1. The Association of Professional Fundraisers in Ireland
What Makes A
Great Ask?
Summary of
individual giving
session IoF July 13

2. What makes a great ask?
• Key learnings from Vanessa Longley
(Director of Fundraising and Marketing,
Havens Hospices) and Roger Lawson
(Consultant, Roger Lawson Consulting)
presentation at the IoF Conference July
2013

3. What makes a great ask?
• 94% customer retention rate in corporate
sector
• But
• 41% donor retention rate in the charity
sector

4. What makes a great ask?
• Get people excited
• Ask in the right way
• Give donors a sense of mission
accomplished
– In a life enhancing, thrilling, imaginative way

5. What makes a good ask?
• Reinforce the point of how important the
ask is
– Do donors know what you are talking about?
– Have a tangible ask

6. How to develop the best ask
• Use words to change/drive donor
behaviour
• Know what behaviour you want to change
in donors
• Craft your ask don’t just chat about the
cause
• What action do you want to drive?

7. How to develop the best ask
• Drive specific actions
– High value givers
– Long-term donors
• Know what objective you want to achieve
– Different asks work in different ways
– Cash V committed giving

8. How to develop the best ask
• Have emotional resonance with the people
the ask is aimed at
• Imagine what it feels like
• Understand the audience
• Meet the donors’ needs
• Different audiences need different asks

9. How to develop the best ask
• Have subtle differences to suit the
different audiences
• The most important person in the story is
the donor
– Get the story right for the donor
• Have a clear action

10. How to develop the best ask
• Donors want to write a cheque and feel
good
• They want to know why they are being
asked for a specific amount of money
• It’s about the value to the donor – asking
what’s appropriate to them

11. How to develop the best ask
• Tell the charity’s story
• Keep it simple
• Make it something they can remember
• Short and to the point
• What do you want to stop/start/change?
• Know the impact of your programme

12. How to develop the best ask
• What do you want to stop/start/change?
– Make something positive happen now?
– Stop something negative happening now?
– Have a vision for something exciting,
inspiring, important in the future?
– Stop something frightening, threatening in the
future?

13. How to develop the best ask
• Ask “ so what?”
• Allow donors to expand their minds
• Give donors a chance to see themselves
in a different way/ a chance to change the
world
• Give them something they can’t buy else
where

14. How to develop the best ask
1. Start with the donor – what they need
2. What’s the offer? What do they value?
3. Give them something to achieve they
wouldn’t be able to do otherwise
4. Make the donor feel good about
themselves
5. Make the donor LOOK good

15. How to develop the best ask
• Give the donor a chance to receive a
benefit
– Have an experience they will never get
elsewhere
• It’s an offer not an ask
• Fundraisers don’t beg, fundraisers give
people a chance to change the world!