: Alan Sharpe, direct response fundraising copywriter, consultant and coach
• Early Bird price for one participant: $238 before end of day January 31, 2008—a $50 saving
• Regular price for one participant: $288 after January 31, 2008
• Note: The dial-in number for this course is not a toll-free number. It is standard phone number in Iowa. You will pay the same long-distance charges levied by your phone company or long distance carrier as you would if you phoned your Aunt Edna in Iowa at 2pm Eastern Time and talked for 90 minutes. This extra cost has been factored into the price charged for this course.
• Register: Click here.

Learn how to raise money online regardless of the size of your organization or the age of your donors.

To succeed online you need two things: a great website and a great email fundraising program. This eight-part course teaches you about both.

PART 1: Website Fundraising (four sessions)

Online fundraising is more important than ever before. Increasing numbers of charities in your sector are using their websites and email to raise funds. And increasing numbers of donors are making the Internet their primary and preferred way to make donations. You must capitalize on this unique opportunity or get left behind.

You can raise money online regardless of the size of your organization or the age of your donors. A well-planned, well-written and well-designed website reaches your donors and potential donors in every country 24 hours a day. But they will only give if you follow the latest tested tactics for soliciting donations online.

Part One deals with websites: why donors visit them, what they expect to find, what makes them return, why they donate online, and how you can attract them and their ongoing gifts and loyalty over time. You'll learn the practical steps you need to take right now to raise funds and raise friends with your website.

You’ll discover:

• why your fundraising website needs to offer a great deal more than a simple Donate Now button
• how to write and design your website so that it attracts new donors, members, volunteers and advocates
• steps you can take today to improve your position on Google and other search engines
• how to write and design special donation pages that inspire your donors to give
• how to craft stories that persuade visitors to remain on your site
• how to write articles and stories that motivate visitors to return often—and bring their friends with them
• how to measure your success—and improve your results

PART 2: Email Fundraising (four sessions)

Email is one of the most important tools at your disposal as a professional fundraiser. It's fast, cheap and easy to use. You can be sure that just about every single one of your donors has an email address and uses it regularly. Email is an informal but effective way to stay in touch with them.

But using email effectively is tough. You face spam filters for one thing. If you don't know what you're doing, a great deal of your email messages will never reach your donors. Then you face the challenge of low open rates. Some donors, unless you are careful, will receive your emails but not open them.

During Part Two, you'll learn the practical steps you need to take to raise funds and raise friends by being a welcome arrival in your donors' email inboxes.

You’ll discover:

• why email is more important than your website
• how to collect email addresses so that you have a growing group of people who want to receive your email newsletters and appeals
• steps you simply must take to avoid being blacklisted by Internet Service Providers as a spammer
• how to write and design email appeals that stir your donors to give
• how to craft donor newsletters that inspire donor involvement and advocacy
• how to measure your success—and improve your results

Course materials

Each of the eight sessions includes a comprehensive handout that you download and print. You'll see screenshots of many websites (good and bad), see sample email appeals and newsletters (good and bad), and get dozens of tips and step-by-step, practical guidelines for using the vital skills you've just learned. Each handout is at least 25 pages of detail. So you will have over 200 pages of notes at the conclusion of the course.

A special message from your trainer . . .

Dear fundraising professional,

If your organization is typical, you don't think about your website enough. And neither do your donors. But you should.

Online giving increased by 50% in 2005. More than 40% of donors always visit the organization's website before making their donation. And two-thirds of those aged 50-64 use the Internet.

What these numbers means is that donors want to give online. And they'll give to your organization if your website inspires, informs and involves them.

Attend this eight-part course taught by telephone and you'll discover the tactics that leading not-for-profit organizations are using in Canada, the United States and elsewhere to attract new donors and renew existing ones using website fundraising.

You cannot afford to be complacent.

I recently visited the websites of 20 leading charities and made an online donation. Eight weeks later, I had received email correspondence from only 10 of them. Which means 50% of the organizations I supported have so far done absolutely nothing to cultivate me as a donor or inspire me to give again. My email inbox is empty for one in every two of the charities I gave a gift to.

Of those I did hear from by email, at least a few made blunders that would scare away less determined donors. Attend this course and you'll discover the mistakes you should avoid. And the best practices to employ immediately to improve your success rates with email fundraising.

You'll learn from some of the best practitioners in the field, including Amnesty International, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and World Wildlife Fund.

Yours sincerely,

Alan Sharpe
Direct mail fundraising copywriter, consultant and coach

Course Outline

PART 1: Website Fundraising

Sessions 1 to 4: February 7, 14, 21, 28

How to move your website beyond the Donate Now button

• why you need a donor-centred website right now
• how to integrate email fundraising into your website strategy
• how to capitalize on your website's most attractive features (global reach, 24-hour availability, interactivity)
• how to create a website that strengthens the friendships you have with your donors
• how to increase donor loyalty and retention with your website

Website content and design

• what visitors look for on a not-for-profit website, and how you can use this knowledge to win their hearts and minds (and purses)
• how to make your web pages "sticky" with content that donors want to read
• dozens of ways to deliver relevant content that brings donors back again and again
• costly mistakes to avoid when designing your web pages
• lessons in web design and content from leading charities

How to attract potential donors

• how to write your web pages so that search engines rank them higher in search results—making you easier to find
• how and where to promote your website offline so that you increase your number of daily visitors
• how to turn your visitors into donors and your donors into visitors
• how to motivate visitors to recommend your website to their friends, family and colleagues

When and how to ask for donations online

• how to link your ask with the content of each page
• how to integrate giving opportunities naturally into the text of each story so that readers are more likely to donate
• how to use involvement and advocacy opportunities as a way to encourage visitors to increase their commitment
• how to ask visitors for donations many times throughout your site without seeming pushy

Donation pages, thank-you pages and follow-up emails

• how to write and design an effective donation page
• what to say, and why, on your donation thank-you page
• how and why you must integrate your online giving page with
  email follow-up letters
• how to create special campaign web pages that encourage donations

How to measure your success (and boost your results)

• why you need to watch your monthly numbers, and what they tell you about what you're doing right
• how to discover which of your web pages are the most popular, and what you can do about it to raise more funds
• how to look beyond your numbers for daily unique visitors to a more valuable statistic
• how to learn where your visitors are coming from
• how to measure your success at turning visitors into donors

PART 2: Email Fundraising

Sessions 5 to 8: March 6, 13, 20, 27

Why you need an email fundraising program—today

• how to increase your reach exponentially with email
• how to integrate email fundraising into your fundraising strategy
• how to capitalize on email's most attractive features (cheap, fast, easy, one-on-one)
• how to use email letters and newsletters to strengthen the friendships you have with your donors

How to build your email list

• how to use each email as a way to attract new subscribers
• dozens of ways to get email addresses from your existing donors
• costly mistakes to avoid when renting or trading email lists
• how to collect email addresses using your website

Email appeals letters

• how to write and design emails that inspire donors to donate
• where in your email to ask for funds, and how often, to boost your chances of securing a gift
• how to turn your donors into advocates and your advocates into donors
• mistakes to avoid in the from and subject fields so that your emails arrive and get read

Donor e-newsletters and alerts

• design secrets that improve email newsletter readability
• how to use email alerts to mobilize your members and raise funds at the same time
• how to persuade your subscribers to get involved (since involved donors are more likely to donate)
• how to ask for donations in email newsletters without seeming pushy

Integrating your emails with your website

• how to integrate your email appeals with special campaign web pages so that your donors welcome your email messages
• why you shouldn't direct readers to your homepage 99 times in 100
• what visitors look for on a not-for-profit website, and how you can use this knowledge to win their hearts and minds
• how to write email thank-you letters for gifts made online

How to measure your success (and boost your results)

• why you need to watch your monthly new subscriber rate, and what it tells you about what you're doing right
• how to measure and improve your email deliverability rates
• how to improve your open rates (the percentage of subscribers who read your emails)
• what your clickthrough rates tell you about your donors and the effectiveness of your messages
• why and how to use classic direct mail fundraising math to calculate your campaign response rates, average gift and cost to raise a dollar

What others are saying about your instructor

• "Alan was awesome. Very engaging and clearly knowledgeable about the subject (and made me excited to get started) thank you."
• "Appreciated the concrete examples."
• "Great presentation. Liked the way I need to think about my letters. Engaging, kept my attention through the whole session."
• "This was a great session. Interesting and interactive. Please thank Alan for doing a great job!"

Comments from participants at Alan's 2004 direct mail fundraising workshop in Winnipeg, on direct mail fundraising letter writing, quoted verbatim from their Workshop Feedback Forms:

• "Most helpful seminar of the session" (anonymous).
• "Great tips for creative and effective communication" (anonymous).
• "Thanks for the great tips. Very applicable, practical" (Jessica B.).
• "Just what I needed" (Brian T.).
• "Terrific! Very beneficial" (anonymous).
• "Very practical and useful. Thanks" (anonymous).
• "Well done. Most informative" (anonymous).
• "Very helpful" (Len S.).
• "Very good! Well worth repeating! Very practical and user-friendly" (Graham G.).

Comments from participants at Alan's 2005 direct mail fundraising workshop in Mississauga, quoted verbatim from their Workshop Feedback Forms:

• "Excellent! A lot of food for thought + application. Very energizing!" (Diane P.).
• "The workshop was great. The room was inadequate to accommodate the audience. Choose a better room for this speaker." (anonymous).
• "Very useful information." (anonymous).
• "Very much enjoyed the high energy, interactive, informative session." (Keren K.).
• "Excellent session. Very useful." (anonymous).
• "Excellent practical tips! I was jotting down opening sentences all session long." Avril H.).

Another reason to attend Online Fundraising Secrets . . .

Your trainer, Alan Sharpe

Alan Sharpe helps non-profit organizations worldwide to raise funds, build relationships and retain loyal donors using cost-effective, compelling, creative fundraising letters.

• Do a search on Google for "email fundraising" and you'll find two million matches. Alan Sharpe is on page one of your search results—enough said
• He writes direct mail fundraising packages for the world's top non-profits, including Doctors Without Borders, Habitat for Humanity and Greenpeace.
• Non-profit organizations retain Alan's services to audit their direct mail fundraising programs and recommend improvements.
• Non-profit organizations retain Alan's services to review their fundraising letters and thank-you letters and suggest improvements.
• Alan publishes the only weekly newsletter on direct mail fundraising, Direct Mail Fundraising Today.
• Alan's advice is followed by over 6,000 fundraisers from dozens of countries on every continent except Antarctica.
• Alan has taught direct mail copywriting at the university level.
• Alan has written a 250-page book on how to write breakthrough fundraising letters.
• Alan has written over 121 articles about raising money with the mail.
• Alan has written 25 handbooks on direct response fundraising.
• Associations (the Association of Fundraising Professionals, for example) and industry suppliers (Blackbaud, makers of The Raiser's Edge, for example), invite Alan to speak at their conventions and deliver workshops.

Details

Cancellations
You may cancel at any time for any reason up to the day of the first session and receive a refund minus a $25 service fee. We have to pay someone else a fee to register you and to process your credit card payment. The $25 service fee that we levy covers these expenses that we must incur on your behalf.

Missed sessions
If you are unable to attend one of the sessions, you can still hear it. Each session is recorded for your convenience so you can listen to it by phone, anytime, day or night, from anywhere, free, for up to six days following each session. You won't miss a thing.

Lifetime guarantee
Apply the techniques and skills you learn in this course. If you're not 100% satisfied with your results, tell Alan Sharpe in writing and he will refund your entire fee immediately.

Questions
Phone Alan Sharpe's workshop hotline at 1 877 742-7732.

Recording
This course is fully copyrighted. What you see and hear is the property of Alan Sharpe. No audio recordings are allowed.

This course is for individuals, not groups. You must purchase one registration for each person in your organization who will participate in this course. By clicking the register now button you agree to our terms.