Future Fundraising Now

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.

4 ways writers fall into the jargon trap -- and kill their fundraising

Trying to motivate donors to give by addressing them with jargon they don't understand crushes a lot of fundraising efforts. People are far less likely to respond if they don't know what you're talking about.

Why does it happen so often?

The Daily Egg asked that same question: Everyone Hates Jargon. So Why Do People Still Use It? A possible answer?

Many people are afraid of using language that's simple because they worry that it will make their product or service seem basic. Provided you're careful when writing about what you do, that's not as big a risk as people think it is.

Let's be clear: Poor use of jargon can cost you. The Crazy Egg post cites a test for online conversion in the financial service industry. They tested the term sales tax refund (which is what most people call it) against sales tax recovery (what the experts call it). A one-word difference.

The non-jargon version got 31 times the response of the jargon version.

I hope the folks who wanted to look smart by using the jargon term are feeling stupid.

There are several reasons you might be tempted to use jargon:

• You want to show people that you're smart. As the test above shows, doing that might help you feel smart, but it clearly demonstrates that you're dumb.
• You value technical accuracy over clarity of communication. If that's you, you may be a lawyer. You sure aren't a fundraiser.
• You're on a mission to educate everyone else about the intricacies of your cause. Can you see how sociopathic that is?
• You're so trapped in your own head that you don't realize other people don't speak your jargon. If that's you, a quick solution is to get professional fundraising help.

The way we raise funds is to communicate clearly and with emotion. Jargon blocks both of those things.

The only time you should consider using jargon is when you know for sure that your entire audience also uses the same jargon. This may be the case if your audience is made up entirely of members of the same faith group, the same branch of the military, or the same profession. In those cases, using a shared jargon can help you connect.

Otherwise, turn and flee from the temptation to throw around those jargon terms.

(This post first appeared on July 13, 2015.)

Try the Ogilvy Method for effective fundraising writing

You've probably heard of advertising legend David Ogilvy. He virtually invented modern direct response copywriting.

Wouldn't you like to know how he did it?

He wrote it down!

In 1955, a fan asked him to describe his right process. And he did. It's pretty amazing, and inspiring or helpful to the rest of us poor slobs who write.

The letter is at Letters of Note: I am a lousy copywriter. Here's the core of it:

1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.
2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.
3. I am helpless without research material -- and the more "motivational" the better.
4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.
5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every conceivable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.
6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.
7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)
8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.
9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.
10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.
11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)
12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry -- because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.

While I can't endorse the "drink half a bottle of rum" part of his process, there are a few things worth pointing out:

• The office might be your worst place for writing!
• He found out every possible thing he could about the thing he was writing about.
• He put repetition to work: 20 alternate headlines. 20 attempts. Great writing comes from trying a lot of different things, most of them not good.
• He separated writing from editing. Two very different activities, both necessary. We often try to combine them into one step -- which means we just do a half-baked job at both.

I'm no Ogilvy, but my process is similar. It's a great path to solid fundraising writing!

Are you confusing would-be donors?

I hate to say it, but there's a chance you are.

Because a sizeable portion of all nonprofits have utterly confusing ways to describing what they do. They aren't trying to be that way. Most of the people in the organization probably think their self-descriptions are crystal clear and admirably motivating.

Here's a helpful exercise I've adapted form a post at MarketInsite (a blog for commercial start-ups and investors: Effective storytelling starts with plain English.

I've modified it so it's aimed at nonprofits that want to connect with donors, which is quite a bit like companies that want to attract investors:

Find an average [donor] who has never heard of your [nonprofit]. Show them the "above the fold" portion of your website, or a copy of the "about us" language from one of your press releases for approximately 45 seconds, to simulate how long the typical [donor] will spend perusing the same.

Wait about five minutes -- to ensure that they are not just parroting back what they read -- and ask them to explain to you in their own words what your [nonprofit] does, and why it's interesting.

It can be a stunning reality-check.

But well worth it for your ability to reach real donors.

Fundraising with nouns and verbs

A standard piece of writing advice is Write with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs.

It's good advice for fundraising writing too.

It can be tempting to pile on the adjectives (modify nouns) and adverbs (modify verbs and usually end with -ly) because they seem to make your writing more vivid.

But that usually backfires.

Here's a great post on writing from ProActive Content -- Fundraising Copywriting Smackdown: Verbs vs Adjectives -- on the impact of scaling back your modifiers. Here's what happens when you do that:

• It Removes Unnecessary Excess. Those modifiers are less informative than you think. Their main impact is to bulk out your word-count, making sentences longer and harder to read. And a well-chosen verb can say it all.
• Verbs Focus the Imagery on the People. Modifiers tend to make your writing about what things are like, and fundraising needs to be about concrete things: People and their needs.
• The New Focus Sets Up the Fundraising Ask. You'll get your reader focused on nouns (people and things) and verbs (actions). And that's what fundraising is.

One of the most improving steps you can take for your fundraising is to go through and cross out adjectives and adverbs. You don't have to remove all of them, but the fewer you keep, the better!

5 things "good writers" avoid -- but fundraisers embrace

If you've had any high-level writing training, you've learned some pieces of wisdom that will make you a better writer.

If you want to do well in fundraising, you need to forget many of those same pieces of wisdom. Because they will make your fundraising weaker.

Here are some things "good" writers avoid ... but fundraising writers are okay with:

1. Telling. The common writing advice is Show, don't tell. For fundraising, it should be Show and tell. If you skip "telling" in fundraising, a lot of your readers won't grasp what you want them to know or do!
2. Repetition. In "good" writing, you usually avoid saying something more than once. In fundraising, we know that if you say something only once, a lot of readers won't know you've said it. In fundraising, the ask should appear many times.
3. Clichés. Don't lean on tired old ways of describing things. Invent new ways. Except in fundraising, where we aren't getting graded on originality. Clichés are clear and often have emotional punch precisely because they're familiar. Don't avoid them.
4. Exclamation marks. "Good" writers create excitement with words, so they rarely need exclamation marks. We fundraisers create excitement every which way we can. We are not afraid of a few exclamation marks. But don't over-use them; if every sentence has an exclamation mark, that's the same as having none at all.
5. Passive voice. The nearly universal condemnation of passive voice is silly, really. Good writing almost always has some passive sentences. In fundraising, we care a lot about sounding informal and colloquial, so we use a bit more passive than others. It's another thing to be careful not to over-do.

Want help with your fundraising writing project? Let's talk! It's easy: Click here to schedule a free 25 minute session with me. Bring your fundraising challenge or question and let's see if I can help.