It would be great if you could speak face-to-face with each and every one of your donors. But when you’re fortunate enough to have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of supporters, that becomes impractical.

Direct mail is an effective way for fundraisers to reach a large number of people when soliciting donations. Still, you want to make your donor feel as if you are talking directly to him or her.

Here are several ways to personalize letters:

• In the salutation, it’s better to address the donor by name rather than just using a generic “Dear Friend.” Print shops can insert the name of each donor into the salutation. That’s pretty basic stuff, but did you realize that you can insert all sorts of text? You could add a line such as, “Since you have already made a donation of BLANK, with an additional gift of BLANK, you join our prestigious group of $1,000 donors.” You supply the figure for the first gift and the technology can calculate how much the additional gift would need to be to add to $1,000. Look around for a shop that has that technological capability.
• Do you have a thank you letter from a grateful recipient of your services? Send that testimonial to your donors. As the cover letter, affix a sticky note with a handwritten message from your board president saying, “Just thought you’d be interested in reading this.” Even though the sticky notes can be created on a printing press, it lends a very personal feeling to the appeal letter. Don’t forget to include a response piece in your package.
• Rather than using a bulk indicia (the text in the upper right corner of the envelope indicating that postage has been paid), use a stamp—a bulk stamp! These stamps look similar to the stamps we use for first-class mail, but allow you to send out your letters at bulk rates. These stamps help make fundraising mail look first class, special and personal, and can boost the response to your appeal letter.

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We like to think of social media as online technologies that help people communicate.

Your Web site is your first and foremost social media tool for fundraising. Make sure that it is attractive, is easy to use and has the information your visitors are looking for.

Other social media include:

• Blogs, like this one, which offer tips, hints and short essays. They’re similar to a newspaper column and could cover any topic, such as politics, the outdoors, the economy or gardening. Professional fundraisers would use a blog to tell their supporters what’s new in their organization. You might include success stories or chat about a conversation you had with a client. You could include tips related to your organization’s area of expertise, such as how to recognize the signs of depression in a child. You could write about upcoming events, a renovation project or other news.  Of course, you could also use the blog to tell your supporters about specific needs you have, including volunteers, items on a wish list, emergencies and regular appeals.
• Twitter, a site that lets you communicate with people through extremely short, frequent messages.
• LinkedIn, a networking site for professionals.
• FaceBook, a popular networking site.

There are many, many other social networking tools out there, but if you’re just getting started, these are good ones to try.

We understand the hesitation some fundraisers feel in learning new technology.  I began to use Twitter only after a conversation with someone who explained how it might help me. If you need help, contact us at 1 (888) 244-4013.

Connie Oswald Stofko

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Do you have a list of donors who haven’t given in a few years? If you’re like many fundraisers, that list is collecting dust. But a list of lapsed donors has much more potential than a list of prospects. After all, your lapsed donors are people who for one reason or another have already donated to your organization. The  Chronicle of Philanthropy recently held a discussion on the topic of lapsed donors. Here are some tips from that discussion: Don’t just ask, How do we get back lapsed donors? Ask the real question: Why have these people started giving to other charities instead of us? That’s advice from Colin V. French, executive director of the Boy Scouts of America National Foundation. The answer may be that donors haven’t given in a while because you haven’t stayed in touch with them or because you aren’t telling your story as effectively as other charities.  Mark Moshier, who leads the Council Funding Team of the Finance Impact Department for the Boy Scouts, said that the more communication you have with donors, the better.  The communication should be focused on issues that appeal to donors. He suggests newsletters that supporters can read while they open the mail. If it goes in the “I’ll- read-it-when-I-have-more-time pile,” it will most likely go unread. Share personal success stories of participants in your program, even if you can’t use the actual name of the person. Read the entire transcript of the discussion at http://philanthropy.com/live/2009/08/reconnect

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Many people write a newsletter article the way they would give a speech— by starting with the background. It works for a speech because people are in their seats and have made a commitment to hear you out. However, the technique doesn’t translate to writing. Your audience has made no commitment. Instead, the reader is performing a test: Is this article worth reading? Should I invest any more time? Your audience performs that test over and over as they go through your article and newsletter. If the headline and the first few words catch their interest, you’ve passed the first test and they’ll keep reading. If the rest of the first sentence delivers, they’ll keep reading. They keep testing and reading, testing and reading, until they either finish the article or they stop reading. If they stop reading, it’s not necessarily a failure on your part. Not every article will pertain to them; for example, you might be writing about an event that’s happening on a day when they already had plans. But if you structure your article correctly, you have done that reader a service because the reader was able to discover early in the article that he or she could move on to an article that is more pertinent. As we said in the headline, say the most important thing first.

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When we write an appeal letter or newsletter, we “put a face on the problem” by telling an emotional, compelling story of a person who was helped by the nonprofit’s services.  (See example.) We were shocked to hear that most fundraisers don’t do that. Frank C. Dickerson, Ph.D., was  shocked, too. He wrote  “The Way We Write is All Wrong: A Profile of and Prescription for Fixing The Broken Discourse of Fund Raising” during his doctoral studies at The Peter Drucker School of Management and The Claremont Graduate University. Dickerson did a computer-based analysis of the language in 2,412 online and direct mail fundraising documents from 880 elite charities. These should have been examples of the very best story telling, but he found that the prose focused on transferring information rather than creating interpersonal involvement.  When he surveyed fundraising executives, they said it was important to have emotional storytelling in their appeals, but the computer analysis found they didn’t actually do it. “The root of the disparity is that we all tend to take writing for granted,” Dickerson wrote. “We all can write. And we all think we can write well. Yet the evidence of linguistics analysis refutes this assumption.” He advises that fundraisers should not shy away from emotion, they should tell stories and they should not over-edit and formalize texts. You can read the whole paper—written purposely in friendly prose rather than in impenetrable academic style, at http://www.thewrittenvoice.org. Make sure you’re one of the rare fundraisers who writes emotional, compelling appeal letters, or find a writer who can do it for you.

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