Could Your Fundraising Be More Accessible?

Here’s a goal for your fundraising in 2025 – make it more accessible.

The ethical reasons are clear: we should not make unnecessary design and language choices that make it harder for people to see, read and understand.

Additionally, the financial reasons are clear:

• When more people can easily read your fundraising, more of your fundraising will be consumed, and you’ll raise more money.
• When more people can quickly understand your fundraising, more people will keep reading, and you’ll raise more money.

Our next three blog posts will be full of tips for how you can make your fundraising more accessible.  All of the tactics we’ll share, as well as the overall idea, are part of the Universal Design movement.  (But we just call it smart fundraising 🙂 )

In the meantime, take a look at your fundraising and ask yourself:

• Is the text easy for an older person to read?
• Is the design easy for a “scanner” to quickly know what’s most important?
• Is the copy written so that the reader needs a college education to understand it, or is it accessible to people with less education?

It’s emotionally stretching for an organization to make their fundraising more accessible.  But you’ll be doing the right thing.  And in my experience, you’ll also raise more money.

This post was originally published on March 19, 2024.

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Hey, my business partner Jim Shapiro is giving a free strategy session on Tuesday, April 29th at 2pm ET, 11am PT, all about how to successfully fundraise in times of economic uncertainty. You know, times like these, when no one knows what’s going to happen next 😊.

He and I have worked with our friend Jeff Brooks to develop some new Crisis Fundraising Thinking™ and it’ll be the basis of Jim’s session.

The truth is that many organizations are making the exact wrong moves right now. They’re assuming donors won’t give and reducing how often they’re engaging with donors. They are waiting for things to settle down, rather than doing the work that will keep their doors open tomorrow.

That ‘strategy’ didn’t work during the Pandemic. And it didn’t work in any of the crises that came before the pandemic, either.

So if you want to know what to do come out of this crisis stronger, click the link below to register for Jim’s strategy session.

https://betterfundraising.com/market-flux-webinar

PS — There’s limited availability so that Jim can have a real conversation with you. This is NOT one of those webinars where someone talks for 55 minutes straight. There will be lots of time for questions.

For more info, click here.