How
NOT To Write A Fundraising Letter: 4 Steps
 |
| Fundraising Letters |
No one wants to read a bad fundraising letter.
Cut the first four paragraphs and get to the chase !
Writing fundraising letters is hard
Editing fundraising letters is one of the services I provide
for my coaching clients, so I've been doing a lot of editing this fall.
I ask clients for letters they're ready to send. These
typically have:
➤ Long, run-on sentences
➤ Lots of references to the nonprofit
➤ success stories and
➤ scant reference to the reader at all - until at the end when
they ask the reader to give to support their work.
This is 100% typical. And 100% how to not write a
fundraising letter.
Effective fundraising letters go further
I think this is the first half of the letter. Writing is hard.
But editing is often harder. Here are 4 steps that should be included in the
second round of editing:
Cut
the first four paragraphs:
Bad fundraising letters start with a lot of "throat
clearing." "The weather's getting cooler..." "The holidays
are a time of..." "Looking around our community..."
Pandemicsplaining - as though people need teaching on what a pandemic is and
how it's hurting people. This throat clearing often goes on for three or four
paragraphs. So cut those. Even though these have wonderful phrases that you are
particularly proud of. Save the phrases in some file if you want. But don't
send them to your donor.
Give
them a problem to solve:
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