Cut Through the Clutter

The good news, Doyle says, is that your donor is willing to give it that shot and can see through the clutter when something is important to him. The key is to be meaningful and to bring out emotion in your messaging. These are the secret weapons in your quest for donors.

Doyle gave six conditions for building a “critical mass of meaningfulness.”

1. The cause must be relevant.
2. The cause must seem important in principle.
3. The cause must seem achievable.
4. The cause must involve individuals in a way that gives them a sense of empowerment and identity.
5. The organization must seem trustworthy.
6. There must be an individual call to action.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, for example, realized that while the average age of its donors had stayed the same over a 10-year period, its new donors had grown up in a different time than the donors it had mailed to 10 years ago. Its package was not really reflecting this change, and it was losing the old donors and not acquiring enough new ones.