Future Fundraising Now

6 things you need to know about writing great fundraising

Writing fundraising is unlike other kinds of writing. Some of what makes fundraising work would absolutely make your writing teachers heads fly off.

Knowing the difference and breaking the habits instilled in us by other forms of writing is the key to success in fundraising.

Here are some of the startling differences from Hands-On Fundraising, at So you want to write to donors:

1. Kind beats clever. Being clever in your writing can be very satisfying. But it rarely works in fundraising. Your goal is for readers to internalize a need and feel empowered to do something about it. Not to crack a knowing smile or admire the writer. Always stay on the task of encouraging kindness. (Also, humor does not cross generational lines easily. What's clever to you is often opaque to donors.)
   
2. Simple is better than complex. Few donors are going to take the time to understand a complex ideas. Keep fundraising simple and crystal clear.
   
3. People respond to people, not statistics. The part of the brain the engages with statistic is a long way from the part that decides to give away money. If you engage one, the other is left out in the cold. That's why stories move people while statistics turn them away.
   
4. Your words are not as powerful as a great image. A picture is worth a thousand words. Probably more. That means when you have a photo that tells the story, use it. And when you have a photo that doesn't tell your story don't use it!
   
5. People skim. Or skip. Let them. Few of your readers start with the first word and then read everything in order, the way you and I do. Write for skimmers. Make lots of visual entry points by keeping paragraphs short, underlining the most important stuff. And be repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive.
   
6. Helping makes us feel good. It's easy to imagine that donors are annoyed by your appeals. We hear from annoyed donors. But the bigger and more important truth is that donors choose to be donors because it makes their lives better. Every time you go to them with an ask, you're giving them a chance to feel better and be better.
   

The top characteristic of an effective writer is the ability to adapt to the situation you're writing in. Fundraising is different, and knowing the difference is your key to success.

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The secret, almost-magic way to get unstuck when you're writing

Do you sometimes get stuck while writing your fundraising materials?

If you said no, you're fooling yourself.

Everyone gets stuck.

There's no magic formula for getting unstuck, but there's something darn close to magic:

Get up and walk.

Check out this post at the Publication Coach Blog: Why you should walk more if you’re a writer.

There are a ton of reason walking is good for writing. Here's just a bit of it:

When we sit, our brains become leaden. But when we walk, our hearts pump faster and our brains and other organs get more blood and oxygen. Scientists have shown this helps our memories work better and improves our attention.

The gentle exercise of walking also leads to new connections between brain cells, holding at bay the usual decline of brain tissue that comes with age.

It's even better than I knew.

It works for me. It can work for you. The busy season is upon us. Take advantage of the power of walking!

The word that aims your fundraising message at your target

You probably wouldn't enjoy the task somebody at Delta Air Lines got a few weeks ago: Write a message to your long-suffering customers about why things are so messed up right now.

Feels like a lose-lose situation.

This article in Inc.com shows how some brilliant copywriter made it a win-win: Delta Air Lines Just Sent a Brilliant Email to Millions of Passengers. This 1 Word Mattered Most.

That word?

You.

The 740-word message included the word 44 times. That's 6% of the total word-count.

What's good about that? The article proposes two things:

1. It keeps the message on track, focused on the customer's perspective.
   
2. It offers a subtle, rhetorical reassurance to even the casual reader who only skims the message. This isn't about us. It's about you.
   

This is something you can do in your fundraising too.

I don't want to give you the idea that you is some kind of magic talisman that makes your fundraising work. In fact, the CopyOptimizer (the forthcoming online tool from DonorVoice that analyzes fundraising copy and compares it to proven winning copy) assigns no positive value to "you."

I think you is more of an "indicator species." If there's a lot of it, we're probably looking at quality fundraising; if there's not much, something is likely wrong with it.

Because fundraising that works is fundraising that enters the world of the donor, making it about what they can do to make the world a better place. It's about the donor's experience, values, and the impact they can have.

Not a recitation of the excellent qualities of the nonprofit seeking their donations.

It's possible to clearly aim your message at the donor without 6%+ you, but that's difficult. Why make things hard on yourself?

"Shake well" fundraising: Your path to results

You've seen it a zillion times on creamer, fruit juice, or shampoo containers:

SHAKE WELL

You know what it means. You know what to do. It works and you don't even think about it.

But I'll tell you a secret: As effortless as SHAKE WELL is, they didn't get to it quickly or easily.

I made up the story that follows. But I bet I'm not far off from how it really went.

The first time a product came out that needed to be shaken by the customer before use the makers wanted to give their valued customers that direction. Here's what the first draft may have looked like:

In order to precipitate any solids that may have settled during manufacture, shipping, and retail distribution of this quality product, be sure to agitate the contents by rapidly moving back and forth for at least 3-5 seconds, then use immediately.

The person who wrote it had a solid and in-depth understanding of the product and why shaking it well was important. That's why they wrote this "curse of knowledge" version of SHAKE WELL.

What they didn't understand was that people don't need to know why they should shake the product. They either already get it, or don't care. Probably both. They also don't need detailed instructions on how to shake well, even though there is some small danger they might get it wrong.

I imagine consumer research showed that many people weren't reading the 40-word paragraph, while others were misunderstanding it, the result was not many people were shaking well. They were not getting the result they needed.

It may have taken months (maybe years?) of research and new drafts of the instructions before they finally arrived at the sweet spot: SHAKE WELL.

And I'll bet some people at the company thought such simplistic instruction was an utter travesty, because it didn't educate the consumer much at all.

Fundraising often goes like this. You start with what you know. But you know way too much. Your working assumption is that if you can transfer all of your knowledge over to your donors, they'll donate.

That might work except for one problem: Few of them are at all interested in taking in all the information. They have their own lives to live!

So you simplify, and simplify, and simplify.

The quicker you can move past your need to explain how everything works and why it's important, the sooner you'll be doing effective fundraising.

Beware the 3-Verb Fumble in your writing

Committee writing is a terrible thing: Lifeless, confusing, unmotivating.

One place most often afflicted by committee writing: Taglines. They're small and short -- and a lot of people in the organization care about them. Every cook crowds into the kitchen, and the result is predictable: Stew. And not the good kind.

And committee-style stew-writing is so common, some writers write that way even when they're working on their own.

Here's one way to tell if you're venturing into committee writing on a tagline: The Three-Verb Fumble.

This is using three nearly synonymous verbs when one would do. Committees do this so more people get their fingerprint on the tagline. Rather than figure out the right verb, they go with three. (Almost always three. Even committees seem to recognize that four or more verbs piled up like a stack of pancakes would just be silly.)

Here are some real-life examples of taglines with the Three-Verb Fumble:

• Ducks Unlimited conserves, restores, and manages wetlands and associated habitats for North America’s waterfowl. These habitats also benefit other wildlife and people.
  
• Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
  
• DC Central Kitchen: To use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities."
  

Three verbs isn't automatically bad: check out the Public Broadcasting System: "To create content that educates, informs and inspires." Those are three distinct verbs that describe different activities. But that's a rarity

But in general, if your tagline (or any other piece of writing) exhibits stacks of three verbs -- you may be suffering from committee writing. (Even if there's no committee involved.)

(This post first appeared on October 5, 2016.)

4 steps to superb writing

Here's a great 4-step guide to the writing process from Ann Handley:

1. The Ugly First Draft. Barf it up! Get it out!
   
2. The chainsaw edit. Move the big chunks around on dollies and hand-trucks. Is it starting to take shape?
   
3. Surgical-tool edit. Finer editing. Each word must earn its keep.
   
4. Read it out loud. Does it sound like writing? If so, revisit #3. Repeat.
   

This works. You may have to repeat #3 a few times -- I do.

The best and worst word in fundraising

There's a single word that can be one of the worst or one of the best words to use in fundraising.

The word?

WE

Here's how to make it the worst:

When we means "those of us in the organization" or "the committee that wrote this message."

When used that way, it's exclusionary. It sets up the sense that we are an organization, not a person. That we are bigger and more important than you, a mere individual.

That's not good for fundraising. People don't give because you are big and important and awesome. They give because you give them an opportunity to put their values to work. They don't give to your organization; they give through it.

When you use we in a way that excludes them, you miss the whole point.

Here's how you can make we one of the best words in fundraising:

When we means "you and me -- the writer and the reader."

That's inclusive. It shows the donor that we're in it together, a partnership, that she's needed. That meaning of we us good fundraising.

(This post first appeared on December 14, 2016.)

How I diagnose fundraising writing

It can be hard to critique someone else's writing in a way that's helpful to them, because we tend to start with our gut feeling about it. Telling someone, Yuck! I don't think this is going to work! really isn't helpful. Nor is saying, This is awesome! I love it!

Worse yet, gut feelings are not accurate. How you feel about some writing isn't important, even though that feeling may be strong. But it tells you almost nothing about the likely effectiveness of the writing.

So when I need to critique a piece of fundraising writing, I start with statistics and facts about it:

• First I check the readability, using Hemingway. It gives the reading grade level (which shouldn't be above 6th grade). It also marks complex sentence (which are hard to read), and counts adverbs (there should be few or none).
• Then I run the copy through the Latinometer, which shows the percentage of words are of Latin origin. Fewer = better. (This step is optional. When the readability statistics are very good, I generally don't bother to check the Latin quotient. In those cases, I already know it's good.)
• Next, I highlight instances of "I" (in all its forms, singular and plural, including me, my, mine, we, us, our, etc.") I count the organization's name as a form of I. Then, in a different color, I highlight the word "you" in all its forms. You should outnumber I. This helps show what the letter is about. If it's about your org, it's probably off target.
• Then I highlight jargon (words or phrases that are not meaningful to general audiences) and abstraction (terms that are vague and not concrete. There should be very little of either.
• Finally, I look for a solid, specific call to action. If it doesn't have one, it doesn't matter if everything else is done to perfection -- the letter won't work. I look for repeated expressions of the offer.

Once I've done all that, I draw my general conclusions. Armed with useful facts, I can keep my gut reaction at bay and say useful, specific things.

Try it. I think you'll like your outcomes!

(This post first appeared on November 16, 2016.)

Fundraising secrets from Elmore Leonard

I recently came across the late Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing.

Leonard was a novelist, most famously of crime fiction. But his rules apply surprisingly well to fundraising writing.

Here they are, along with my annotations for fundraisers:

1. Never open a book with weather. (Probably not a good idea for a fundraising appeal either. Unless it's about a hurricane.)
2. Avoid prologues. (Yes!)
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. (Yes!!)
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said." (Yes!!!)
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. (I think fundraisers are allowed a little more. Something like two or three per 500 words.)
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose." (Probably.)
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. (Even more sparingly in fundraising. Dialect is hard to read.)
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. (They're real people in our case. But still, go easy.)
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things. (So true for us.)
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. (Super advice; develop a sense of what readers tend to skip.)

Then he gives his most important rule, the one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Follow these rules, and you'll do well!

How counting pronouns does (and doesn't) make your fundraising stronger

When someone asks me to look at their fundraising letter and tell them my opinion on its effectiveness, one of the first things I do is count pronouns:

• First I count all first-person pronouns (I and we in all their forms).
• Then I count all second-person pronouns (you it all its forms).
• If the first-person pronouns outnumber the second-person ones, I'm pretty sure we have an ineffective appeal.

This pronoun count doesn't take into account a lot of other things: Is there a strong call to action? Is the story relevant and well written? Is it really aimed at what the donor can do? Is it being sent to the right people at the right time? Those things matter a lot more than what pronouns are used.

I have a feeling that if you wrote an appeal and got the pronouns out of whack, but you did everything else right -- the appeal would do well. And I know for a fact that if you do a great job on the pronouns, but miss a lot of other things, and your appeal will not do well.

There's no real magic in the pronouns.

The pronoun count only reveals one thing, and it does so in an indirect way. A lot of I and not much you usually indicates a fundraiser who doesn't know fundraising is about donors, not the organization. They think you raise funds by telling donors how amazing your organization is.

Fundraising that starts with this fundamental error almost always has several problems:

• A weak call to action (like "support us") -- or none, other than vague hints.
• No story, or a story that has nothing to do with the donor.
• Lots of jargon that makes it hard for the non-specialist to understand.
• Does not connect with the donors' values.
• Doesn't put action in the donors' hands ("give us money so we can take action").
• Hard to read (high readability score, tiny type, difficult fonts).

So when you're looking at an appeal, go ahead and count the pronouns. And make sure there's more you than I.

But, more important, make sure you're also getting the other stuff right!