Future Fundraising Now

5 questions never to ask in your fundraising

Asking someone as question is a time-honored way to strike up a conversation. What about those Seahawks? or Cold enough for you? People ask questions like these because they can work to start a conversation.

I think that's why so many fundraising messages start with a question.

They shouldn't. Not usually. Here are some question types that almost never work:

1. Simple yes or no. Have you ever driven a motorcycle? If the answer is yes, you might have a connection. But if it's no, you're off on the wrong foot.
2. Boring yes questions. Have you ever eaten in a restaurant? A yes to an obvious questions isn't worth much if it's a boring answer. Your question needs to evoke passion in some way.
3. Well, duh questions. Are you against small children dying of painful, preventable diseases? This type of question gets you an easy yes, but probably not much passion. You can sometimes turn this type into a good question if you add an unexpected twist.
4. Head scratcher questions. Have you ever wondered if our capacity-building initiatives are sustainable? Make sure you're speaking your readers' language and framing the issue in ways they care about.
5. "Can you imagine" questions. Can you imagine carrying your adult child 12 miles just to get basic care for a serious injury? The answer to most can-you-imagine questions is no. And when it's yes, it's often a boring yes. Avoid these!

A question that invites an enthusiastic, passionate yes can be a great way to start a message. But it's hard to formulate these.

If you're not sure, don't start a fundraising message with a question.

Jeff's sure-fire outline for effective direct mail fundraising

I recently read a piece of fundraising writing advice: Start with an outline. At first I scoffed. It seemed like an unnecessary extra step. Then I realized, I often use an outline.

It's just that I've been doing this so long the outline is mostly in my head. But it took a long time to get there.

Here's an outline I often use for writing a direct mail piece. It's just the letter, and it's about right for a four-page letter. It would be very tight on anything shorter than that, and it might call for a few added points if the letter is longer than four pages.

There are many other possible outlines. This is just one. Take it as a starting point. I can't guarantee it'll give you a winner, but I can say it has given me winners.

Fundraising Letter Outline

• Introduction: why you're writing to the donor.
• Ask. (Short version.)
• Description of the problem.
• Why the donor's gift is needed now.
• Ask. (Extended version.)
• A story that demonstrates the need, using the life of one person as an example. (One to four paragraphs.)
• Ask.
• Word-picture of the change that'll happen when the donor gives.
• Ask.
• Reminder that this cause is closely connected with the donor's values.
• Ask.
• Conclusion: thank the donor for caring.
• P.S. Ask again.

Discover your fundraising writing preference and save a ton of energy

How do you write fundraising?

Template, or no template?

According to an interesting Monday Morning Memo, Making the Sausage, you are probably one or the other, that is your writing process is one of these:

1. Follow a template and search for the information to fill each of the openings within that template.
2. Gather information and then organize it however you choose.

The post further noted that about half of writers use each method, and that there is no correlation between talent, experience, or anything else and the writing method. It seems to originate in the mind of each writer.

I think I might be a template writer, even though I rarely use an actual template. The templates are in my head, installed there by decades of writing fundraising copy.

Which kind are you?

It might be useful for you to determine. You could save yourself some time and energy not struggling against your true preference. Take a look at yourself and decide. Then see if it works for you.

Tomorrow: One of my templates for fundraising.

13 tips for stronger fundraising

Here's some great help for fundraising writers from Pamela Grow's Blog, at 13 Ways to Write Better Fundraising Asks:

1. Know your audience. Know the people you're asking. Be clear about their demographics. And what's in their heads and hearts. Big hint: They are not you! If you create fundraising that seems persuasive to you, you are likely missing them!
2. Find your best story. Powerful stories that show the problem you're asking the donor to solve are a key ingredient. Find and tell stories. (And a story that's about a problem that's already been solved -- that's probably not the one you need.
3. Let emotion rule. If you are using facts and statistics to make the case, you are not doing your best work. Appeal to the heart.
4. Write music. Write so it's easy, even pleasurable to read. That means it's rhythmic, with varying sentence length, and it sounds good. The best way to know if you're doing that or not: Read your stuff out loud. If it sounds clunky, you'll notice. If you stumble, that's usually a sign that it's awkward.
5. Infuse your letter with gratitude.
6. Put your donor in the picture. Fundraising is not a story about an awesome organization that's doing amazing stuff and hopes to recruit helpers to fund the awesomeness. Fundraising is a story about how a donor can put her values into action via an organization. Fundraising is all about donors.
7. Ask. Early and often. And directly. Don't hint around and talk about "partnering with us" when you mean "give." And a fundraising message that doesn't have a direct and clear ask at least three times is missing the mark.
8. "How long should my letter be?" Short answer: Probably longer. Longer fundraising messages usually do better. If you are struggling to squeeze your direct mail onto a single page, you are probably killing response.
9. One writer. Writing by committee is guaranteed to produce a nasty, incoherent brew that won't raise much money!
10. Outline it. It really helps to start your message with an outline. That helps assure that you get to all the things you need to get to -- most importantly asking several times.
11. Swipe. Pay attention to what other fundraisers are doing. And steal smart. That's what the pros do.
12. KISS Keep it simple, sweetheart.
13. Write drunk. Edit sober. Don't literally write while you're drunk. That doesn't work, despite what Hemingway claimed. (Believe me, I know.) But write quickly, adventurously, even sloppily, not worrying about mistakes, grammar, even logic. Then go back and fix it.

How to avoid hesitant fundraising writing

There are habits we have in speech that make us seem more agreeable -- but when those same habits creep into writing, it makes the writing weak, less clear, hesitant.

Here's a great post at The Publication Coach that can help uncover these speech habits that sneak into writing: Is your writing too hesitant?

• Expressions of uncertainty: I think, perhaps, I believe, or disclaimers like I may be mistaken. Hard to avoid, because they come naturally in speech, but to be avoided in writing.
• Hedges: Weakening words and phrases like sort of, kind of, somewhat.
• Tag questions: Phrases or questions that seek immediate confirmation, like isn’t it? Don’t you agree? These are important in speech. Not so much in writing.
• Intensifiers: Like really and very.

There's an important exception to this that comes up frequently in fundraising writing: When you want your writing to emulate speech. Which is often in our work.

The trick for fundraising writers: Know what writing mode you're in at the moment.

Conversational? Declarative?

Strong fundraising goes back and forth between the two modes. So, as with all writing, be aware of what you're doing in every sentence you write.

What is a great fundraising sentence like?

I came across the following sentence the other day. It took my breath away...

When he was eighteen and was leaving home for the first time, Ralph Wyman was counseled by his father, principal of Jefferson Elementary School and trumpet soloist in the Weaverville Elks Club Auxiliary Band, that life was a very serious matter, an enterprise insisting on strength and purpose in a young person just setting out, an arduous undertaking, everyone knew that, but nevertheless a rewarding one, Ralph Wyman's father believed and said.

It's the opening sentence to the short story, "Will You Please Be Quite, Please?" by Raymond Carver.

It's a stunning sentence. Packed with specific and implied information about the main character.

A great sentence, but not if it were in a fundraising message. At 72 words, it's just too long for easy reading.

With apologies to one of the greatest short story writers of all time, I've edited the sentence as if it were to be in a piece of direct mail. See what you think:

When Ralph Wyman left home for the first time at 18, his father -- an elementary school principal -- had some advice: "Life is a very serious matter. An arduous undertaking, but a rewarding one. A young person just setting out needs strength and purpose. Everyone knows that."

The senseless violence I've committed on that sentence almost makes me physically ill.

But it's a little easier to read now.

My point: There are many different kinds of "good writing." What's great in one context could be awful in another.

A lot of people writing fundraising struggle with this. Because they come from some other type of writing, a different genre that has different conventions and goals than fundraising writing.

Often it's journalism, academic writing, formal business writing, technical writing ...

All of these require skill and study.

But if you bring the skills of these other genres to fundraising, you won't be a good fundraising writer.

Raymond Carver -- an absolute master at his craft -- would have been disastrously bad at fundraising.

(Or maybe not. I've noticed that good writers are usually aware of and in control of voice and conventions; Carver might have been able to modify his "fiction" voice and write amazing fundraising!)

If you learned how to write in a genre other than fundraising (and almost everyone did), you have some re-learning to do before you'll be a great fundraising writer.

There's no shame in that.

The shame is being too inflexible to adapt to the world of fundraising. It's a quick path to frustration and failure.

5 common direct mail fundraising writing mistakes

It's those easy, common mistakes that make fundraising fail. Here are some things to avoid, from the Bloomerang Blog, at Donation Letters: 5 Scary Writing Mistakes and How to Fix Them:

1. Speaking to the crowd. An appeal letter is a message from one person to one person. You're not addressing an auditorium, so make it personal and direct, the way you would if you were chatting over coffee.
2. Using Olympian language & grammar. Don't steamroll that chatting-over-coffee with formal, high-flown language and complex grammar that makes you sound unfriendly.
3. Guessing who the donor is. Know who the donor is. How much has she given? When did she most recently give? Use the knowledge you have to connect in a relevant way.
4. Muddling the message. You can really only do one thing at a time in fundraising. Don't cram multiple messages into your letter.
5. Forgetting to repeat the ask. If you ask only once, you've not really asked at all. A well-built fundraising letter asks three, four, or more times.

4 fundraising lessons from the whistle-blower

I promise I'm not going into the politics of it, but there's a great lesson for fundraisers in a recent New York Times article: The Whistle-Blower Knows How to Write.

That's right: A writing instructor looked at the whistle-blower's 9-page document with an eye to the quality of the writing. (You can read the actual complaint here.)

Here are the whistle-blower's strengths:

1. The whistle-blower gets right to the point. From the first sentence, you know what they're saying. Your fundraising should be like that: Stay away from verbal warm-ups. Get to the point!
2. The whistle-blower uses subheadings to make sure we can connect the dots. Subheads are smart. Anything that helps skimmers get the point more quickly, including underlines, larger copy, handwritten notes in the margins ... these things help your readers get it -- and that means they are more likely to donate.
3. The whistle-blower gets an A for his topic sentences. The whistle-blower writes in a classic formal style, with long paragraphs that are complete thoughts introduced by tight and clear first sentences. We don't do that in fundraising -- not quite! But periodic strong topic sentences that orient readers to what we're saying: YES. They just happen every few of our super-short paragraphs, not just once at the beginning of each paragraph.
4. The whistle-blower uses active verbs. While moderate use of passive voice is fine, it's best to keep every sentence strong and built around good verbs. That's good writing that will keep readers engaged.

The two types of jargon that gum up fundraising

Jargon is bad for communication.

I know that's easy to say. And a lot of people say it.

But you still find it constantly in fundraising. Those insider professional terms being thrown at donors, like: Food insecure, at-risk youth, capacity building, holistic, civil society ...

It's very simple: these are specialist terms, and only specialists know them. Few of your donors understand such terms, and even fewer are moved by them.

Stay away from those terms.

But there's another kind of jargon that's even more insidious, as pointed out at Clairification: How Jargon Destroys Nonprofit Fundraising & Marketing.

It's those odd phrases we sometimes use to avoid being specific when we're asking for money -- but we're either uncomfortable with asking ... or we have brand guidelines that insist on a blanket of idealistic abstraction around our communications. Phrases like:

• Change your world today
• Restore hope
• Empower a child

These phrases are no better than the technical jargon that can trap us.

To communicate clearly and raise more funds, keep these two anti-jargon rules in mind:

1. If it's professional terminology, don't use it.
2. If it's abstract, don't use it.

Use plain, concrete, non-specialist language all the time!

Book Review: A stylebook that will actually improve your writing style

Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer

I'm no fan of stylebooks in general. Many of them do more harm than good to quality writing. (Like the awful Strunk and White.)

But here's a good one. It's packed with smart writing advice from a seasoned copy editor who has only a few chips on his shoulder.

Right at the beginning, Dreyer makes it clear that style rules exist only to make your writing better. Not to uphold the sniffy peeves of English teachers and grammar fanatics. And, right away, he dispatched a handful of "nonrules: -- that is, commonly enforced rules that are "unhelpful pointlessly constricting, feckless, and useless." He gives us permission to break these nonrules:

• Never Begin a Sentence with "And" or "But."
• Never Split an Infinitive.
• Never End a Sentence with a Preposition.
• Contractions Aren't Allowed in Formal Writing.
• The Passive Voice Is to Be Avoided.
• Sentence Fragments. They're Bad.
• A Person Must Be a "Who."
• "None" Is Singular and, Dammit, Only Singular.
• "Whether" Must Never Be Accompanied by "Or Not."
• Never Introduce a List with "Like."

There's no telling how much writing has been rendered lifeless because someone believed these nonrules must be followed. If you believe any of them -- or if you have a colleague with a red pen who believes -- stop it right now!

(I should admit here that I believe in one of the above nonrules. Not telling which. I know it's just a peeve of mine, but it will never cross my desk. If I encounter it in your writing, I will endeavor to leave it alone, assuming the writing is good otherwise!)

The book is worth the price for the above list alone, but there's a lot more. Mainly well-reasoned thoughts on why you might choose one word, phrase, or punctation over another. (Including this gem: Only godless savages eschew the series comma.) It's written in a human, non-sniffy tone that will make you like the author, and it's often laugh-out-loud funny. How often do you find that in a stylebook?

If you're a writer, or you deal with other people's writing, get this book. It will help!

Available at Amazon: Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.