What You 'Think' in Fundraising Can Kill You
Or at least destroy your results.
Fatal thought No. 1: Long letters are bad
I hear this often from students in the fundraising classes I teach. "No one wants to read a letter that is more than a page long." Unfortunately for all you short-letter proponents, that's not what tests have shown.
Granted, there are always exceptions, but consider this wisdom from a colleague who is a very successful fundraising copywriter. He wrote copy for a three-way test: four pages, six pages and eight pages. "The eight won on all metrics. The six was second, and the four last. For some nonprofits, the more you tell, the more you sell."
Pamela Barden is an independent fundraising consultant focused on direct response. You can read more of her fundraising columns here.
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