To engage your readers, you want to pull your ideas down from the ether and express them through the things of the world. Copy that’s abstract won’t grab donors. Verbal images will.
A verbal image is different from a story. Fundraising stories are narratives — this happens, then that happens and so on. A verbal image, even though it may have some narrative elements, is essentially a snapshot — a succinct, sharply focused picture that readers immediately get. And that’s where it draws its power.
A verbal image is concrete. You can write in your appeal, for example, that your charity has 1,000 pounds of medical supplies to distribute. But that’s abstract. It’s unlikely to have much of an impact, because your donor can’t envision 1,000 pounds. Instead, you can write that your charity has boxes and boxes of antibiotics, bandages, vaccines, stethoscopes and crutches, stacked from the floor to the ceiling, filling up the entire warehouse, just waiting to be shipped. That’s concrete. It’s something your donors can see in their mind’s eye.
You can use verbal images to make just about every part of your offer and your appeal more compelling for donors, keeping in mind that the images should be based in fact and not just made-up.
Just as you use photos and other visual images, you can make your appeals more compelling and more effective with verbal images. To pull donors in, don’t just say it. Show it with verbal imagery.
Category: nonprofit
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How to get donors to really lean into a fundraising appeal
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How two nonprofits are reacting in the Trump era
Lately, many nonprofits are finding that they have to worry about something they never even considered before.
Sure, they had the usual worries about donor attrition, revenue, acquisition, retention, and so on.
But now, on top of all that, they have to worry that the federal government might be coming after them.
“The Trump administration is mounting a sweeping offensive on America’s nonprofit sector, deploying a blend of funding cuts, the elimination of tax benefits, bureaucratic paralysis and even installing a small DOGE team to target organizations that challenge the president’s agenda,” according to Politico (4/18/2025).
At least two nonprofits are reacting in the best way there is – with direct mail.
Take the Environmental Defense Fund. The Trump administration has canceled or interrupted hundreds of EPA grants, shut down more than 100 climate studies, and ended National Science Foundation grants for projects related to climate change. These cuts directly affect the EDF.
So they’re firing up their donors.
EPSON MFP image Amnesty International is another example. The Trump administration stopped U.S. foreign aid, halting programs for health care, food security, shelter, and humanitarian support. And ended funding for programs supporting survivors of sexual violence, refugees, and marginalized communities.
Amnesty International has said that these cuts will leave millions without essential services.
So they’re firing up their donors too.
EPSON MFP image Both of these appeals are following a bold, in-your-face strategy to get noticed, get the appeal opened, and move donors.
There’s the oversize outer envelope (11” x 5” for one and 11-1/2” x 5 for the other).
There’s the simple, powerful messaging on the outer envelope: “Fight Back!”
There’s the bold graphic approach, with huge fonts and attention-grabbing reds and yellows.
And there’s the invitation to take action. The Amnesty International carrier touts an “activist tool kit inside.” And the Environmental Defense Fund envelope announces, “Petitions Inside!”
Inside, the letters continue the “take action” theme, urging donors to donate and to get involved.
You can see the strategy in both of these outer envelopes. They’re all about demanding attention, increasing the open rate, and getting donors motivated. When you see an appeal envelope like this in your mailbox, you know it’s something important. Your interest has been piqued. Your ire has been roused. And your means for fighting back are right at hand, inside the envelope.
These are tactics and strategies that virtually all nonprofits could use in their appeals, especially now when there’s so much chaos and uncertainty.
That’s why, as this turmoil continues and as the economy inches closer toward recession, nonprofits will have to grab donors’ attention and motivate them like never before. And that means direct mail tactics likes these will become necessary not only for success but also for survival.
See the whole story at https://www.nonprofitpro.com/post/how-2-nonprofits-are-using-direct-mail-to-get-donors-fired-up-to-take-action/
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Want more of your regular donors to become monthly donors?
Nonprofits love monthly donors for obvious reasons. Monthly donors give consistently, require less frequent fundraising, and tend to be more loyal.
But to get regular donors to opt into monthly donor status, you have to make this seem like something they would want to do. Which makes this email effort so puzzling. It begins:
I’m deeply grateful for your support as we work together to bring needed resources to our neighbors experiencing homelessness.
As our partner, you’ve truly provided a lifeline to many local community members, especially with the current high cost of living and the uncertainty that accompanies it.
That’s the opening. And for these two paragraphs, I’m wondering why they’re writing to me at all, except to express gratitude and suggest that our work is completed, since I’ve apparently already “provided a lifeline.” I’m thinking “what’s this about? Is it a thank-you email?” It goes on:
Because I know we share the vision of a community without homelessness, I’m inviting you today to join the [monthly donor program name], the [nonprofit’s] monthly giving circle.
Members of [monthly donor program name] donate monthly to ensure vital services are available all year long. This support is critical in ending the cycle of homelessness.
Oh, so that’s it. They want me to become a monthly donor. But wait a second, I thought that as an occasional donor I was already ‘sharing the vision’ and ‘ending the cycle of homelessness’ with the gifts I give, at least that’s what they’ve been telling me. It continues:
With your [monthly donor program name] membership, you can help countless neighbors regain self-sufficiency and hope for the future.
Again, I thought I was already doing this with the gifts I currently give. It continues:
And by signing up online, you can automate monthly gifts, save money on postage, and help reduce administrative costs, too — all while providing access to vital care for community members facing homelessness.
It’s only at this point, at the end of the email, that I see some reasons why I might actually want to become a monthly donor. But these reasons are only tacked on as an afterthought.
A couple things about this. First, there’s this idea that every communication to a donor has to open with gratitude for their support. Sure, there’s a time for thanking and appreciating donors. But not in every communication. What’s more, by telling me that I’ve already provided a lifeline to community members, they’re suggesting that the job is completed, so what do you need me for as a donor?
Second, if you want me to change my pattern of behavior – like going from an occasional donor to a monthly donor – you better give some pretty good reasons to do it. And those reasons should probably be at or very close to the beginning of the email in order to get my attention.
Even more to the point, those reasons should be compelling. In this email, I’m offered the opportunity to “automate monthly gifts, reduce postage costs, and help reduce administrative costs.” These aren’t exactly barnburners. Not many donors are sitting in front of their computer thinking, “Gee, I’d really like to automate monthly gifts.”
There are good, solid reasons a donor would consider becoming a monthly donor, but you have to lay out those reasons explicitly and do it in a way that’s interesting and advantageous for the donor. You can’t expect donors to fill in the gaps on their own and convince themselves. They won’t. Instead, they’ll just move onto the next email.
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The envelope teaser
The burning question in direct mail fundraising?
Should you use a teaser for the outside envelope of your next appeal, or not?
Some say the plain, blank envelope is the best ‘teaser,’ a no-teaser kind of teaser.
But if you use a blank envelope to ‘trick’ people into opening it, and if the appeal isn’t something the donor wants or cares about, and they just toss it, then what have you really gained?
That’s why the opposing camp suggests using a teaser in order to set the stage for the donor and get her interested in what the appeal is all about, so that when she opens the envelope, she’s ready for something that’s relevant and interesting.
Along those lines, there are three basic types of teasers that work.
There’s the offer teaser.
There’s the benefit teaser.
And there’s the curiosity teaser.
To get the whole story – including specific examples for each kind of teaser – visit https://tinyurl.com/ew65trr3
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What’s wrong with thanking donors?
I just got an email with the subject line “I’m so grateful.” Let’s see what this is all about.
Turns out it’s from a rescue mission, an organization that I love and support.
Here’s the text of the email:
Dear George,
What a wonderful day! And you helped make it happen.
I cannot thank you enough for your support of our #GiveFromHomeDay.
Your generosity makes a life-changing difference for the people we serve — homeless men, women and children who are desperately in need of hope.
As we do everything we can to reach our most vulnerable neighbors, your support is what makes our work possible.
On behalf of all of us here, and especially on behalf of the families we serve, I hope you know just how appreciated you are.
Sincerely,
Okay, an important point here. “You helped make it happen”? Uh, no, I didn’t. I have supported this organization in the past, but I didn’t give to this specific campaign. Soooo … why are they thanking me?
Are they trying to guilt me into giving now? Is that why they’re thanking me for something I didn’t do?
Or do they not know that I didn’t give? And they’re just sending the thank you out to everyone on the email list for some reason?
Either way, this email is not giving me warm fuzzies as a supporter. And that’s too bad, because this email could have been written in such a way as to thank donors who did give, present the opportunity for those who didn’t give yet to give now, and still be able to send the email out to the entire list.
But all of that notwithstanding, the bigger issue is this notion of thanking donors – reflexively and constantly – in every communication, no matter what. There’s this idea that we have to be thanking donors all the time, and that this is some kind of expression of “donor love” or donor centricity.
There’s a time and a place to thank donors – like in a thank you email sent in response to a donation, in a newsletter where you’re emphasizing positive outcomes, and so on. Because then you’re thanking donors for doing something good and positive – something, in other words, that they’d expect to be thanked for.
Acknowledging and appreciating your supporters doesn’t mean you have to begin every appeal letter or email with a thank you, or that the purpose of an appeal is to stroke the donor’s ego instead of presenting a compelling offer, or that you just send out blanket thank yous to an entire donor list for no reason.
When you do that, donors see it as the smokescreen that it so obviously is.
Plus, it’s patronizing. Most donors are people in the 60s, 70s, and beyond. They know BS when they read it. They also know it’s not endearing to be thanked for something unnecessarily.
So by thanking donors when it’s not warranted or in communications where it doesn’t fit, you’re not bringing your donors closer. You’re reinforcing the negative impression that most donor communications are just a lot of hot air that really shouldn’t be believed or taken seriously. And all that does is undermine your fundraising.
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Try this to increase fundraising response
One of the best ways to boost the response of your direct mail fundraising appeal isn’t what you might think. It’s to send an email.
Mail and email complement each other, creating better response than either would separately. That’s one of the messages in new research from Virtuous and NextAfter on multichannel fundraising.
The research shows that offline donors who receive an email are more likely to give a gift offline and to give again. The email also makes them more likely to give online.
Clearly, the two channels – online and offline – work together. That’s important. Because, as the research shows, multichannel donors are worth three times more than either online-only or offline-only donors.
So, the next time you do a mail appeal, take the next step and produce an email to go along with it. This is pretty easy to do. You’re simply creating a companion email that’s based on the content of your mail appeal, so most of the work has already been done. It’s mainly a matter of adjusting the messaging for email, formatting, and then distributing the email.
Your fundraising will stand out because the research also shows that very few organizations are communicating with offline and online donors in multiple channels. Not sure exactly why this is. Maybe it’s the ‘multiple’ that’s scaring nonprofits off. Maybe they think you have to use every channel that exists. You don’t.
But you do need to use mail and email. Not one or the other. Both, at the same time. And not just one online channel like social media. During a conversation about fundraising around the holidays, one nonprofit explained that the staff decided they would use social media – alone – for their Christmas fundraising. Good luck with that.
Mail and email. That’s the way to go. That’s multichannel enough for now. And even that safe step forward will make a big difference in your fundraising.
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3 Reasons Why Your Non-Profit Should Add a Blog to Your Website
by guest blogger Joe Garecht, President of Garecht Fundraising Associates.
Every non-profit wants to raise more money online. But most non-profits struggle to get traction raising money on their websites. One of the reasons why organizations struggle online is because they simply don’t have enough people visiting their websites… and if people aren’t visiting your website, they’re not going to donate on it.
In my experience, one of the best ways to get more people to visit your site… and to keep them coming back again and again… is to add a blog to your website. Adding a blog to your non-profit’s site is easy to do and will provide huge rewards to your organization down the line.
How is a Blog Different from a Website?
The first question we need to answer is what we mean when we say “blog.” A blog is different from a simple, static website – or rather, it is an addition to your traditional non-profit website.
Your non-profit does need a traditional website where people can learn more about your non-profit and your programs, connect with your staff, sign-up to volunteer, and donate to your organization. You need a good old-fashioned website with all of these things, the types of information that stays fairly constant. This part of your website will be updated, but not every day or every week… those pages will stay pretty static, with only periodic updates made to them.
Your non-profit’s blog is an add-on to your website. It is one section of your website where you are constantly adding new things. A blog is fluid and updated often. You can be a little less formal on your blog, and you should be adding new things at least once or twice per month, though adding new information weekly is a better goal.
How Can Adding a Blog Help Your Non-Profit?
I believe that every non-profit that has at least one full time fundraiser or one full time communications staff member should maintain an active blog on their website. There are 3 important ways that a blog can help your gain more traction with your website:
#1: A Blog Gives Your Supporters a Reason to Regularly Visit Your Website
If you want to grow traffic to your website, then your non-profit’s website needs to be more than just a brochure. Your goal as a non-profit fundraiser is to get your donors to see your website as a resource – a place they want to visit regularly for updates about your organization.
The only way your donors will want to visit your website often is if you are regularly updating your site, meaning that you are consistently posting new information that is interesting, informative, or entertaining. The single best way to do this is by having a regularly updated blog on your website, where you post something new each week. You can post an article, pictures, a video or any combination of the three, so long as you are doing it consistently. Whatever is easiest and most appropriate for your non-profit.
#2: A Blog Provides SEO Power That Brings New Donors and Supporters to Your Website
It’s not just your current donors and supporters that you are trying to attract to your website. You also want to make sure that new donors, new volunteers, new supporters, and others interested in your work can find your website and learn about your programs. A good way for new supporters to connect with you is by finding your website when they use a search engine like Google. One way to put your non-profit in a great position to get found in Google is by harnessing the power of SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is the process of putting content on your website in such a way so that when people search in Google for words and phrases related to your non-profit, Google gives them a link to your site. Search engine optimization also includes getting other websites to link to your site, so that Google and other search engines know that your content is worth sharing. One of the best ways to get people to link to your site is to post content that people want to share with others.
The process of search engine optimization is complex and beyond the scope of this article, but you should know that having a blog is helpful for SEO because you are posting lots of new content that can be found by search engines and that people might want to link to. This means that having a regularly updated blog will almost certainly increase traffic to your website. The increase won’t happen right away, but as you add new articles or other content every week or every other week, your traffic will slowly build. After a year of weekly blogging, you will likely see a significant jump in your web traffic year over year.
#3: A Blog Shows That Your Non-Profit is Active and Engaged
Having a regularly updated blog will show your donors, volunteers, and the community at large that your non-profit is active and engaged. When someone comes to your website, they will see that you posted a new informative article last week, or maybe the week before that. They will know that your non-profit is working hard and will be able to see what the latest news is from the frontlines of your programs. This will help support your fundraising efforts, your PR efforts, and your volunteer recruitment efforts.
What Type of Content Should You Put on Your Non-Profit’s Blog?
When planning out your blog content, it is important that you not overthink it. Don’t stress out about your blog content. Instead, commit to putting up either a short article of at least 300-400 words, or a short video of 1 minute or more, or some pictures with an explanation, and doing it each and every week. Consistency matters far more than perfection. Your posts can be informal so long as they are still professional, meaning no typos and no outrageous grammatical errors. But they don’t need to be perfect.
As for the exact types of content that you can create for your blog, you should be posting the same types of information you are putting in your newsletters, such as updates on your programs, updates on your events, profiles of your clients, staff, and donors, important updates on your mission field, etc.
In fact, many non-profits double dip with their content by posting blog articles and then using them as content in their newsletters… putting a summary of the article or the first paragraph of the article in their newsletter, with a link that says “Click here to read more.” This way, all of your e-mail newsletter subscribers will stay updated with what you are posting on your blog, and you don’t have to write twice as many articles by doing one for your blog and a separate one for your e-mail newsletter.
Adding a blog to your non-profit’s website will help you grow your website’s traffic, raise more money, and increase awareness of your organization. It’s easy and effective.
About the Author
Joe Garecht is the President of Garecht Fundraising Associates. He has twenty years’ experience as a Development Director, Executive Director, and fundraising consultant to hundreds of non-profits. -
One reason why fundraising appeals go bad
“The letter doesn’t sound like me.” That’s something a president/CEO or executive director of a nonprofit might say when she’s reviewing a fundraising appeal.
It’s actually a frequent comment, and it’s understandable, really.
After all, the president probably believes passionately in the cause that their nonprofit is engaged in and probably works like crazy at it. So it’s completely understandable that she would think of herself as the face of the nonprofit, as if she and the nonprofit are somehow one and the same.
And that’s exactly where the disconnect comes in. Most donors will probably never meet the president, will probably never even see a picture of the president, and probably wouldn’t know the president’s name except that it’s on the bottom of the letter. Most donors, to be honest, probably don’t know or care who the president is.
So it’s probably not the president who should be thinking of himself or herself as the face of the nonprofit. If anybody should be doing that, it should be the donor.
The reality is that the fundraising letter isn’t there to reflect and validate the president – as vital as that person unquestionably is to the nonprofit. It’s there to reflect and validate the donor. So when the president says the letter doesn’t sound like her, that’s okay – and probably even beneficial – as long as it sounds like something that interests the donor.
This is a hard thing for a lot of presidents to come to terms with – again, for completely understandable reasons. But sometimes it gets a little nutty. Like the president who forbids the use of contractions in letter copy… or beginning sentences with “and” … or using sentence fragments … simply because these and other quirks are pet peeves or personal preferences.
In other cases, it’s more extreme.
One president who was heading up a Christian rescue mission was reviewing a Christmas appeal, and he reacted to all the references to the birth, the nativity, and so on. “I don’t really talk about that very much,” he said. Keep in mind, he was a devout Christian. It’s just that, for him personally, he preferred not to wear his faith on his sleeve, and that included his very real feelings of joy over the birth of Christ. He felt this was intensely personal, not something to be included in a fundraising letter. So the feedback was to reduce and tone down the references to the birth. Remember, this was a Christmas appeal. Coming from a Christian charity.
The president may be reluctant to have lots of nativity talk in his letter, but you can bet the donors want to see plenty of Christmas language and Christmas imagery in a Christmas appeal. After all, this is a charity that they have not only an emotional connection with but also a spiritual one. They’re no doubt expecting religious language. They’re probably even looking forward to it.
And that’s the point. It’s not the president’s letter, even though his or her name and signature are on it. That’s tough for many presidents to realize. The effective ones do realize it, though. They know that it’s the donor’s letter. And so, it should be all about her, all about her values, all about her heart for the cause, and all about giving, because that’s what draws donors closer to the nonprofit – and that’s what raises more money.
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Are your fundraising appeals repetitive? Good
Effective copywriting for fundraising is weird. It has a lot of characteristics that seem to be the opposite of what’s right. One of these is repetition.
Good copy for an appeal tends to repeat some things over and over. To the uninitiated, this seems wrong.
In our English composition classes in school, we’re taught to make a point and then move on, continuing to make successive points until the conclusion. That’s basic expository writing – which is nothing like copy for an appeal.
That’s because most donors probably won’t read an appeal letter from beginning to end. They tend to skip around. So we repeat key things in order to catch the reader’s attention at various points in the appeal. But there’s another reason to use repetition, and it’s based on science.
In this study, the researchers wanted to test the assumptions people make about what they read and hear. So, they designed a test in which subjects were given sets of statements to review. Some of the statements were true, some were false, and some were repeated. The statements were generally expressions of fact (or what appeared to be fact), like “Zachary Taylor was the first president to die in office.”
The upshot is that the repeated statements were more likely to be judged as true, compared with similar statements that were not repeated. So, if you saw the statement, “Zachary Taylor was the first president to die in office” again and again, you’d tend to think it was true, even without looking it up. (It’s not true, by the way. William Henry Harrison was the first.)
Think about what this means for fundraising copy. First, though, a caveat: of course we wouldn’t repeat a false statement in order to make it seem true to donors. That would be unethical.
But if we want to enhance the believability of a true statement, then repetition is one way to do it – and a very effective way. It could be a statement like, “Your gift will transform lives.” Naturally we’d want donors to believe that true statement.
Or maybe it’s a statement that’s true but strains credulity a bit, like, “Your gift will multiply 1,000 times in impact.” In order for an offer like that to be effective, it would have to be believable for donors. Repetition would be one way to accomplish that.
There are lots of ways to use repetition in appeals. And it’s good to. Repetition is there for a reason. Its use in appeals is purposeful and strategic. Don’t avoid it. Embrace it for better results.
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New Year’s Fundraising Resolution: Connect with your mid-level donors
You probably hear a lot about mid-level donors, and that’s for good reason. For most nonprofits, these donors represent the single largest opportunity for short-term and long-term growth. Cultivating mid-level donors increases their giving but also cultivates donors who can move into major giving, generates leads for planned giving, and increases overall donor retention, since donors who give at higher levels tend to remain more loyal. All of which can add up to game-changing growth.
So first things first, you have to define who your mid-level donors are. There are three main ways to do it, according to Pursuant. The first is the top 5 percent of your direct mail donors. The second is donors giving an annual cumulative total of $1,000 up to major-donor level. And the third is this formula: 3x average gift x 12 months. Defining mid-level donors will vary for different organizations, of course. But in general, for many nonprofits, mid-level donors are those who give about $1,000 to $9,000 a year.
Now, how do you reach these donors? It’s vital to create a unique donor experience for them that makes them feel valued as individuals and yet part of a community of supporters.
Generally, this is going to be a multichannel approach that could include telemarketing, surveys, in-person visits and more. But direct mail is going to be a key part as well. It’s a different kind of direct mail appeal, though.
Mid-level donors are less transactional and far more relational in their giving than most annual fund donors. This is why standard direct mail won’t work for them. But specialized direct mail can and will.
These donors need to be approached in a unique way that demonstrates the impact, stewardship, and engagement they expect. In general, they respond best when there’s a specific program or initiative for them to fund, when they receive plenty of information (much more than you’d provide for annual fund donors), and when they’re recognized as being part of a group of select supporters. A specialized direct mail appeal can do all these things.
There’s a lot of data analysis and strategy that have to go on before you uncover your mid-level donors, but it will all come to nothing unless the approach to communicating with these donors is the right one. Specialized direct mail is the cornerstone of the program that will engage mid-level donors for greater revenue and retention.
Fundraising Copywriter George Crankovic 