Reading Stephen Hitchcock’s Open Immediately: Straight Talk on Direct Mail Fundraising
This is one of the reasons fundraising letter templates don’t work. They’re like a fundraising version of Mad Libs: easy to fill in the blanks but sort of funny sounding when they’re read.
And that’s why impersonal “Dear Friend” letters don’t work well either. But even if you insert a donor’s name, it’s really easy to sound impersonal in fundraising letters.
According to Hitchcock’s extensive research, fundraising letters get better response rates without brochures. I’d imagine this is because brochures are, by their very nature, impersonal.
So don’t include a brochure and don’t let you letter sound like a brochure! To help resist the temptation to become impersonal, Hitchcock advises using conversational language and having only one signature at the end of a solicitation letter.
A technique I use for overcoming impersonality is doing demographic research to find out who my typical donor is:
- how old,
- what gender,
- where she lives,
- how big her family is, etc.
Once I’ve done the work, I write to that person. It’s helpful to get a picture of what that person might look like to put on your computer monitor. And I always give her a name.
However you fundraise for your nonprofit–whether you’re asking for money in a fundraising letter, on the web, or in person–remember this timeless truth: people give to people.
[For the prior "Fundraising Secrets" posts, go to: http://fundraisingcoach.com/blog/category/frsecrets/]
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7 responses so far ↓
1 Jonathan // Apr 1, 2008 at 8:42 am
Hi Marc, thanks for the comment the other day.
Reading through your blog, I can see that I agree with a whole load of your advice. Especially on this post, which is more or less the cornerstone of our business and our US sister site [insert shameless plug to http://www.justgiving.com and http://www.firstgiving.com here].
Look forward to reading more through my RSS feeds…
2 Marc A. Pitman // Apr 1, 2008 at 9:15 am
Thanks Jonathan!
Sorry the comment came so late.
3 » Fundraising Secret #16: ALWAYS be interested in the donor as a PERSON // Apr 8, 2008 at 10:34 am
[...] the spirit of the last fundraising secret People give to people, I offer Fundraising Secret #16: ALWAYS be interested in the donor as a PERSON not as a [...]
4 The Justgiving charities blog // Apr 15, 2008 at 11:56 am
Person-to-Person Fundraising…
At the beginning of the month, Peter Deitz, at the About Micro Philanthropy blog, asked the question, Is Person-to-Person Fundraising Dead, or Just Getting Started?. This was part of the Giving Carnival, which he describes as:a monthly event that gathe…
5 » Be human // May 8, 2008 at 3:49 pm
[...] isn’t it? If people give to people, why do we make our fundraising letters so [...]
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7 Socialreporter | People give to people: meet the global intermediaries // Sep 15, 2008 at 9:33 am
[...] personal and significant? Globalgiving offers one route. The old adage about fundraising is that people give to people. If your gift is global you may need some personable [...]
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