Mal Warwick first got me thinking about how often I use “you” (or I don’t use “you”!) in my fundraising letters.
Here’s a sort of test I saw in Fundraising Success magazine.

Does Your Messaging Pass the ‘You’ Test?
“The ‘you’ test is the quickest, surest way I know to judge whether materials are basically ‘donor ready.’ [...]

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Here’s a great blog post on how not to send an email message.
Please do yourself a favor and read: Six Ways to Screw Up a Customer Email.
Are you guilty of doing you any of these?

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Jeff Brooks over at the ever insightful Donor Power Blog, has a great comparison of traditional fundraising vs. effective fundraising. (He calls it: The differences between good and bad fundraising.)

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I was thrilled to read this post on the Google Checkout blog: Introducing Google Checkout for Nonprofits.
I’ve been using Google Checkout for my Fundraisingcoach.com Store and for etithing at the Vineyard Church of Waterville and love it!
Good job Google!

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Jeff Brooks at the Donor Powered Blog, lists these 7 surprising facts about direct-response fundraising.
I use these factoids all the time in my thinking about mailings so I thought I’d list Jeff’s 7 here:

Blank carrier envelopes usually out-perform envelopes with teasers.
Longer letters perform better. Usually. There are exceptions.
The most-read part of a fundraising [...]

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Seth Godin is always on the cutting edge of things. He’s done it again with squidwho.com.
Who needs a “Who’s Who” in print when you’ve got the internet.
But it feels weird setting up a page for myself. So in the spirit of Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell, I’ll give away a free copy of [...]

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Just got this in the mail:
Dear Marc A. Pitman,
This Monday, May 28th, join thousands of bloggers and use your blog to benefit DonorsChoose.org, a non-profit Web site that brings teachers and donors together to fund specific student projects that range from “Magical Math Centers” to “Cooking Across the Curriculum”.
BlogCatalog would like to challenge you [...]

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Mark Nakumara pointed me to this great blog post by Guy Kawaski about ways to used LinkedIn.
Can you imagine how cool it would be if donors started researching you before a solicitation call! Very cool!
To read the Guy’s blog post click here.
My LinkedIn profile is here.

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One of the most effective ways to not create donor evangelists is to talk a language nobody but your inner circle understands.
Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog, has a great post on How To Position Yourself as Human. He offers a great link to “succint positioning” and some practical advice on how to test to [...]

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We’re all clients at some point in our lives. And many of us have been freelancers. Robert Weiner refered some of us on CharityChannel.com to this great blog post: The 12 Breeds of Clients and How to Work with Them.
I think I’ve been 6 or 7 of them!

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