A Blast From the Past: Elements of a Great Fundraising Offer (September 2009)

You can accomplish this tall order by creating a powerful fundraising offer — a call to action that will make donors look beyond the intangibility of what they're buying and happily reach for their checkbooks anyway.

The best fundraising offers have these seven elements:

1. A problem
Something isn't right in the world. Something's missing. Somebody is hungry, sick or lost. A situation needs to change. Maybe it's more of an opportunity than a problem: Something great can happen if we take action.