Newsletter: Why are Round-Up Fundraisers So Successful? 🤔 ; The Most Underrated Sales Skill Is Follow-Up 📞 ; Copywriting Tips Inspired by Comedian Norm MacDonald 😢

Why are round-up fundraisers so popular and effective?

I always thought it was because the requested donation never exceeded 99 cents, which made it easy (and cheap) for shoppers to donate.

This may be true, but I recently read about another possible reason.

Kristen Berman of Irrational Labs shared a study last week in Lenny's Newsletter on a fintech app that wanted to help its users pay down debt faster, saving them thousands of dollars in interest.

Kristen's company created a basic A/B email test on a random selection of the company's users:

Both emails got users to increase their mortgage payments - yay! - but the round-up email was the clear winner as it got 40% of users to increase their payments.

But why? Kristen explains...

"Try to recall how much you pay on a loan bill. It’s unlikely you know the exact amount to the dollar—you’ll likely recall a round number. We already mentally round up the amount we pay on loans.... [The rounding up option] made it psychologically easy for people to do more of what they were already doing."

The same may be true for in-store round-up fundraisers. If you've spent $86.29 on groceries you're probably already telling yourself that you spent $87 so rounding up to that amount is psychologically easy when the cashiers asks.

Experiment: Instead of asking shoppers to round-up to the nearest dollar, ask them to round-up to the nearest five or ten. Here's what I'm thinking. If you've spent $86.29 on groceries it's not a stretch to think - or to tell someone - that you spent $90 on groceries. In short, people may be willing to round-up to a bigger number than the nearest dollar!

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

✍️ Partnership Notes

1. This author makes a great point on brand salience. 95% of the companies out there are not ready to partner with you. Your #1 job is to make sure they remember YOU when they are ready to partner with a nonprofit.

2. Closely connected👆The most underrated sales skill is....

3. Before you start recruiting sponsors for an event, ask: Should we even be doing this event? Is it worth it? If it's not, here's how to convince your board to scale back events.

🤑 Marketing Your Cause

1. Copywriting tips inspired by Norm MacDonald. Great stuff here. RIP to a great comedian! #1 made me cringe (and laugh)! I loved #6: Embrace your dirt.

2. The power of pairing two emotions to activate a sense of need.

3. Experiment: Does putting your nonprofit's “link in bio” cause less engagement, lower performance on Instagram?

😎 Cool Jobs in Cause

1. Coordinator, Corporate Partnerships, Ocean Conservancy, Washington, D.C.

2. Development Manager, Boys & Girls Club of Paterson & Passaic, Paterson, NJ ($50k - $60k)

3. Director of Corporate Partnerships, Mercy Corps, Portland, OR ($96k - $130k)

4. Director of Business Development, WaterAid, Washington, D.C. or NYC

5. National Director, Corporate Relations (Two Positions), American Lung Association ($120k - $150k)

6. Manager, RMHC & McDonald's Alignment, McDonald's, Chicago

Do you have a partnership position you are trying to fill? Hit reply and share the job posting with me! I'm happy to post it here for FREE.

🧠🍌 Brain Food

1. Eight ways to keep former board members engaged.

2. People are opting out of the career grind and choosing a slow life style. "Lying flat is justice." 🛏

3. Cannabis trends in social purpose via Rocket Social Impact. Hmmm, a well done piece. This may explain why Rocket's el presidente🎖 Rich Maiore is holed up in rural Massachusetts! 🌿🚬😂