How do you make your fundraising letters creative and fresh year
after year when your requirements do not change all that significantly? I am not
speaking about new initiatives. I’m talking about the programs
that you run year right after year. The membership drive that you run
year right after year. The funds that you need to raise to cover
administrative expenses and salaries year after year. How can
you request funds for these points more than time without having boring your
donors into apathy? Understand a lesson from Jack Foster.
Jack Foster spent 35 years functioning in creative departments of
advertising agencies in the United States. One of his challenges
was performing the advertising for Smokey Bear. Here’s how he
describes his predicament:
“The very first issue the writers and art directors had to do each
year was come up with a simple poster.
“The guidelines for the poster never varied: It had to be a particular
shape and size; it had to feature Smokey; it had to be basic
adequate to grasp at a glance, clear enough for even a dunce to
realize, and (if it had words) brief adequate to be read in
three or four seconds.
“The mission of the poster by no means varied either: It had to
convince folks to be careful with fire.
“In other words, each year we had to come up with the same
issue only various.
“And we did. Indeed, every single year we came up with 20 of 30
different concepts for posters. Every year. For over 20 years. Over
500 posters, all featuring Smokey and all trying to do the same
thing and not a a single of them the exact same.”
I faced related challenges when I worked at advertising agencies
as a copywriter, and as a freelance copywriter for direct
response agencies that generate fundraising letters for
international non-earnings. The work was hard, but I discovered
that writers and art directors could indeed develop original
fundraising appeals year after year for the very same customers who
needed funds for the identical issues.
Here are some lessons I learned along the way, suggestions that will
assist you present your situation for assistance to your donors in
creative methods more than time. The secret is realizing exactly where to look for
suggestions. Here’s where I look.
Challenges in the field
1 spot to appear
for original concepts is the field. If your charity is involved
with kid welfare, then your “field” may be the homes of your
foster parents. If you are a tiny but international
humanitarian organization, then the “field” for you is the towns
and villages where you operate overseas. As you sit down to
generate a brand new appeal letter, appear to your field and ask
your self what challenges you are facing. These challenges can
typically be translated into a compelling ask. Let me give you an
instance.
Doctors Devoid of Borders is an international aid organization
that sends volunteer doctors and nurses to locations exactly where no
medical infrastructure exists, typically simply because of war or natural
disasters. Because they never ever know exactly where the next tsunami or civil
war will strike, they require to have sufficient funds on hand at
all occasions so they can respond quickly to a humanitarian crisis
anywhere in the world. This indicates their fundraising letters ought to
ask for funds for no distinct emergency, but for emergencies
in common. A difficult challenge.
Doctors Without having Borders has met this challenge year after year
in creative ways. Here is just 1. They realized that they
typically sent their volunteers into emergency scenarios that were
created by water. Either there was a flood or there was a
drought. Either there was too a lot water or not adequate. In a
brilliant move, Doctors Without having Borders crafted an original
fundraising package that presented this global want. They told
their story in such a way that the want was obviously great,
though not necessarily looming.
Donors who received the appeal understood that Physicians Without having
Borders necessary funds on hand to meet the challenge of floods or
droughts at anytime. But they also understood that their gift to
the organization might be employed to support victims of a cholera
epidemic, or individuals displaced by a civil war. By seeking to a
challenge faced in the field, Physicians Devoid of Borders designed a
memorable fundraising letter campaign that did absolutely nothing a lot more than
raise dollars for their common fund in a novel way.
Your frontline staff
Another source of
creative suggestions for fundraising letters is your staff,
particularly those at the front lines of your ministry. The males
and women who carry out your perform face to face with the public
have dozens of stories to tell about the requirements that your
organization meets and the folks it assists. Quite a few of these wants
can be translated into an appeal, not for a unique project, but
a request for general funds to meet a given need. Here’s an
instance.
In talking with the staff of a ministry that operates with inmates
in Canada’s prisons, I discovered that most inmates have a
problem with anger. Their tempers typically land them in prison.
And, even though inside, they develop even a lot more angry. As you can
imagine, a compelling theme for an appeal letter would be inmate
anger, and how a donor’s gift supplies the funds that this
prison ministry wants to assist inmates conquer their anger and
lead productive lives upon release.
Milestones
Is your organization
celebrating a 10th or 100th anniversary? Then you have the
ingredients for a compelling appeal, supplied you link past
successes with your plans for the coming months and years. Have
you just served your millionth meal? Or planted 500,000 trees as
of this week? Translate your milestones into compelling proof
that your organization desires your donors’ continued help,
then place your proof on paper in the kind of a persuasive
fundraising package theme and mail it.
Current successes
Similar to milestones
are current successes. 1 organization I wrote for won the Nobel
Peace Prize. That became a theme for one mailing. One more
organization I know of retired their debt early, and announced
the truth with an appeal for funds.
The essential to keeping your fundraising letters engaging and a joy
to study with every single passing year is to present your function in new
methods. As Foster place it, “to come up with the exact same issue only
diverse.” And the greatest locations to appear for those creative suggestions
are your customers, volunteers and staff, and the challenges they
face each day in carrying out your mission.
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