My wife can still remember the name of her math teacher from grade four. You know why? Because he, um, paused every few words, and ah, ahhhhh, you know, ahh, added an ahh to what he was saying, ah, so that Ruth, was driven to, um, distraction. (more…)
If your non-profit organization is typical, your direct mail program raises 50 percent of its revenue with one mailing-the Christmas appeal. More people give more money to the “Holiday Season” letter than they give to any other single mailing all year. Your goal this Christmas is to persuade these generous donors to give again. Here’s how. (more…)
If you want your fundraising letters to sound more vigorous, get tense. The present tense, that is.
Listen to the sports news on the radio and you’ll hear the announcer saying, “tomorrow the Atlanta Falcons take on the Minnesota Vikings.” The announcer doesn’t say, “the Atlanta Falcons will take on the Minnesota Vikings.” He doesn’t say that they will, but that they do. (more…)
My wife and I listed our house for sale last Monday and sold it on Wednesday. The buyer offered us a few hundred dollars more than our asking price, so we accepted. But we have lingering doubts. Maybe you would, too.
You know how it is. You name your price, and your buyer agrees immediately. So you immediately wonder if your price was too low. Maybe that’s why the buyer agreed to your price so quickly.
In direct mail fundraising you’ll find this same challenge. How much should you ask a person to donate if they have never donated before? (more…)
I received an email the other day that reads as follows:
–letter starts–
Hello Mr. Raiser,
My name is _______. I work for a non profit organization, the ____________. We are in a season of taking the ministry international and also growing and empowering the ministries within. I would like to draft up a professional letter, that will go out to major corporations and empowered people, asking for donations, and for it in return be a tax write off! My goal is to mail/email a donation letter to different large companies and multi-millionaires example Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump. I’m not sure at all as to how to even begin the letter. Please help! (more…)
Want to learn a lesson in direct mail fundraising from Winston Churchill? He once observed that a fanatic is “someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
A fundraising letter fanatic, of course, is someone who thinks the only thing you can mail a donor is a fundraising letter. But that’s just one of more than 40 things you can mail to make friends and raise funds using paper and postage. (more…)
Why did the Canadian cross the road? To get to the middle.
Your job as a direct mail fundraiser is to give your donors both a reason for donating and an incentive for donating.
Your enemy is inertia. Your enemy is Coronation Street. Plenty of perfectly nice donors with perfectly good intentions to donate will nevertheless procrastinate or get distracted, lay your fundraising letter aside to deal with tomorrow, but then forget.
Which is why you should consider using an incentive, something that will give your appeal letter a sense of urgency. Something that’ll motivate your donor to act today. I recommend a deadline. Give your donor a deadline for responding and you will likely boost your response rate. (more…)
I was pontificating with my wife, Ruth, the other day, explaining that fundraisers have no control over one of the Big Cs of fundraising. “Ideal donors,” I announced, “have the Capacity to give, have a strong Connection with the charity, and are Committed to support the charity over the long term.” (more…)
The last thing you should ask for in a fundraising letter is a donation. You have no business asking for money until you have first persuaded your donor that you deserve her attention, value her time, appreciate her as a person, and want to partner with her in turning the world upside-down. (more…)
How many of your current donors would give you a larger gift if you only knew how to ask them? Quite a few, quite likely. (more…)
Do you want your donors to give more, do you want them to give more often, or do you want more of your donors to give?If your answer is “all of the above,” here are some tested ways to increase the size of donor gifts using fundraising letters. (more…)
Anger is one of the best emotions that you can arouse in a donor. Anger is a healthy emotion, particularly when your fundraising letter offers donors a way to assuage their anger. (more…)