If you want to guarantee that your donors will ignore your newsletters, illustrate your stories with cliché photos. Here are the top four:
1. People cutting a ribbon with an oversized pair of cardboard scissors.
2. Ground breaking ceremony in which a bunch of suits with hard hats pose with their feet on shovels.
3. Oversized check being passed from donor to executive director.
4. Someone receiving an award, gripping the hand of the presenter, and grinning at the camera.
If you want to guarantee that the media will ignore your event, invite them to one of these ceremonies. The only thing the media despise more than press conferences are ribbon-cuttings, ground-breakings, check-passing ceremonies and “grip and grin” photos, says publicity expert Joan Stewart.
Be like Queen’s University and do something different. The college in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, held a groundbreaking ceremony in which the Principal climbed into the seat of an excavator, drove it onto the field before the gathered dignitaries and media, and brought the shovel down into the ground and back up again full of dirt. That’s different. That’s the kind of photo that will grab the attention of your donors, and the media.
Think long and hard and you’ll come up with creative alternatives to cliché newsletter photos.
Instead of a check-passing photo, take a photo of someone receiving what the gift funded.
Instead of a ribbon-cutting photo featuring your leaders, why not take a photo that features your donors? Let’s say you mailed a special appeal letter six months ago, asking for funds to build a wheelchair-accessible ramp at your summer camp for kids. The money came in, the ramp is complete, and the project was a success.
You could run a story in your newsletter with the headline, “New Wheelchair Access Ramp Completed,” accompanied by a photo of the ribbon-cutting ceremony with this caption: “Our executive director cuts the ribbon during the opening ceremony for our new wheelchair access ramp.” Boring. The focus of the story is the ribbon and the ramp, not the benefits of the ramp (who it helps) or the cause of the ramp (the donors).
Instead, you could take a photo of a camper descending the ramp all by herself in her motorized wheelchair. Surrounding the ramp are the volunteers who donated their time, and a representative sampling of donors who gave their gifts. They are all waving and applauding as the girl makes her way to the bottom of the ramp, ready to break through the inaugural ribbon at the bottom with her legs (much the same way Olympic runners do with their chests).
The headline reads: “New Wheelchair Ramp Gives One Camper—and Many Donors—a Big Lift.”
The photo caption reads: “INCLINED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE: Dozens of Camp Wikiming volunteers and donors celebrate as 13-year-old Kirsten Jacobs enjoys the fruit of their love, labour and generosity—the new wheelchair access ramp to Lansing Hall.”
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