Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

How to Make Sure a Low-Priced Offer Does NOT Produce Small Gifts

Steven Screen | August 19, 2025July 17, 2025Ask

Here’s a question I get every time an organization is thinking about using a good fundraising offer with a low price point:

“OK, so our offer is $7. Are we going to get a ton of $7 gifts? Aren’t we going to raise less money this way because our donors are going to give less?”

The short answer is:

Not if your Ask Amounts for each donor are at or above what that donor gave last time.

Let me explain…

Offer Amount vs. Ask Amount

There’s a difference between your Offer Amount and your Ask Amounts.

Your Offer Amount is the cost of your offer – the cost to do the thing you promise will happen if a donor gives a gift. (We’ve talked about how those amounts should usually be less than $50.)

Your Ask Amounts are the amounts you list for your donor to give on your reply card. They often look something like this:

[ ] $50
[ ] $100
[ ] $150
[ ] $_______

Those are your Ask Amounts. (This is also often called “gift ask string” or “gift ask array” but we’re going to refer to them as Ask Amounts for clarity’s sake.)

Think of it this way:

Your Offer Amount is how much it costs for the donor to do one meaningful thing.
Your Ask Amounts are how much you’d like the donor to give today.

Make sense? Still with me?

How Smart Organizations Raise More Money

This is simple to explain, but it takes a bit of work to do. But here’s what the smart organizations do:

They customize the Ask Amounts for each and every donor.
The customized Ask Amounts for each donor are in increments of the Offer Amount.

Here’s what that looks like. Say I had recently given a donation of $100 to an organization. And they were writing me with an offer of “$35 will train one volunteer to advocate for our cause.” My Ask Amounts would look something like:

[ ] $105 to train 3 advocates
[ ] $140 to train 4 advocates
[ ] $210 to train 6 advocates
[ ] $______ to train as many advocates as possible

There’s a lot going on in that example that’s helpful.

First, the Ask Amounts are all in $35 increments – increments of the Offer Amount. Because remember, your whole letter (or email, or newsletter, or event) should be about the Offer. So it will make more sense to your donor if your reply card has amounts that are based on the offer you are writing them about.

Second, the beginning Ask Amount is at or above how much I gave last time. This is key to helping donors give how much they gave last time… or more!

Third, the description text (“…to train 3 advocates”) describes how many of the outcomes my gift will fund. This helps donors know exactly how much good their gift will do. It’s a proven tactic.

To do this, most smaller organizations use Excel to calculate the Ask Amounts and Outcome Amounts (“3 advocates”) for each donor. Then they merge in those amounts onto the reply card.

This takes real work. It’s worth it.

The Benefits to You

When your Offer Amount is low, and your Ask Amounts are at or above how much your donor gave last time, two positive things happen:

More people respond because your barrier of entry is so low. In other words, more people respond because it costs so little for them to make a meaningful difference.
You’ll raise more money because donor’s gifts will usually be at or above what they gave last time.

Increasing the number of people who respond + keeping their gifts at the same size or larger = more money for your cause!

This post was originally published on May 7, 2019 as part of a series on creating successful offers. Click here to download the e-book we created from these posts.

“You” is the magic word for newsletters

Steven Screen | August 14, 2025July 17, 2025Report

Here’s an easy-to-follow tip to increase the amount of people who read your next newsletter:

Use the word “you” as the first word of the main headline on your cover.

That tells your donor right away that the newsletter is to her, and for her. And don’t you think she’ll be more likely to read if you signal to her that the newsletter is about her in some way? Versus what most organizations do, which is talk about themselves?

Want another tip? Use the word “you” again – in either the subhead or the first sentence of the main story.

Now you’re signaling to the donor that this really is about her. That the “you” in the headline was not just “donor-centered window dressing,” but was a signal that your organization really does care about her.

And now your donor is thinking, “Hey, this organization might be different from the other organizations I give to. They might appreciate me.”

And one final tip: use the word “you” in every single picture caption.

My rule is that picture captions should not be about what’s happening in the photo. Picture captions should be about the donor’s role in what’s happening in the photo. So instead of “Lisa and Laure enjoyed a week of summer camp at our facility” it should be, “Thanks to you, Lisa and Laura enjoyed an incredible week of summer camp!”

Now you’ve really done it. Your donor knows that you sent her a newsletter that’s about her and about what her gift accomplished.

That’s a Big Deal! Because very few (if any) of the other nonprofits she’s giving to have taken the time and money to show her what her gift did.

Some of them have sent her chest-thumping newsletters about what the organization did. But none of them have gotten in touch with her to tell her what she did.

Big difference.

And when you use the word “you,” she’s more likely to read more. And to know more about your organization. And to give more the next time you send her an appeal.

All from using the word “you” more often.

Think about it this way. As a donor, which type of newsletter would you like to receive: a newsletter that’s to everybody and all about the organization, or a newsletter that’s to you and all about what your gift did?

You know which one your donors would prefer. So follow these tips and make them one!

This post was originally published on September 10, 2019.

Why You Shouldn’t Use the Word “Vulnerable” in Your Appeals

Steven Screen | August 12, 2025July 17, 2025Ask

Though I’m a great believer in being vulnerable when you create your fundraising, I never use the word “vulnerable” when writing fundraising.

And when organizations that I work with use the word “vulnerable” or the phrase “the most vulnerable,” I delete it.

Here’s Why

When you’re Asking for support in your appeals and e-appeals, what usually works best is to present donors with a problem that is happening right now, one that the donor can solve with a gift today.

The problem with the word “vulnerable” is it accidently tells donors that there is not a problem today.

According to Webster’s, Vulnerable means:

Capable of being physically or emotionally wounded.
Open to attack or damage

Look at those definitions again. In both of those cases there is nothing wrong right now. A person is “capable” of being hurt. Or is “open to attack.”

Think about it this way. Say you received two simple e-appeals right next to each other in your inbox. One e-appeal asked you to give a gift to help a person who is in need today. The other e-appeal asked you to help a person who might be in need sometime soon. All things being equal, most donors will give to help the person who is in need today.

By describing your beneficiaries as “vulnerable,” you’re focusing donors’ attention on the fact that there’s nothing wrong yet. You’re telling donors that there might be a problem in the future. So there’s less of a reason for a donor to give a gift right now.

By using the word “vulnerable” you’ve caused fewer people to send in a gift today.

Here’s What I Replace “Vulnerable” With

Instead of focusing on what might happen, focus on what’s happening right now.

What this usually means is that instead of focusing your fundraising on all the people who might need help, you focus it on the people who need help right now.

Here are a couple of examples…

“Your gift to help vulnerable children in our schools learn to read will…” becomes, “Your gift to help a child who is a grade behind in reading level will…”

“Your gift to protect people who are vulnerable to this disease will…” becomes, “Your gift will help people who have this disease by… “

“Your gift will help the most vulnerable…” becomes, “Your gift will help the people who need it most right now…”

If your organization uses “vulnerable” or “the most vulnerable,” edit your future fundraising to talk about the people (or a person) who needs help now. You’ll start to raise more money.

The Big Picture

If you stop using “vulnerable,” will your next appeal raise twice as much money? No.

But if my experience is any indication, I think you’ll raise more money than you’re raising now.

Two reasons.

First, even though your use of “vulnerable” is a small thing, successful appeals and newsletters are made up of a hundred of small things. The better you get at noticing and improving the small things, the more money you raise.

Second, not using “vulnerable” is a very real step on the way towards a powerful principle to operate by. The principle is that you’ll raise more money with your direct response fundraising (appeals, e-appeals, radio, TV, etc.) if you share the most compelling problems your organization and/or beneficiaries are experiencing right now.

Sharing a current problem (not a potential future problem) with donors is one of the ways you can break through all the noise and increase the number of people who send you gifts.

And anything you can do to break through all the noise right now will help, don’t you think?

This post was originally published on June 18, 2020.

LIST of what to “repeat” to save time and raise more money

Steven Screen | August 7, 2025July 17, 2025Repeat

I know the idea of “repeating” fundraising you’ve done before doesn’t make sense at first. And it can feel weird.

That’s why I want to talk about the secret of “repeating” – just think of it as a tool that savvy fundraisers use to save time and (surprisingly) raise more money.

What We Mean by “Repeat”

When we say you can “repeat” something, here’s what we mean in a nutshell: do the same thing again, but slightly differently.

Send the same letter again, but slightly reword it
Send the same email again, but slightly reword it
Run the same event again, but with a different beneficiary speaker
Send the same letter again, but with a slightly different design

Are you picking up what I’m laying down?

And in some cases you can send the exact same thing. Same email. Same letter. We’ve done both of them and they’ve both worked:

My podcast partner Jeff Brooks tells a story about an organization that sent an appeal every month. One month it accidentally sent out the exact same appeal that it sent the previous month – and it raised more money the second time!
I think about an organization that took half their donors and sent them the same exact email the last four days of the year. Those donors gave more than the other half of their donors who received four unique emails.

Because remember:

Most of your donors aren’t paying that close attention
Many donors need to hear something twice (or more) before they pay attention and really think about it

When to Repeat Letters and Emails

Here’s how to repeat your appeal letters and your emails.

If you are doing something that you did the year before, you can repeat it.

Say you send out a Thanksgiving appeal last year, and you’re going to do another one this year. The first thing to do is to look at last year‘s Thanksgiving appeal and its results.

If the results were better than the previous year, repeat it. Don’t write a completely new email. Don’t design a completely new letter. Make only the minimal number of changes you need to make.

The same is true for anything you do each year. Here’s a list of things we’ve repeated to great success, and I’m sure there are more examples:

Year-end / Thanksgiving / Back-to-School / etc. – letters & emails
Facebook campaigns
Events
Giving Tuesday
Renewal
13^th Gift
Sponsorship/monthly giving upgrade campaigns
Monthly giving recruitment

You name it. If you do it every year, you should be repeating it and making slight tweaks to make it better, not reinventing the wheel.

When You Repeat, Watch Out for…

Here’s what to watch out for when you’ve decided to repeat a fundraising tactic…

Any detail that was true last year, but not this year. You need to update anything that’s not true. New ED? Update the name at the end of the letter. This year’s “Thanksgiving Meal” costs $1.93 instead of $1.92? Update the letter. Your organization now rescues Wombats? Add “wombats” to the list of animals you rescue.
Does the story need to be updated? Many letters contain a story about a person that illustrates the need. That story should be swapped out and replaced with a new story. But the rest of the letter doesn’t have to change.
Note: this is true for events as well.
Doing too much. Don’t make too many changes just because you’re in there.

Story Time with Steven

I used to write appeal letters and emails for The Salvation Army. They are a fundraising machine who has all of this down to a science. (You might read that they are a “fundraising machine” and think, “Well, that would never work with my donors.” Please be open to the idea that it would work. Many of your donors also give to the Army.)

Most of the time I would receive the following instructions when it was time to write a letter:

“Here’s last year’s letter. It worked great. Update it for this year and change only what’s absolutely necessary. Do not mess this up.”

Inspiring!

No, not really. At least if you’re a ‘creative type’ like me.

But that’s how you build a mature fundraising program that raises the big bucks. You take something that works. You repeat it. You refine it. You look for little ways to make it better. You watch the results closely and look for what donors love, as told through their giving.

Over time you build a money-raising machine that allows you to do so much good in the world that people come to learn fundraising from you.

Listen, a lot of people don’t like hearing this. They want to be creative. They want to love the fundraising they send out.

I’m the same way. I get bored writing the same emails for the second (or tenth) year in a row.

But over time, if you look at the results, it becomes really obvious that if you repeat what worked before, you’re going to raise more money.

Please trust me – I’ve banged my head against that wall enough time to have a small dent in the middle of my forehead. (Well, actually that scar is from my sister throwing a Hot Wheel at me, but it’s a better story if it’s a fundraising scar.)

You are going to be tired of what you’ve been doing. So will your boss and your Board. You’re going to want to do it differently. You’re going to want to ‘come up with a new theme for this year’!

Don’t give in. Keep doing what’s been working great. You’ll raise more money each year.

If you invent a new approach each year you’ll be causing two problems: #1, you’ll be raising less money; and #2, you’ll be taking a LOT of time you could be using to do something else. Like, you know, focusing on major donors, where 90% of your individual donations come from. Or acquiring new donors, who are the future of your organization.

But Whither Innovation?

I’m going to write a post later this month on ‘how to innovate when you’re in a culture of repeating what’s worked in the past.’ Because you have to innovate.

But you want to innovate in a way that minimizes your risk. And I’ll share how to do that. But here’s an analogy to tide you over…

If you’re Apple, do you decide to stop making the iPhone and replace it with something completely new? No. You keep on updating, tweaking the iPhone to make it better each year. And you keep releasing different versions of the iPhone to try out new ideas.

Sheesh

Enough rambling. I hope the concept of “repeating” is making sense. I know it’s not how normal nonprofits operate. But it’s one of the secrets that savvy fundraisers have discovered – and you should be using it. You’ll save time, and you’ll raise more money.

If you’d like to have me help your organization know what to repeat – or to tweak what you’re doing to make it even better – get in touch!

This post was originally published on June 7, 2018.

How to Thank Your Donor So She Actually Feels Thanked

Steven Screen | August 5, 2025July 15, 2025Thank

The goal of your Thank You and/or Receipt package is not just to acknowledge your donor’s donation.

Any organization can do that.

Any autoreply or receipt letter can do that.

Your goal should be to make your donor feel thanked, appreciated and important.

How?

When you thank her for helping your organization do its work, you’ve made it about you, about your organization.

What you want to do is make it about her. So, thank her for her generosity. Tell her what her gift is going to do (instead of saying what your organization is going to do). Tell her how important she is to your organization.

When you do that, you’ll find that most of your Thank You/Receipt copy is about her. And less of it is about your organization.

Less about You, More about Her

Donors are inundated with requests for support. In the United States, there’s one nonprofit for every 200 people. And almost all of those organizations talk about themselves. Endlessly.

But a very few of them have learned the secret: your donors are more interested in themselves – their lives, their values, their impact – than they are in your organization.

So if you talk to donors about their lives, their values and their impact, they will finally feel like a nonprofit “gets” them. They’ll feel that there’s a nonprofit that’s working on their behalf – trying to help them do what they want to do – instead of just another nonprofit trying to sound great to get their next donation.

Do you feel the fundamental difference? The posture of gratitude for what the donor did, not for what she helped your organization do?

If you can embrace that fundamental difference, and start communicating to your donors that way, you’ll begin to build a tribe of loyal donors who will give you more gifts, larger gifts, and will give to you for longer.

This post was originally published on May 21, 2019.

How to Choose What to Underline and Why

Steven Screen | July 31, 2025July 15, 2025Ask

I’m going to teach you to raise more money by showing you what to emphasize in your fundraising letters.

Because if you underline or bold the right things, you’ll raise more money.

NOTE: for brevity, I’m going to lump all forms of visual emphasis as “underlining.” You might use underlining, or bolding, or highlighting, doesn’t matter. All of those are different tactics. I’m talking about the strategy of visually emphasizing small portions of your letters and e-appeals.

First, let me tell you why your underlining is so important.

Underlining has two purposes in fundraising writing. Almost nobody knows the second – and more important – purpose.

Bolding or underlining signals that a sentence is important. This is true of almost any writing.
But underlining also serves a second, more important purpose. The most effective fundraisers use underlining to choose for your donor which things they are most likely to read.

Because remember, most of your donors won’t read your letter from top to bottom. They will scan your letter – briefly running their eyes down the page. And as they scan, when they see a sentence that has been emphasized, they are likely to stop scanning and read.

It’s this second, more valuable purpose that most organizations don’t know about. So they underline the wrong things.

My Rule of Thumb

Here’s what I try to do. This doesn’t apply to every letter, but I try this approach first on every single letter I review or write:

The first thing underlined should be a statement of need, or a statement describing the problem that the organization is working on.
The second thing is a brief explanation of how the donor’s gift will help meet the need or solve the problem mentioned in the first underlined section.
The third thing is a bold call-to-action for the donor to give a gift to meet the need / solve the problem today.

If you do that, I can basically guarantee that your letter will do well. A MASSIVE number of fundraising letters don’t even have those elements, let alone emphasize them. If you have them, and you emphasize them, here’s what happens:

Donors know immediately what you’re writing to them about
Donors know immediately what they can do to help
Donors know immediately that they are needed!

Because of those things your donors are more likely to read more. And more likely to donate more.

There Are Some Sub-Rules

No pronouns. Remember that it’s very likely that a person reading the underlined sentence has not read the prior sentences. So if you underline a sentence like “They need it now!” the donor does not know who “they” are and what “it” is. The sentence is basically meaningless to the donor. Their time has been wasted.
Not too many. You’ve seen this before; there are four sentences that are bolded, five that are underlined, and the result is a visual mess that only a Board member would read. Be disciplined. I try to emphasize only three things per page, sometimes four.
Emphasize what donors care about, not what your Org cares about. If you find yourself emphasizing a sentence like, “Our programs are the most effective in the county!” … de-emphasize it. Though it matters a lot to you, no donor is scanning your letter looking to hear how good your organization is at its job. But donors are scanning for things they are interested in. So emphasize things like, “Because of matching funds, the impact of your gift doubles!” or “I know you care about unicorns, and the local herd is in real danger.”
Drama is interesting. If your organization is in a dramatic situation, or the story in the letter has real drama, underline it. Here are a couple of examples from letters we’ve worked on recently: “It was at the moment she saw the ultrasound that life in her belly stopped being a problem and became a baby” and “The enclosed Emergency Funding Program card outlines the emergency fundraising plan I’ve come up with.”

And now, I have to share that I got the idea for this post when I saw this clip from the TV show “Friends”. It turns out that Joey has never known what using ‘air quotes’ means – and he’s using them wrong (to hilarious effect). I saw it and thought, “That’s like a lot of nonprofits trying to use underlining effectively.”

If you’re offended by that, please forgive me. I see hundreds of appeal letters and e-appeals a year. I developed a sense of humor as a defense mechanism. 🙂

The good news is that learning how to use underlining is as easy as learning to use air quotes!

You can do this. Just remember that most of your donors are moving fast. Underline only what they need to know. That’s an incredible gift to a compassionate, generous, busy donor!

And if you’d like to know how Better Fundraising can create your appeals and newsletters (with very effective underlining!) take a look here.

This post was originally published on March 15, 2018.

Deadlines and Consequences

Steven Screen | July 3, 2025June 12, 2025Ask

When I’m reviewing an appeal or e-appeal, one of the simple questions I ask is:

“Is there a deadline or consequences?”

Deadlines focus people’s attention – and cause more people to take action. Consequences help people know what’s at stake – and cause more people to take action.

So the next time you’re creating or reviewing an appeal or e-appeal, be sure to include a deadline or consequence. You’ll help donors see how their gift to you is important and timely.

And ultimately, it’s pretty simple: if you don’t give your donors a reason to give a gift today, you’ll get fewer gifts today.

Attention Leaks

Steven Screen | June 19, 2025June 10, 2025Ask

It is hard to get a donor’s attention.

So when you are sending a donor something with an explicit purpose – for instance you’re Asking for a gift or Reporting back on what their previous gifts made possible – don’t include anything that can cause your donor’s attention to “leak” away from your main message.

Here are three examples of accidental attention leaks:

Your social media handles on the envelope for your appeal. At the moment a donor picks up your envelope, would you like them to open the envelope and have a 4% chance of them sending you a gift… or go to your Instagram page and have a .25% chance of giving you a gift?
Promoting your upcoming event right before the ask to give a gift. It’s well known that the more options you give a donor, the smaller the overall response. I’ve seen many a great fundraising email or letter torpedoed by someone who says, “Hey, please add a paragraph about our event” or “Be sure to also mention that we need volunteers and include the link.”
A list of your Board members down the left side of your appeal letter. I ran a test once where we sent a letter to half a nonprofit’s donors on letterhead that had the list of Board members down the left, and the same exact letter to the other half of the organization’s donor except the list of Board members had been removed. The letter without the list of Board members raised more money.

In my opinion, here’s what happens when you list the Board members down the side. Some donors are reading the letter, picking up what you are laying down, starting to think about giving a gift… and they see a name on the left that takes their attention away from the carefully crafted letter. Maybe the name reminds them of a friend from college. They wonder what that person is up to. And pretty soon your donor is on Facebook instead of reading and responding to your letter.

Your organization spends so much time, money and effort to get a donor to read your fundraising. Don’t allow anything in your fundraising other than content and design that will drive them towards taking the action you want them to take.

There is one place this advice doesn’t apply – your e-newsletter. You can stick everything in there because you don’t expect anyone to respond.

But if you want people to respond, here’s what I’ve learned over years and years of looking at fundraising results: pieces of fundraising that “keep the main thing the main thing” will cause the most action and help your organization the most.

Three Editing Examples

Steven Screen | June 3, 2025May 13, 2025Ask

We recently helped a nonprofit create a series of emails to raise money to help them recover from flooding at their facilities.

The emails raised twice as much as any email campaign they’d ever done.

Because people always like our posts that feature “before and after” examples of fundraising copy, here are three simple edits I made to these emails, along with brief explanations for why…

Before #1:
“I couldn’t sleep last night worrying how the staff at the sanctuary will weather this storm, literally.”

After:
“I couldn’t sleep last night because I was worrying about the staff, the babies, and the equipment.”

Reasoning:
In direct response fundraising, specificity is your friend. The initial copy was conceptual – about how the staff will “weather the storm.” But the concept was hiding specifics that were meaningful and valuable! Share the specifics because they are easier for a reader to understand quickly – and usually more meaningful, too.

Before #2:
“Potable water is especially important right now.”

After:
“Water that’s safe to drink is especially important right now.”

Reasoning:
Not everyone knows what the word “potable” means. And even for readers who are familiar with it, many will have to think about it for a second to recall what it means. In direct response fundraising, any time you use words that some readers don’t understand and other readers have to think about, you’ve almost certainly reduced how much money you are going to raise.

Before #3:
“Will you please make a generous gift today?”

After:
“As we scramble, would you please make a gift today to help?”

Reasoning:
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with “Will you please make a generous gift today” – in fact it’s very good copy. But I have found that in an emergency situation, an email that sounds like a “breathless dispatch from the field” will raise far more money than email that sounds like every other email the organization sends.

So I made sure the email sounded like it was written by a human (not an organization) who was being clear, but was clearly in a crazy situation.

One of the ways you communicate to donors that the situation is not normal is by using language that is not normal.

Finally, as a bonus, here’s a subject line I worked on:

Subject line Before:
It’s time for immediate action

Subject line After:
Flooding – please help

Reasoning:
The initial subject line could be written by any nonprofit, anywhere, at any time. The updated version referenced the flooding – something dramatic, concrete, and unique to this organization at this time.

I hope these example edits – and the reasoning behind them – help you with your next email or letter!