How to Write Better Fundraising Materials

Each set of ears pays attention to a different group of stimuli and represents one of the four basic personalities that reside in the minds of your readers. Ahern, in his book, How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money, labels these personalities as amiable, expressive, skeptical, and bottom-liner.

Here are tips about appealing to each:

Amiable

Our amiable sides are downright friendly. We respond to people and stories about people. This part of our brains wants to help, nurture, and be part of a community.

• Use photos in your materials...of faces. Use them to establish eye contact with the reader. Yes, a reader will make eye contact with a facial image so make sure the subjects' eyes are nice and big.
• Write anecdotes, stories about the people your agency helps. Create a scene in your reader's mind. Don't use abstractions, but develop stories that will tug on the heartstrings. It is the best way to explain what you are all about. Author Ahern says that "fundraisers use anecdotes as micro-documentaries that instantly interest, educate, and inspire strangers."

Expressive

Our expressive sides plead for something new. They crave something they don't already know. Give your readers a dose of news right away to get their attention. It could be a fact, statistic, or a new program. Place the news in the first paragraph of your appeal letter, on the home page of your website, or on the front page of your newsletter. What is news?

• A daring new program
• A story about how a client changed his/her life.
• An emerging trend.
• A problem that no one knows about yet.

Skeptical

This is the wary part of your brain. Readers, while they may respond to your anecdotes, do not just sit down and write a check. That is because they are wary, afraid of being taken, suspicious of fundraising appeals. How do you deal with such skepticism? By figuring out all the objections ahead of time and answering them.

• Provide answers and lots of information in an accessible place such as your website. Anyone with a computer now researches people, places, anticipated purchases, and the background of your nonprofit.
• Develop a list of FAQs. Brainstorm with your staff and come up with any and all objections or questions a skeptical person might ask about your agency. Develop answers and then post the top ten FAQs on your website, print them in your materials, circulate them to your volunteers.
• Provide testimonials. Credible testimonials are immensely soothing. Use real people talking about problems that your agency has solved. Good, credible testimonials are one of the best tools for addressing skepticism.

Bottom-Liner

Our bottom-line side wants to know what to do next. What are we supposed to do? And how, exactly, will we do it? Use a "call to action" to trigger this side of your potential donor. Say, "Send us a check. Put it into the enclosed self-addressed, postage paid envelope." Tell the reader exactly what to do and then make it ever so easy to do it.

Want the reader's email address? Provide an easy-to-use response card. Do you want the reader to volunteer? Provide a name and telephone number of a person to call. Maybe you want the reader to download a PDF file from your website. Give clear instructions about how to do that.

With these "personalities" in mind your fundraising materials will appeal to the heart, provide real news that will get the reader's attention, provide facts and more facts to quell skepticism, and tell the reader what to do and how to do it.

These are just some of the "trade secrets" of highly accomplished writers of fundraising materials. Tom Ahern in How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money, has packed his less than 200 page book with many more. Ahern specializes in writing copy that motivates donors to give. You don't have to be a brilliant writer to do the same, but you do need to know the best practices that have been proven to work.

How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money, Tom Ahern, Emerson & Church Publishers, 2007, $24.95 U.S.