Stories are powerful — our brains seem to be hard-wired for this ancient method of sharing information. As a result, including stories in your emails may seem like a no-brainer. But there’s a problem: Non-profits are adding stories to their fundraising messages… and they’re not working. How can smart organizations harness the power of stories to communicate with supporters and get them to donate? In M+R’s newest publication, we dig into what makes stories powerful, explain recent test results that can help non-profits avoid falling into the personal story trap, and offer concrete...

Note: This is an archived publication! Visit www.e-benchmarksstudy.com for the most recent versions of all our Benchmarks studies and Benchmarks Extras. Thanks to everyone who joined us for a great session at NTC today to talk about the findings from this year’s 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study from M+R and NTEN! The release of M+R’s fifth annual eNonprofit Benchmarks Study analyzes data from a record number of groups – which means more numbers to crunch and more charts for you to geek out over. (If you’re into that kind of thing. Which we are.) With more than 40 nonprofits letting us...

So, how did the end of year season turn out for non-profits? With final results in, we decided to compare our clients’ end-of-year 2010 results to their 2009 figures. Here are the top findings on looking at aggregate stats from 13 clients we work with who conducted fundraising campaigns this past December as well as last December: More Money – 77% raised more money this year than they did last year. More Donors – The number of donors grew by 12% this year. Lower Response Rates – 85% saw the same or lower email response rates than they did last year. More Asks – 85% sent more solicitations...

What do open rates really tell you about your program or your supporters? M+R Research Labs cracked the code! We looked at five advocacy messages from four groups and compared the supporters who took action to those who were sent an email and were marked as having opened that message. Of those who received an advocacy message and took action, 22% weren’t marked as opening the email. That means actual open rates are higher than the tracked open rates reported by most message reporting tools. These results are consistent with our previous findings, which have shown that 20% of the people who were...

Note: This is an archived publication! Visit www.e-benchmarksstudy.com for the most recent versions of all our Benchmarks studies and Benchmarks Extras. The 2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study offers valuable insights and key industry benchmarks for online messaging, fundraising and advocacy, based on a full year’s worth of results from 31 leading nonprofit organizations. Check out this year’s findings and see how your program measure up! Download the report for FREE here...