Guidestar: Every Fundraising Appeal Should Include These Five Slants

By Jeff Brooks, 8/29/17

Fundraising uses a style of writing that’s personal, repetitive, simplistic, old-fashioned, and just plain messy. Those from journalism school, academia, or business can be in for a shock.

But as I discuss in my book, The Fundraiser’s Guide to Irresistible Communications, the strange conventions of fundraising are the result of decades of experience, discipline, and head-to-head testing.

In the small space here, I’ll share five approaches that should filter into practically every piece of correspondence with your donors.

1. MAKE IT SOLVABLE

So many fundraisers think the size or intractability of a problem is what makes it compelling. What they’re missing is that donors don’t want to solve a problem because it’s big. They want to solve it because it’s solvable.

You’ve heard that 22,000 children die from hunger-related causes every day. That’s mind-boggling. I spent years looking for ways to make that fact vivid. I talked about how many children die in a given year (917) or minute (15). I painted visions of emptied-out American towns with populations of roughly 22,000, like Portsmouth, New Hampshire, or Fairfax, Virginia.

But it never worked. If you want action, you must help donors feel the pain of hunger by seeing it play out in one life. Then give them the opportunity to save one life—then another and another. That’s how you’ll get them working with you to solve big problems.

2. MAKE IT UNCOMPLICATED

Simplicity is a challenge for many of us. We’ve become experts in our causes and we’ve mastered the complexity of our organizations’ work. We know the shades of gray. That’s all fine. But bring that complexity to your fundraising and you’ll fail to motivate donors.

No matter how complex your organization’s work, your fundraising must reduce it to a simple essence non-experts can understand and understand quickly.

For example, a lot of organizations say their true goal is to spread hope. But hope, as beautiful and inspiring as it is may be, is a weak fundraising proposition. You have to talk about the concrete actions that lead to hope: helping farmers grow more crops, resettling displaced families, or feeding hungry children.

Donors haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about your cause. Very few will ever become an expert like you—they have other things on their minds. But they can still wholeheartedly support your work if you speak to their level of understanding, not yours.

3. GIVE A CALL TO ACTION

Call to Action is a bit of ad agency lingo that means exactly what is says: it’s the specific action you want people to take. Pick up the phone and dial a number. Go to the store and look for a specific product. Go to a website and sign up for something. Or, in fundraising, make a gift to accomplish some specific good.

Some fundraisers bury their call to action under layers of abstract verbal fluff. They say things like “Your support could bring hope to some special kids.” That’s not straightforward enough to do the job. “Special kids” could apply to anyone on the planet under 18. “Hope” may be the thing with feathers that perches in the soul but it has no single, specific meaning. Even the word “support” doesn’t mean “donation” to everyone. Talk that way to donors and they won’t understand you.

A real call to action leaves nothing to the imagination. “Your gift of $25 or more—sent by December&bnsp;31—will give low-income kids in our community soccer uniforms, so they can compete joyfully in this character-building sport.”

For the full article as published by Guidestar please click here.

 

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