Donor retention keeps falling, while donor skepticism keeps rising. So, it’s more important now than ever to connect with donors in a personal way if you expect to engage and keep them. But how?

There are two key “abilities” that are vital for effective fundraising. They’re credibility and likeability. It’s essential to convey both to donors if you expect them to join with you in your mission. See more in my article in Nonprofit Pro.

• Building credibility takes financial transparency, testimonials, and the like. But it’s more than that. There are specific things you can do to gain donors’ trust or win it back if you’ve lost it. See more here.
• Establishing likeability is a lot about tone and presentation, including a conversational copy voice. But again, it goes deeper than this. Likeability is more than the way an appeal is written. It’s a strategy that embraces donors on a personal level of shared values. More about that here.

It’s all but guaranteed that failing to convey credibility and likeability in appeals and content marketing will hurt your fundraising efforts – which will drain revenue. For some nonprofits, the result is some belt-tightening, but for others, it could be a question of survival.