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Appeal vs Appealing

Steven Screen | September 18, 2025September 23, 2025Ask

If you feel like your appeal letters and e-appeals could be raising more money, let me ask you a question.

Are you appealing for help, or are you trying to make your nonprofit appealing?

I ask because, somewhere along the way, nonprofits stopped writing appeals that actually appeal for help.

Our industry calls these things “appeals” because that’s what they used to be — an “earnest request for aid” — a cry for help. They were letters about a negative situation and an “appeal” for the reader to send in a gift. (And later, in a newsletter, donors were given updates on what their gift accomplished.)

I see a LOT of appeals, and not many organizations follow the original model any longer. Instead of saying, “Right now, people are being trafficked through our local airport, and your gift will help put a stop to it,” they write, “Our holistic approach to training airport workers has successfully interrupted the trafficking of hundreds of people, please support this inspiring work!”

Which is a shame, because appeals that are cries for help raise materially more money.

So next time you’re sending out an appeal or e-appeal, read it out loud and ask yourself: would a stranger reading this letter know exactly who needs help and how their gift will provide that help?

If not, you’re probably trying to make your organization appealing instead of appealing for help.

Focus Donor Attention on the Near Future

Steven Screen | September 16, 2025September 16, 2025Ask

The graphic above has been sitting in a folder on my computer for months because I’m not quite happy with it.

But I’m following my own advice and “sending it out even if it isn’t perfect.” I think it can help you raise more money this fall, and a lot of organizations need all the help they can get right now.

Here’s the Big Idea; focus your appeals on the near future, not on the past.

To use the language I used in the graphic; you will raise more money if you focus your appeals on “work that needs to be done soon.” You will raise less money if you focus your appeals on “work your organization has already done.”

Weirdly, nonprofits tend to relentlessly focus their fundraising on the past. They share stories of people they have already helped. They share statistics and lots of numbers from their past work. They talk about the approach they’ve used.

I believe this comes from a good place – it’s an attempt to prove to donors that the organization knows what it’s doing and is effective.

But what I’ve seen from looking at fundraising results for 30 years is that individual donors send in more money when the focus of the appeal is on the near future, not on the past.

When you ask your individual donors to fund meaningful work that needs to be done soon, I think three things are happening:

Donors are thinking about something they can affect (the near future), versus something they cannot affect (the past).
Donors are thinking about the negative situation your beneficiaries are facing today, instead of a positive story of a person who has already been helped and no longer needs help.
Donors realize that their choice in this moment has consequences in the near term.

But really, even just those three bullet points overcomplicate things.

It’s as simple as this little story … put yourselves in the shoes of a busy individual donor. She’s at home, has a couple minutes, and is going through her mail or email. She feels like making a gift. Which appeal do you think she will give to:

“We’ve done work that’s important to you in the past, will you support us?”
“Work that’s important to you needs to happen two weeks from now, will you give a gift to help?”

Individual donors making quick decisions seem to be wired to support work that they care about that needs to be done soon.

So focus your appeals on the near future – usually between the day you send it and about 8 weeks from then. Focus on meaningful work/service/help your organization plans/hopes to do in the next month or so. Ask your donors to send in a gift to help fund that work.

Save the focus on the past for when you are reporting back to donors. Or when you are making a case to a Foundation for why they should give you a grant.

If our experience is any indication, you’ll be so pleased at how much money your appeals raise that you’ll never go back to focusing your appeals on the past.

‘But We Don’t Actually Do the Work’

Steven Screen | September 11, 2025September 9, 2025Ask

Earlier this week I wrote about focusing your fundraising to individual donors on what their gift will make possible, not on how your organization does its work.

This advice immediately causes consternation for some organizations, particularly community foundations and what we might call “middleman organizations” that raise funds primarily to help other organizations.

For instance, I recently emailed with a woman who works for a local nonprofit that a) raises money to pay for the admin costs and staffing of a national program that runs in her state, and b) that national program engages the local community to c) utilize support provided by other nonprofits.

Local foundations and organizations like the one above will say things like, “Well, we can’t tell donors that their gift will do anything specific because we don’t do the work. We just make it possible for other nonprofits to provide their services.”

However, I believe community foundations and middleman organizations can absolutely tell donors that their gift will make specific services happen.

I think what happens is that these nonprofits get too caught up in the difference between “what we do” and “what we make possible.”

As I wrote last week, individual donors are much more interested in what your organization makes happen than they are in exactly how your organization makes it happen.

There are lots of instances of this being true and completely above board. For instance, international relief & development organizations usually have local/indigenous partners who “do the work” of feeding children, providing education, digging wells, etc.

Medical research charities often outsource significant portions of their work, from bloodwork to testing to actually working with patients.

My recommendation: don’t artificially limit what you say in your fundraising based on a belief that donors only fund your activities (how you do your work). In our experience, donors tend to be more motivated by the outcomes your organization creates – what your work makes possible.

Your organization can absolutely make clear asks around providing specific services, even if those services are provided by another nonprofit/entity, as long as the donor’s gift provides funding that makes those services possible.

What, Not How

Steven Screen | September 9, 2025September 5, 2025Ask

Here’s a principle I live by when creating fundraising:

“Ask individual donors to fund what your organization makes happen, not how your organization makes it happen.”

Most nonprofits tend to focus their fundraising on “how their organization makes things happen.” This means their fundraising tends to be full of three things:

Their Programs. You see this in sentences like, “Our program Uplifting Kids takes children from 3-5 and….”
Their Approach. “We have a holistic approach that preserves the dignity…”
Their Analogy. “What we really do is provide hope at the end of the road.”

That’s how the organization does its work. It’s how the organization makes the change it makes.

It’s 100% true that institutional funders are very interested in how organizations do their work. Institutional funders are often experts in the field, so when you tell them your programs & approach, the Grantmaking Officer has the knowledge & context to immediately understand why your programs & approach are valuable and worth supporting.

In fact, a grants officer might have proposals from five similar organizations on their desk on any given day. In that context, how the organization does its work is vitally important.

On the other hand, individual donors are usually not experts in the field. They don’t have the knowledge or context that helps them understand why your programs and approach are valuable. And these non-experts tend to value different things about your work than institutional funders value.

So the question, “What do individual donors value about our work?” is one that every nonprofit should be asking itself.

And for what it’s worth, in our experience individual donors are more interested in funding what you make happen. They are interested in the results of your approach. They want to fund the change you make.

For example, a nonprofit that provides preschool to underserved families should say, “Will you give a gift to send one child to preschool” instead of saying “Will you support Uplifting Kids, our program that takes children from 3-5 and…”

Share results like “13 underprivileged women graduated from college because of you” and “the fall theatre season was a smashing success thanks to you.”

Share specifics like, “You can help a child in outer Mongolia get the medical care they need” instead of “You can give a child hope at the end of the road.”

You get it.

Is there room to mention your programs, approach, and analogies in your fundraising? Sure. They are a small part of what makes up your brand.

But your fundraising to individual donors will immediately start working much better if you start to focus on what your donor’s gift will do instead of how your organization will do it.

The Amount of the Match

Steven Screen | September 2, 2025August 27, 2025Ask

Here’s a super tactical, deep-cut of a post for you. Save or bookmark this for the next time you have a matching grant to use in email or the mail.

Specifically, this post is about how to communicate the amount of matching funds you have.

Most pieces of fundraising always mention “there is a match” and the “amount of the match” in the same breath throughout the letter. You don’t want to do that.

The fact that you have a match, and the amount of the match, are two distinct pieces of information. And one of them is far more important than the other.

Here are the rules of thumb that we try to live by…

Guiding Principles

It’s the match itself that makes people respond, not the amount of the match. Therefore, the amount of the match is not a piece of information we want to over-communicate or over-emphasize.
The amount of the matching funds only needs to be mentioned once in the email or letter. Sharing the amount honors the provider of the match, and lets donors know that the funds are limited.
Include the amount of the match on the landing page and/or the reply card. Do this so that donors who don’t have the letter or email will still see that the funds are limited. But remember that other copy points like “the donor’s gift doubles” and “what the gift will do/fund” and “the deadline” are more important for creating a response than the amount itself.

Specific Guidelines

Even though you should mention the match itself early and often, mention the amount of the match just once in the email or letter.
Specifically, mention the amount of the match the second time the match is mentioned in the body of the email or letter.
- For example, in the context of a letter I will highlight that there is a match on the outer envelope, in the upper right corner/johnson box, and in the first three or four paragraphs of the letter. Then, the second time the match is mentioned in the letter, I include the amount of the match. (This usually happens 1/2 or 3/4 the way down the first page of the letter.)
If you want to mention the amount again on the second page, fine. But do it at least three paragraphs before the end of the letter. Don’t mention the amount in the PS.

Edge Cases

If the amount of the match is so large that it’s almost a news item of its own, mention the amount of the match more often. For instance, say you’re a small organization and you’re given $500,000 in matching funds. By all means, mention it more than once.
- But remember – for the donors reading your letter or email, it’s still usually more important that “their gift will be doubled” than “how big your match is.”
When using email or social to promote a match, mention the amount more often when the matching funds are almost gone. As in, “There are only $570 in matching funds left, give now to have your gift doubled!”
Sometimes the amount of the match is very important to the person / Foundation / Organization that has given it. If you need to mention that amount more often for them, no problem.

I hope these rules of thumb help you raise even more money the next time you have a matching grant!

Who Is Shining?

Steven Screen | August 28, 2025August 27, 2025Ask

You know games like Monopoly or Uno or Exploding Kittens? Well, of the Top 5 best-selling games in the world right now, three of them were created by one guy.

His name is Elan Lee. He is one of the top “game designers” of our generation.

And here’s what Elan said recently when talking about creating games:

“We do not make games that are entertaining. We make games that make the players entertaining.”

Read that quote again. Seriously. I had to read it three times before I really understood that second sentence.

He wants players to have the feeling of, “I was fun to be with, and the people I played with were fun” – not “that game is so fun.” He knows that if the players feel great about themselves when playing the game, they will want to play again.

Put another way, he wants the people playing the game to shine, not the game itself.

This idea perfectly maps over to fundraising.

Think about your organization’s fundraising to individual donors for a second. And think about your donors as “the people playing your game.” Does your fundraising make the people playing your game shine, or does your fundraising make your organization shine?

For instance, is your fundraising to individual donors mostly about your organization, mostly about the great things you’ve already done, and then asks your donors to support your work? If so, you’re making your organization shine.

But fundraising to individual donors is a lot like human relationships: if you can make someone feel good about themselves, they are likely to feel good about you.

Helping a person feel and be great is a surer path to relationship than telling them that you are great.

There are millions of people playing Elan Lee’s games because he designed the games to make the players shine. If you’d like to have more people donating to your organization, design your fundraising to help your donors shine.

Embrace the ‘In Between’

Steven Screen | August 21, 2025August 18, 2025Ask

The time in between when you make a fundraising ask, and when you start to receive gifts, is tough.

You’ve completed your work. You’ve thought it through. There’s nothing you can do to make it better and then of course you start to worry. What if there’s a typo? What if the link goes to the wrong page? What if, as the people at your event pick up their giving forms, they aren’t inspired?

But also, it’s a time of excitement and expectation. You can’t wait to have people react to it, to hear what questions they have, to see the money start to come in.

And you never know whether it’s going to work. (Well, when it’s the 15^th time you’ve done a Back To School campaign and they all work great, you are pretty sure. But you still don’t know.)

And after the “in between” tension of waiting, there’s the first gift that comes in 3 minutes after you send the e-appeal. There’s the long-lapsed major donor who calls after receiving your letter. And sometimes it’s middling results and a realization of what you could have done better. Every once in a great while it’s just mostly silence.

Always exciting. Sometimes a little stressful.

This tension and expectation “in between” will always be a part of trying to grow your impact. Because if you want to grow, you need to talk to more people than you can talk to one-to-one. Which means that for the life of your organization you’re always going to be making asks of groups, and sending out letters & emails, and then experiencing the “in between.”

Embrace it.

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.

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.