Tag: writing

Want to See Expertise in Action – and Steal Ideas for Your Organization?

Steven  |  Ask
Direct mail fundraising.

The following is a guest post from John Lepp of Agents of Good in Toronto.

It’s a tour (de force) through a successful direct mail package. John calls out 26 different ideas that you can use for your organization’s direct mail appeals. (Many can be used for e-appeals as well.)

John and his business partner, Jen Love, know their stuff. This is well worth your time!

The summer (in North America anyhow) tends to be a quiet time for sending out mail appeals.

They can be a little hit or miss.

Late this spring, we were working on a June mailing for STEGH Foundation (who I wrote about this past January and their YE appeal).

And like the mailings before it, we applaud Amanda Campbell and the whole team at STEGH for going the extra mile for their appeals and their donors.

I worked with Rachel Zant on this appeal and we wanted to share the 26 ideas that you can steal right now to make your next appeal more successful.

I’ll go first!

Outer Envelope

  1. Was a 9”x6” envelope. Testing tells us that almost anything other than a white #10 will do better in the mail.
  2. It was closed face. It didn’t have a window. Makes it look more like personal mail than using a window.
  3. We asked the letter signer, Jacqueline Bloom, to hand write her name and return address for us and we scanned that in and put it on the outer. No logo, no focus on this PMS colour or this specific font. This makes the outer look more personal from Jacqueline to the donor. Which is the point. Obviously.
  4. We used a personalized mail indicia. Testing has shown us that a commemorative stamp > first class generic stamp > visual indicia > standard indicia > meter postage…
  5. We used an image of lilacs in the indicia. Anyone in southern Ontario would know what that is and instantly be able to smell them since they are everywhere and gorgeous at this time of year. All of these things add up to a highly engaging and ‘openable’ envelope.

All of these things add up to a highly engaging and ‘openable’ envelope.

Next is the letter.

  1. It was designed to look like a personal letter from Jacqueline to me, the donor. Personalized, indented, lots of white space, hardly any ‘design’ and used a large serif font.
  2. Emphasis. Look at what is bolded and underlined. Some donors will only read or look at these things and make a decision to give or not. Make sure everything that you highlight will keep them engaged or move them to give.
  3. We cut off the last paragraph on page one. I know a lot of people who HATE this. Think it’s a mistake. It isn’t. It’s done so the donor will flip the letter over to keep reading.
  4. We also used a helpful “Please turn over…” written by Jacqueline as well.
  5. We included a photo of Jacqueline by her signature so donors could envision who was talking to them in the appeal. Humans give to humans and we are constantly trying to remind donors that they are talking to other humans.
  6. Jacqueline’s signature is very clear. You can see she took the time to write it out cleanly so it is readable. This very small thing does send visual clues to your donor – that you CEO or ED isn’t so important that they don’t have the time to ensure that their name is written cleanly.

The reply form.

  1. It is full size. 8.5” x 11”.
  2. It is personalized for me. The donor.
  3. The gift array was also personalized to my previous giving.
  4. We included an option for giving $198,000 – which is what we needed to raise. Doing this might seem a bit cheeky (and it is) but there have been instances where donors have checked that box or at the very least give a little more than what they tend to since they actually know what you are going to do with their gift.
  5. It has a ton of white space.
  6. If a donor wanted to give online or by phone, we made it easy to figure out how to do that or who to talk to!

Finally, we added a lift note.

  1. Lift notes of almost any type tend to do just that – lift response. Try adding something that rounds out the case or adds a little more detail to the appeal in some way.
  2. We decided to add a photo of the thing we were raising funds for.
  3. We had Jacqueline write out the message, which makes it feel far more personal than just type setting it.
  4. We also included a business reply envelope, postage paid, for the donor to send their gift back in.

Rachel’s perspective and 5 bonus tips:

This letter started off as a bit of a struggle for me, I have to admit. I’d already written a great letter for this appeal – asking donors to fund a new ventilator. It was a slam-dunk, highly emotional, compelling letter about the most basic of all human needs: the need to breathe.

But then we found out the ventilator had already been funded. Back to square one.

We learned the hospital urgently needed to fund a new C-Arm. It didn’t sound all that exciting at first – not after a letter about a new ventilator during COVID. However, our amazing contact, Amanda, hooked me up to an interview with a wonderful hospital staff person who was able to tell me in great detail just how vital this piece of equipment actually was.

The ever-talented John Lepp suggested I imagine the sounds this machine might make (or not be making). And from there, it was pretty easy to start writing.

Here are my top five tips and takeaways:

  1. Start with YOU! You’ll notice I started the first sentence off with a “you”. Sure, the lead would still have been compelling without it – but the “you” draws the reader in to become a part of the scene. The next few sentences set that scene up in vivid detail.
  2. Short and sweet. I purposely started off with short sentences that are easy to read and scan. You want your donor to keep on reading until they get to the ask! You’ll also notice the lift note copy is very short too – just a handwritten note on the back of a photo.
  3. Ask for one thing. The ask is very direct, urgent and for one thing only! It clearly explains the machine and the need, and that’s it.
  4. Tangibility. I did the math and divided the cost of the machine by the number of donors receiving this appeal and it worked out to a nice ‘affordable’ amount for your average person, so that became our first ask amount. I’ve used this approach in other letters and it’s worked out well.
  5. Be consistent. The “Yes-line” or CTA on the reply form reiterates the ask in the letter. It’s not the same generic line used in every single reply form sent out. All the pieces in this package are related to the same subject.

We decided to share this appeal since on the surface, it’s one of those not too sexy, a bit boring and standard appeals you all should be doing but don’t take the time to since you are in a rush to get to whatever is next in your schedule or focusing on the shiny other thing someone in the office is waving around.

This appeal only dropped a few weeks ago but is performing very well and strangely, is reactivating some long lapsed donors at a surprising rate. (Donors who haven’t given in 6 to 7 years are responding at 4.2%!!!!)

If you want to talk about this appeal more or how we can make your appeals stronger this fall, please reach out anytime to chat!

John has a book coming out soon (which I will absolutely be reading). Sign up for their newsletter on their website if you’d like to hear when it releases!

Two Letters in One

Steven  |  Ask
Write a letter.

The previous post introduced readers to a big idea:

Successful direct mail appeals tend to be written to communicate the main message in a) just the areas a donor is likely to see as they glance at your letter, and b) in the letter as a whole.

Why? Because a large percentage of your donors will just glance at your letter and make a decision for whether to give – or not. And you want your letter to be effective for both “Glancers” and for people who read the whole thing.

So how do you write a letter that works for Glancers and Readers?

It looks something like this:

  • The top-center or top-right corner of the letter contains a short blurb about the Need or about what the donor’s gift will do to help.
  • The first three-ish paragraphs tend to summarize the whole letter. They share why the donor’s gift is needed, what the donor’s gift will accomplish, and ask the reader to send in a gift today.
  • The middle section of the letter tends to go more in-depth. It shares more details about why the letter is being written, perhaps shares a story that illustrates the need for the donor to take action, and shares a bit more about what the organization does in situations like this.
  • The last couple of paragraphs tend to repeat what was said in the first three paraphs.

The Result

This results in a letter that “makes the whole case” in just the first few paragraphs. This ensures that almost anyone who picks up the letter will know what it’s about – which results in more gifts. Think of it as making half of your donors understand more about what their gifts help do – who wouldn’t want to make that improvement?!?

This results in a letter that can sound repetitive to internal audiences because it repeats the main ideas in a couple places. But the vast majority of donors (the audience for the letter!) don’t experience the letter this way. To donors, it sounds like a focused letter about something they care about.

This results in a letter that doesn’t “sound like us” – because if you’re going to summarize the whole case in three short paragraphs you don’t have time to talk the way the experts in your organization normally talk. But remember, if your letter doesn’t “sound like you” I think you should experience “not sounding like you” as a positive, not a negative.

Your Next Letter

The next time you write and design a letter, first go look at the heat map. Remind yourself (and anyone involved with approving the letter) that you’re writing two letters in one.

If you can make your letter work for both Glancers and Readers, you’ve done a great service to your organization and beneficiaries.

How? Because you’ve lowered the barrier to giving a gift. Instead of requiring a person to read the whole letter to know what you’re writing about, you’ve made it possible for Glancers to know – in just a heartbeat or two – why you’re writing them today and what they can do about it.

Do that and a surprising number of Glancers will send you a gift.

And your regular Readers will still send you their gifts.

You will raise more money and do more good.

You will have sent 2 letters in 1.

Lessons from a “Heat Map”

Steven  |  Ask
Heat map.

The graphic above is what’s called a “heat map.” It tracks where reader’s eyes looked as they read this piece of direct mail fundraising. It also tracks the order in which the reader looked at each area.

There’s a LOT this can teach an organization about how to succeed in fundraising through the mail and email…

The “Heat Map” Lessons

Not all heat maps look exactly the same. But they generally look like this one, and they all teach the same lessons:

  • Most donors don’t read the whole thing
  • Most donors don’t read your letters in order – they “skip around”
  • Large type, and type in the upper right corner, will get more attention
  • They tend to focus on the beginning and the end
  • They are more likely to read words on the left side of the page than on the right side of the page

Many people at nonprofits find this news distressing.

I find it powerful.

Because once you know how direct mail works, you can use it to raise more money for your cause than you’re currently raising.

The Big Takeaway

So what do you do with this information?

Write your next appeal with the knowledge that you’re writing two letters in one:

  • One complete fundraising appeal needs to fit in the green areas (more or less). Because most people will scan your letter and decide whether to give a gift – or not – only by looking at the green areas. Your ‘letter in the green areas’ needs to contain everything a donor needs to know to decide whether to give you a gift today.
  • And the entire letter, from start to finish, needs to make sense for the minority of people who will read the whole letter and decide whether to give a gift or not.

The big idea here is that even though you only write one letter, it’s written and designed to work for BOTH groups of your donors.

The most effective direct mail appeals are written and designed to get the main message across in both the green areas and in the rest of the letter.

To do this well requires a particular style of writing. It’s a style that can be learned.

The tricky part – in my opinion – is to get people who don’t prefer that style of writing to see the reason for it and the benefits of it.

What To Do Now

So here’s the question: are your organization’s letters written and designed to get the main message across to both groups?

If your organization is writing and designing only for donors who read the whole thing, you can be raising a LOT more money.

If that’s you, here are the steps I’d follow. Make sure that the “powers that be” at your organization know about:

  1. Heat maps and the lessons they teach
  2. How you have two groups of readers
  3. How it’s more inclusive to write letters that work for both groups
  4. And how writing for both groups will raise you more money because you’re multiplying how many people receive your message.

In the next post, I’ll talk about how to write an appeal that works for both groups.

If this were a normal post, I’d go ahead right now and share how to write this type of appeal. But I find that it’s not the “tactic” of writing for both groups that holds organizations back from doing it.

What holds them back is either the belief that it doesn’t apply to their organization, or that they don’t like that style of fundraising letter (or email).

So let’s just sit for a couple of days with the idea that there’s a style of fundraising appeal that’s written only for people who will read the whole thing. And if that’s the style your organization is using, in my experience your message is not reaching a very large percentage of your donors, and you’re not raising as much money (and doing as much good) as you could be.

Context is Everything

Steven  |  Ask
Context

Context is everything in fundraising. 

A conversation with a long-time major donor whose child was impacted by your organization’s work is different than a conversation with a potential major donor you’re meeting for the first time.

We all intuitively get this.  And we modify our writing / behavior / messaging accordingly.

But when creating mass donor fundraising, nonprofits raise a lot less money because they forget this lesson in all sorts of little ways.

Take a look at these two examples.

  • Some organizations call the people they help “our clients.”  That’s defining the helped people based on the organization’s relationship with them. 
  • Saying “Will you support our work?” make sense (and feels powerful) from an organization’s point of view.  But it’s defining the work based on the organization’s relationship to it.

The first rule of persuasion is, “You cannot take a person where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are.”

So you want to start with the donor’s context – you want to meet the donor where the donor is.

So instead of saying, “our clients,” you might say, “people suffering from PTSD who need counselling.”  By naming what it is you’re helping with – rather than using the internal shorthand of “our clients” – you’ve “met the donor where they are.”

Instead of asking donors to support your work, ask them to “help a person suffering from PTSD.”  Asking donors to “right wrongs” or “fight injustices” will always be more effective than asking them to support your organization.

Here’s another example from a piece of fundraising I saw the other day.  The organization said this:

  • Please help stop human trafficking, your gift will support our organization’s work.

But don’t you think they would raise more money (and stop more trafficking) if they said this?

  • Please help stop human trafficking, your gift will help keep a young girl safe.

To a donor, it’s more important to “keep a girl safe” than it is to “support an organization.”

The Key Realization

It’s powerful to realize that most donors care more about the issue you’re working on than they care about your organization.

Why?  It helps you remember that even though your donors serve your organization through their giving, you’re also serving donors by giving them an opportunity to do something about a cause they care about.

And when you remember that you’re serving donors, you’re more likely to go to their context – to “meet them where they’re at.”

When you use a context that makes more sense to donors, you serve donors more effectively and, as a result, you raise more money.

A Short Note for Writers

Steven  |  Report

Here’s a tip our writers use as they work on donor communications:

Use verb tense to help take your donors on a journey.

And here’s what that looks like:

  • When Asking for support (appeals, e-appeals, events) use the future simple tense to describe what the donor’s gift will do: “Your gift will help…”
  • When Thanking for a gift (receipt letters, thank you notes) use the present continuous tense: “Your gift is helping…”
  • When Reporting back to donors (newsletters, e-news) use the past simple tense: “Your gift helped…”

It’s a subtle – but powerful – way of communicating to a donor that their gift matters and that it made a difference.


This post is excerpted from the Better Fundraising e-book “Storytelling for Action.” Download it for free, here. 

How to Make Good “Fundraising Bets”

Steven  |  Repeat
Statistics

At the beginning of your fundraising career – or when you start doing more direct response fundraising than you have in the past – you need to make “bets” on what you think your donors will be most likely to fund.

You’re writing an e-appeal and wondering, “Should I talk about this program, or that program?”

You’re writing an appeal letter and wondering, “Should I ask donors to fund this, or to fund that?”

Each decision is a bet.

The more bets you make, if you pay attention to the results, the better you’ll get at making bets. And ultimately, the better you get at making bets, the more money your e-appeals, appeals, newsletters, and events will raise.

The way to get better at this is for your organization is to practice. 

Let me give you an example.  It’s an outlier for most of us, but it makes the point.

My mentor spent his career doing direct response fundraising for some of the biggest nonprofits in the country in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, including most of the national Christian nonprofits.

True story: by the end of his career, he had sent so many pieces of direct mail, to so many of the lists available, that he could make accurate predictions for how each letter would perform.

He would hold the mockup of the letter in his hand, look at the offer, and look at the writing and the design.  Then he would look at the mailing list that it was being mailed to.  Cultivation, acquisition, didn’t matter – he could tell you with relative certainty how many people would respond, what the average gift would be, etc.

I walked into his office once and he was concentrating so hard he didn’t notice me for a couple minutes.  He was as “in the zone” as it’s possible to be.  I watched him write some numbers in the margins of a printed-out spreadsheet, then I asked him what he was doing.

He said, “I’m writing down my predictions for how each letter to each mailing list is going to perform.” 

Here’s the amazing thing: he was usually correct to within a 10th of a percentage point on response rate, and within a dollar or two on average gift size.

It was remarkable.  It was otherworldly.

He was able to do it because he had done it so many times before.  He was very, very good at making “bets” for what an organization should talk about, how they should talk about it, and who they should talk about it to.

And when he was wrong – when one of his predictions didn’t match up with what actually happened, he would say, “Huh, I wonder what I missed?”  And then he’d look at the letter and the list to figure out where he had gone wrong, so that his next bet was more accurate.  So that his next bet raised more money for whatever nonprofit he was serving.

You and your organization can get great at knowing what to talk about, how to talk about it, and who to talk about it to. 

But you have to practice.  A lot.

It’s not a gift, not a talent, not an ability.  It’s an acquired skill.

An Experiment in Photography Class

Steven  |  Ask
Photography Class

A quick story from Atomic Habits by James Clear…

  • “ON THE FIRST day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film “Beginning Photography” students into two groups.

    Everyone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the “quantity” group. They would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on.

    Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be in the “quality” group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a nearly perfect image.

    At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.”

The Lesson for Fundraisers

In my experience, the best way to raise more money via email and the mail isn’t to produce great fundraising, it’s to produce more fundraising.

Two pretty good appeal letters will usually result in more money for your mission than one “perfect” appeal letter.

And because you know you can ask more often, this approach is available to you.  Today.

(If you react negatively to the idea of asking more, please read the post I just linked to.  It’s written especially for you.)

The “two is better than one” approach is so successful for smaller nonprofits because it forces us to push aside perfectionism and fundraise in the real world, where practice, experience and failure are the best teachers.

You Are Fundraising in a Golden Age

For small organizations, the only real cost to sending out another email is the time it takes to write, format, program and send the email.

This was not possible 20 years ago. 

When I was beginning to practice all of this in the 90’s, it cost at least a couple thousand bucks to learn something because email wasn’t feasible for smaller orgs.

Think how much SLOWER the pace of learning was, and how much HIGHER the cost was to learn.

Compare that to today.  If you want, in the next three months you could learn what took me three years to learn at the beginning of my career.

You just need to practice.  It’s available to you.  An organization could start this afternoon, if they want to.

Three Editing Principles

Steven  |  Ask
Editing

In my first job as a fundraising writer, my mentor regularly and rigorously edited my work. 

It was painful. 

But I’m forever grateful because he always explained the “why” behind the edits.  And over time I became a more effective writer.

In an effort to “pass it on,” here are three edits I made in the last week.  Hopefully seeing the “before” and the “after” – and knowing why the edit was made – will help you in the same way it helped me…

Start with the Most Important Info

Original copy:
“Today, you have an incredible opportunity. Thanks to the generosity of [company name], your gift will be TRIPLED up to $40,000.”

Edited Copy:
“Your gift will be TRIPLED up to $40,000! What an incredible opportunity to increase your impact, thanks to the generosity of [company name].”

Reasoning:
Put the most important information first.

The example paragraph contains three ideas: the donor has an opportunity, the matching funds are provided by a company, and the donor’s gift will triple.  Of those three, the most important idea *to the donor* is that their gift will triple.  Arrange the ideas in the paragraph so that the most important idea is first. 

You never want to put important information at the end of a paragraph. A significant percentage of people will scan your letter or email (instead of reading it).  And “scanners” often don’t read more than the first few words of a paragraph. 

“Don’t bury the lede” is in the Donor Communications Constitution for a reason.

Avoid Ambiguity

Original copy:
“Her mom’s ability to work has been impacted by the pandemic.”

Edited Copy:
“Her mom hasn’t been able to work as much because of the pandemic.”

Reasoning:
Avoid words and phrases that can mean multiple things.

The phrase “ability to work has been impacted” is value neutral; the ‘impact’ could be either good or bad.  But the job of this sentence (and the paragraph it resides in) is to provide evidence that a gift is needed today.  The edited copy makes it clearer, faster, that the situation is a negative one. 

Any time you require a reader to figure out exactly what you mean, you’ve increased the chances they will abandon your email or letter. 

Make It About the Reader

Original copy:
“We still need your help to reach our match goal.”

Edited Copy:
“Your help is still needed, and your gift will be doubled.”

Reasoning:
Donors are more interested in themselves than they are in organizations.

The sentence, “We still need your help to reach our match goal” is mostly about the organization.  It’s the organization that needs help.  It’s the organization’s goal. 

But that sentence can be re-written to be about the reader.  “Your help is needed, and your gift will be doubled.”   And we’ve turned the slightly ambiguous phrase “match goal” into a donor benefit; their gift will be doubled.

Editing your direct response fundraising to make it more about your reader and their interests is a counter-intuitive but proven approach to raising more money.

From Jargon to Generosity

Steven  |  Ask
Jargon

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you understand that when donors open your appeal letters and e-appeals, they don’t read, they skim.

And that when you bold or underline portions of your letter, what you’re really doing is choosing what your donor is most likely to read.

This means you have to make absolutely sure that whatever you’ve bolded or underlined is EASY for your reader to understand.

Now take a look at this highlighted copy from the first page of a letter that recently came across my desk …

  • “Your gift of as little as $44 can provide quality resources for a child at the children’s home.”

What the heck are “quality resources”?

Consequences

Does bolding or underlining a phrase that’s not easy to understand torpedo the letter and cause no one to donate?

No way.

Because if a person reads the whole letter that this sentence was part of, they can figure out what “quality resources” are. And some readers will know what the organization is referring to.

But does bolding or underlining anything that’s not immediately crystal clear make the reader have to work harder to understand?

Yes.

And the harder you make your reader work, the fewer donations you’re going to get.

Make Generous Choices

Keep your reader in mind when you write and design your fundraising.

Make these two generous choices:

  1. Use words and phrases that your reader will immediately understand. It’s generous to cross the gap to your reader’s level of understanding (as opposed to making your reader cross the gap to your level of understanding).
  2. Use your bolding and underlining (and other forms of visual emphasis) to emphasize text that summarizes your whole letter. In other words, a reader should be able to read just the emphasized text and know what your letter/email is about and what’s being asked of them. It’s a generous act to write and design your letter/email so that a reader doesn’t have to read the whole thing to get the point.

So… does your organization have any phrases that are equivalent to “quality resources”? Any phrases that you use often, even though they are a bit of barrier because most donors don’t quite know what they mean?

What’s a clearer way your organization could phrase them to be more generous to your readers and donors?

After all, your donors are extraordinarily generous to your organization. How could your organization’s writing and fundraising be a little more generous to donors?