Nonprofit fundraisers need to understand this: writing fundraising copy is not like writing a paper or a direct mail letter.
You can use some of the same techniques, but your approach must be different. When people read online, they have shorter attention spans and they tend to skim content.
You need to write in a way that meets how they read online. To write effective fundraising copy, follow these five tips.
1. Know your audience
It’s the golden rule of fundraising copy. You need to have a target audience before you can write a winning plea for support. As a nonprofit, your donor base should be carefully analyzed to determine if there are any emerging trends on who is giving and why. One way is through personas. This is the idea of profiling your audience and determining how they think as well as what drives them. Doing this will help you create better content and messages for your audience.
Make sure to survey your donors after a donation is made with straightforward questions such as, “What attracted you to our organization? “How did you find out about us?”. These insights can help drive the development of those profiles while also keeping a tight pulse on your support base.
2. Personalize.
Many times, fundraising letters that are boring, stuffy and generic will hit the trash fast. Color your appeal for support with personality and surprise your reader.
A personalized letter, for example, will be addressed specifically to the potential donor, and is signed by a real person. It is a letter that is casual in language, without sacrificing urgency in your message.
3. Keep it Simple
If you are going to keep your reader engaged, you need to keep it simple.
If you, for example, are sending out a plea for support by mail or email, do not send out anything longer than a page. Details and/or statistics that demonstrate your organization’s mission are helpful, but are most effective condensed into bullet points. This allows the reader to capture the information quickly. Including multiple headers in your plea for support will also allow the reader to pick and choose which segments of the letter are of most interst to him or her.
Give only one action that you want the reader to take and walk them through how they should take that action. This helps the reader understand what they need to do.
4. Be credible
New donors are not going to give unless they trust who you are. One way to facilitate this is to leverage your existing support base as social proof.
Personal fundraising pages helps you do that because your support base is asking their friends and family to donate to their page, which automatically gives you social proof and an endorsement.
Also remember to maintain a Charity Navigator or Guidestar profile and note that in your communications so that readers understand that you are a credible charity.
5. Tell a story
Bring your mission to life with stories. Stories help you express your organization’s personality while building a strong emotional connection with the reader.
Tell a story about one idea within your organization. Focusing on one idea helps your reader understand what your organization does and it also helps them identify with the characters within the story. Here are some resources about how stories can be important.
