Donors Are Different — But Some Things Never Change

Your donors and prospects don’t want to have to use a glossary of acronyms or resort to grammatically diagramming a sentence to understand what you want them to know. Make sure someone who doesn’t know your organization at all can tell you what the main message of your communication is.

Repeat after me: 'I am not the target audience'
When I teach fundraising writing, every session begins with the class saying in unison, “I am not the target audience.” Even if you are the typical gender, age group and demographic of your audience, you aren’t the target. Simply by being an employee of, volunteer at or consultant to your nonprofit, you know far more than your target audience does.