When Is It OK to Break The Rules?

By Andrea Berry, December 13, 2011

We're proud of what we do here, but honestly, the Idealware story is not all that attention-grabbing--at least, not compared to the rest of the nonprofit field. Helping nonprofit staff who are struggling with technology definitely has trouble competing with organizations who are saving things like cute puppies, adorable children and beautiful landscapes. Concerned with our ability to compete for funds with the heart-warming and the heart-wrenching, we set out to search for an alternative approach.

One thing we played around with was the concept of moving our campaign to a different part of the year to help us stand out more, but we felt that missing the “giving culture” of the year-end was a mistake. Last year we tried a substantial matching campaign that worked well, but felt a bit awkward. So this year we took a bold approach to our end-of-year fundraising campaign. If you've seen it, you know it's obvious that we broke the rules--strategically, and yes, intentionally.

We chose to go against some of the email fundraising best practices in order to stand-out from the deluge of letters. The actual credit to our approach falls to Chris, our Senior Editor extraordinaire, who wrote two drafts for our appeal--one a true traditional fundraising letter, the other a version that bucked the rules almost completely:

• It was too long

• It started off talking about what we are not rather than what we are

• It was punchy, and a little sarcastic

• There was no announced goal

• It didn’t have a P.S.

But when we read it, the nontraditional letter resonated in a way the other letter did not. It was the same base content, but it spoke to the reader in ways we hadn’t been able to achieve with letters past. I conceded that it was okay to break the rules if it worked this well, so I held my fundraiser’s nose, took a deep breath and sent out the letter the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

We’ve gotten a tremendous response! Yes, people unsubscribed from our list at a higher rate than normal, but not drastically higher than last year's campaign. Yes, a few curmudgeonly people emailed us to explain exactly what we did wrong in the email, although we got no irate “I signed up for this list for free resources and now you are asking me for money!?!” emails like in the past. And we raised almost double off of that first letter than last year.

So was it okay to break the rules? I think the answer has to be yes. Consider this me giving you permission, with the following caveats:

• It has to make sense.

• You must have a good reason.

• You don’t do it all the time.

• Your gut tells you that you definitely should.

What do you think? Here’s our letter…was it okay for us to break the rules? Let us know what you think in the comments.

And while you’re at it, why don’t you speak with your wallet, too, and make a donation to support Idealware?