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.
The following is a hand-picked guest post from Samantha Swain. Enjoy, and you can read more about Samantha below.
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In times of uncertainty, the most powerful action nonprofits can take isn’t to retreat, it’s to gather.
The Big Idea: Community as Resilience Strategy
The organizations that will thrive in challenging times aren’t those with the most resources, but those that have woven the strongest web of human connection around their purpose. Your most valuable asset isn’t your funding or even your programs – it’s the community that believes in your mission.
When people physically gather around shared purpose, something transforms. Science confirms what we intuitively know: face-to-face connection builds trust, generates empathy, and creates the neural foundation for collective action.
Building Your Longer Table
In a world pulling apart at the seams, building a longer table isn’t just a concept – it’s essential. Every time you bring people together around your mission, you create:
Sustainable fundraising rooted in relationship rather than transaction
Deeper volunteer commitment grounded in belonging, not obligation
Responsive programs shaped by community wisdom
Authentic advocacy powered by diverse voices
Your Immediate Next Step
This month, host one gathering designed explicitly to extend your organization’s table. Structure it not for efficiency but for connection. Create space for stories that reveal why your mission matters to each person present. Start small like a dinner with your board, a tour with a donor.
Remember: In times of scarcity, we must resist the urge to contract. Instead, build your table so long and so welcoming that people can’t help but be drawn to your work—not just for what you do, but for the community you create.
The most resilient organizations aren’t building higher walls. They’re building longer tables.
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Steven says, “Samantha Swaim has more than 20 years of event planning and fundraising expertise. She is the co-author of Planning a Successful Major Donor Event, is the founder of the annual Elevate fundraising event conference scheduled for March 3-4, 2026 and is the co-host of The Fundraising Elevator podcast – which I recently appeared on: check it out!”
The following is a hand-picked guest post from Tom Ahern. Enjoy, and you can read more about Tom below.
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Do low grade scores read as dumbing down?
If you write an appeal at the 6th-grade level, you’re not targeting kids. You’re helping busy adults “get” your ask as fast as possible.
[The subhead above was written at the 6th-grade level, as scored by Flesch-Kincaid. It has a reading ease score of 76 out of 100, far ABOVE the desired minimum of 55. Did you recoil? Did you instantly think: “Dammit, Tom. Stop talking down to me!”]
——
There it was… in my email in-box: the Bat signal … from a friend and colleague…
Hi Tom,
I have a work problem and need your help, please!
When I got to [insert charity name here; it’s in NYC], they were passing the foundation’s quarterly impact reports verbatim on to major donors.
My boss saw that I have the comms knack and let me take over editing these to make them “individual-donor friendly” – mainly choosing one impact story and highlighting a person receiving benefit from our programs, with photo, etc…
Now we have a new VP of Development. The guy who writes these foundation reports directly reports to her… and she is now letting him stick his nose into what we are doing. He has no training in fundraising.
While I was at a doctor appointment a few weeks ago, my junior colleague agreed to share the draft he and I had been working on with this guy, who proceeded to torture him for 45 minutes and tell him how stupid he was for using low Flesch-Kincaid grade scores as our benchmark. To summarize the marcomm rant: “Our donors are not stupid” etc.
You’ve heard it all before.
So I have a very small window in which to educate this ignoramus. I have a big folder of stuff I’ve accumulated over the years plus books.
Do you have any sort of executive summary of Tom’s laws that I can share? If not, I can provide the kit and kaboodle to my colleague, and he can distill it down.
Best, [name deleted]
PS: I can’t believe this is happening.
——
My reply to [name deleted]…
Preach, sister. (And so sorry!)
Clearly, your marcomm guy doesn’t know what he doesn’t yet know. And weren’t we all in those shoes once upon a time?
It’s almost an unbelievable story, after all.
Who would guess that the Flesch-Kincaid readability scales are one of the best-kept trade secrets of the world’s most successful direct-mail copywriters?
Or who would guess that these same Flesch-Kincaid ease-of-reading scales dictate how the U.S. Navy writes its maintenance manuals? Keeping that sophisticated machinery humming are bright, recent high-school graduates. Hey, sailor: Got a problem? Here’s how to fix it quickly. Even though you’re not a nuclear scientist.
So, my friend, here’s an excerpt from a book I compiled from experts around the world: If Only You’d Known….
If you’re looking for the equivalent to “Tom’s laws,” this is as close as I have.
Chapter 15
What’s the preferred “grade level” of reading for a direct mail appeal?
[ ] 6th grade [ ] 9th grade [ ] 12th grade
Grade level and speed reading
[Answer to the quiz above] You’re not sure, right? Well, what if I told you that this particular direct mail appeal hoped to raise donations from alumni of a prestigious university?
In that case, you might assume “12th grade.” The thinking: write at the same grade level as a person’s educational attainment.
Otherwise you commit the insult of “writing down.”
Not exactly
“Grade level,” as measured by the standard Flesch-Kincaid readability scoring system,[1] has nothing to do with your intelligence or how far you went in school.
The system scores just one thing: How quickly my brain can move through your prose. Below, on the left, are the readability scores for a successful direct mail letter.
On the right are the readability scores for a university-written case for support. The one on the left will be a brisk read for everyone. The one on the right will be a slog for everyone, including the Ph.Ds.
You decide.
Your writing can bring me clarity and quick understanding. Or your writing can bring me labor. Which do you think is more “reader convenient”… or appreciated?
Steven says, “Tom Ahern was described by the New York Times as “…one of the country’s most sought-after creators of fundraising messages.” Tom has what I’d call the industry-leading newsletter about fundraising. Being mentioned in it was a career highlight for me. You can (and should!) subscribe for free here.”
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.
The following is a hand-picked guest post from Julie Cooper. Enjoy, and you can read more about Julie below.
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Want donors to feel your mission? Stop writing articles. Start setting scenes instead.
Tom Ahern once said to me, “Most copywriters are frustrated novelists.”
I was intrigued.
Tom went on to explain that at a conference some years ago, he met up with several other world-class fundraising copywriters at a bar, and they compared notes and stories over drinks.
That’s when they found they had one thing in common: they’d all written novels. (I guess the “frustrated” part of “frustrated novelist” came from not hitting Stephen King- or J.K. Rowling-level jackpot literary success.)
Huh. Interesting.
Brett has written novels…
And I’ve helped revise and edit them…
It struck me: this common denominator is not a mere coincidence. It’s essential to fundraising writing success.
You have to know how to put your donors right in the middle of a scene. That way, they’ll really FEEL the urgency, really SEE the need, really WANT to help.
Turns out, you don’t actually have to write a novel. You just have to understand what novelists know in their bones…
People are storytelling creatures.
Our lives are stories. We can never get enough.
This is why:
Stories bind us over the dinner table.
Stories connect us over social media.
Stories glue us to our screens (and books and…).
Stories help us “live a thousand lifetimes.”
Stories guide us away from bad futures and toward good ones.
Stories change the world.
A good story is immersive. You feel like you’re there.
So how can you put your donors “on the scene,” where the need is, where they can help?
First, set the scene.
Put your donors in a place and time. Like this:
Second, add sensory details.
Put your donors in a “body” that experiences the world.
Like this:
Third, add interior thoughts.
Put your donors in a mental space. Like this:
Fourth, add emotions.
Put your donors in an emotional place. Like this:
Fifth, add dialogue.
Put your donors in the middle of an exchange. Like this:
If you do all this – if you write vivid scenes worthy of a novel, not dry articles worthy of TheWall Street Journal – you’ll put your donors in the middle of your story.
Your story will become your donors’ story.
Your donors will have a visceral connection to your mission.
They’ll get it. They’ll feel what you feel. They’ll want what you want. They’ll be with you for the long haul.
Now that’s a happy ending.
* * *
Steven says, “This guest post is from Julie Cooper, the ‘fundraising copywriter and donor communications specialist’ who I’m THRILLED to share with you. Julie’s (and her partner Brett’s ) newsletter and blog are full of fun, practical advice.”
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.
Most nonprofits have a “higher ground” understanding of their work and their cause.
And they should! They are experts. They understand the cause they are working on, and they understand the complexities of what needs to be done. They’ve built programs that are effective. Their expertise makes them good at what they do.
But when organizations create fundraising that invites individual donors to join the organization on its higher ground – instead of creating fundraising that meets donors on shared common ground – they put barriers between their donors and giving.
They make their fundraising exclusive.
The hallmarks of higher ground fundraising are things like:
Spending more time explaining the process the organization uses (your programs, or a particular approach) instead of the change in the world that the process makes possible…
Focusing more on the organization itself, and less on the cause or beneficiaries…
Sharing statistics to illustrate the size of the need or the scope of the organization’s work…
Educating the donor about everything that the organization does, rather than focusing on what donors tend to be most interested in…
All while using the organization or sector’s jargon to sound professional.
It’s like higher ground fundraising requires the donor to know about the organization in order for them to help the beneficiaries.
Two Problems
Higher Ground fundraising causes two problems.
First, it raises less money. Every one of the bullets above, in our experience, causes individual donors to give less. Individual donors tend to be more interested in what’s happening with the cause or beneficiaries today, and the change that the donor’s gift will make (or has made). Individual donors tend to be less interested in the organization itself.
The bulleted points above are highly relevant to staff, organizational partners, grant-funding organizations, etc. But they aren’t as relevant to individual donors. Hence the old phrase, “Individual donors give through organizations, not to organizations.”
Second, the “higher ground” approach results in exclusive fundraising. It creates a filter where the people likely to donate are the people who are willing to put in the time, the people who are willing to learn about the organization’s approach, and the people who are willing to speak the way the organization speaks.
Each of these is a barrier that some people will not cross.
From Higher Ground to Common Ground
Do the hard work to make your fundraising simple and inclusive. Have a good offer. Create fundraising for individual donors that any person who cares about your beneficiaries, at any level of understanding, at any reading level, will find relevant.
This means consciously deciding to leave the high ground. It means you’ll have to defend your fundraising from internal audiences who love the high ground and want everyone to join them there.
Here’s why: there are a LOT of people out there who care about your beneficiaries and would like to give a gift to help. There are far fewer people out there who are willing to wade through an education in your work before they can give a gift.
So if your communication and fundraising are always on the higher ground – and inviting donors to join you there – you will remain smaller than you could be. You will remain doing less than you could be.
If your communication and fundraising are aimed at the common ground you share with donors, you will raise more money and have a larger impact.
The preferences are things like “we use this particular phrasing to describe our work” or “we talk about the people we serve in this particular way” or “we believe donors should support us because of X and Y.”
All good things.
But one of the hard parts about creating effective fundraising at smaller nonprofits is that the fundraising is evaluated according to the preferences of the nonprofit.
For instance…
When you create an appeal that uses the particular phrasing that the staff likes, you get kudos from the staff. The piece of fundraising gets approved & sent.
When you create a newsletter that thoroughly describes a program, the program staff give you kudos. The newsletter gets approved & sent.
When you write something that gets your ED’s “voice” exactly right, the ED gives you kudos, and the piece of fundraising is approved & sent.
The problem here is obvious to anyone who has been reading this blog for a while:
Fundraising that makes staff feel good is probably going to raise less money – when a donor is looking at an email on her phone, how she feels about the message is more important than how staff feel about it.
Thoroughly describing a program is probably going to raise less money – when a donor is looking at a newsletter, how it makes the donor feel about her previous giving matters more than how thoroughly the program is described.
Getting your ED’s “voice” right is a total crapshoot – when a donor is reading an appeal, how quickly he knows it’s relevant to his life & values matters so much more than how faithful the writing is to the ED’s “voice.”
Here’s the result of a nonprofit evaluating its fundraising based on its own preferences: more kudos are given to pieces of fundraising that raise less.
One of the lessons that nonprofits learn as they grow larger & better at fundraising is that the preferences of the staff are most likely different than the preferences of donors.
Once organizations realize that, they begin to give kudos not for “matching internal preferences,” but for results like “percent response” and “net revenue” and “average gift size.” They pay less attention to staff preferences, and more attention to donor preferences (as gleaned from fundraising results).
When Nelson Mandela was in prison (for 27 years!) he studied the language of the Afrikaner people who put him in prison.
Mandela shared that “the way to understand people is speak and understand their language.”
Mandela credited his understanding the Afrikaans language with his ability to establish good relationships first with the prison wardens, and later with the Afrikaners who ran South Africa.
Mandela understood the language of the Afrikaners, spoke the language of the Afrikaners, yet advocated for his people.
The same principle is true for highly effective Fundraisers: they understand the language of their donors, speak the language of their donors, yet advocate for the organization’s beneficiaries or cause.
Any time you’re responsible for bridging a gap – whether it’s between different races or between nonprofits and donors – the bridge is more likely to get built if you understand and use the language of the person you’re trying to build it with.
