The Gift of Not Having to Know the Details

When writing appeals, it’s a natural instinct to tell individual donors more about the organization itself.

This results in copy like:

• Founded in 1971, we’ve been…
• Our three pillars are…
• Our program, Uplifting Kids, addresses the needs…

All of this is educating the donor under the belief that “if our donors knew more about us, and knew how competent we are, they would give more.”

However, in 30+ years of looking at fundraising results, what I’ve seen is that appeals raise more money when they educate less.  (The two most successful appeal letters of my career don’t even mention the organization.)

Here’s my interpretation of the data: by eliminating the education, you remove content that is unimportant to a donor’s decision.  This results in appeals where more of the content is relevant, which causes increased giving. 

Put differently: when you remove the noise, the signal is stronger.

Reminder – I’m talking about communicating with individual donors and non-donors in the mail and email.  Not at an event, not at lunch with a major donor, not a tour, etc.

Here’s how I advise nonprofits to think: “It’s a generous act to simplify our mail and email fundraising for individual donors.  They don’t need to need to know the details – that’s what they have us for!  If we get a chance to interact in person or at an event, they are showing interest so it’s appropriate to go into the details.  And if they keep giving faithfully through the mail or email without ever interacting with us another way, that’s OK too.”

Remember, you’re already removing lots of details about your organization from your mail and email fundraising.  You don’t talk to donors about your accounting practices, or whether you own or rent your office space, or your approach to HR. 

So, just remove a few more details about your organization.

When you make the generous act of not requiring donors to know your organization’s details, you unlock more generosity from more donors.