In Fundraising, Your English Teacher Gets an ‘F’

OK, I admit it: I used to be an English teacher. I’m not ashamed — maybe just a little sheepish. If I helped a few people enjoy language, think more clearly or discover the power of revising their own writing — well, then, I made the world an ever-so-slightly better place.

The problem is, like every other English teacher, I spent a good deal of effort teaching my students some very artificial rules about writing. And now that I’m in the fundraising world, some of those rules come back to haunt me. Yes, there were many students who really paid attention to their English teachers and are now zealous evangelists of the rules we taught them.

But most of those rules don’t belong in effective fundraising. Worse, the more absurd the rule, the more strange, hypnotic power it seems to hold. But try and tell that to those former students — those dear, hard-working students who warmed our hearts and made our days back in the classroom.

The time has come for me to make amends by showing you some of the English-teacher rules that fundraisers should ignore.

Essay structure
I spent a lot of time drilling essay writing into students’ heads. You remember: Open with a thesis paragraph, follow with three more paragraphs of supporting evidence, then end with a rousing conclusion. Every paragraph starts with a topic sentence, and there’s a clear, logical flow from beginning to end.

It’s a useful way to write when you’re in college, but once you’re done with that, you’re better off forgetting the skill. It just doesn’t help, especially in fundraising, where you seek to motivate readers to action.

Essay structure is as formalized and artificial as haiku. The better a piece of writing is as an essay, the more likely it misses the mark as fundraising copy, which should be loose, repetitive, emotional and narrative.

Sentence fragments
A sentence technically isn’t a sentence unless it has a subject and a verb. No argument from me on that. But English teachers often turn that fact into a rule: Never commit a nonsentence to paper.

Why? A motor vehicle that only has two wheels isn’t a car, but that doesn’t mean you can’t drive it. Sentence fragments propel a reader forward. They’re easy to read. They sound like speech. In other words, they are desirable in almost every way.

Sentences starting with conjunctions
Put a conjunction like “and” or “but” (or “or”) at the beginning, and suddenly a sentence is demoted to mere phrase. And this, in the prescriptive world of English teachers, must not be seen in writing.

But when you listen to people talk, you’ll notice that we start our sentences with conjunctions more often than not. It sounds natural. It’s easy to comprehend. And it breaks down the barrier between reader and writer.

Sentences that end with prepositions
On this rule, I’m with Winston Churchill. It’s said that once, on seeing some fussy and unnecessary edits made to something he wrote, he thundered something to the effect of, “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”

There’s actually a reason for this rule: If you end your sentence with a preposition, you’ve left the prime emphasis spot — the last word — with a piece of grammatical scaffolding.

But in fundraising, there’s a more important principle: Sound like an unpretentious human.

Split infinitives
At some point, the rule-makers came up with this doozy: When you use a verb in its infinitive form, as in “to ask,” you mustn’t put anything between “to” and “ask.”

The weird logic behind this rule in English: You can’t split an infinitive in Latin because, in that language, it’s a single word. Why that means you can’t take the two-word English version and plop something interesting or useful in between is beyond me.

If you want copy that moves people to give, you’re better off being able to build infinitives so they sing — not mechanically following a nonsensical rule.
(I have a feeling the Starship Enterprise wouldn’t have gone as far if its five-year mission had been to go boldly or boldly to go.)

There’s more, of course. There’s a long list of no-nos imported from the classrooms. They don’t belong out here, where we have responsibilities to the missions we serve.

Should you forget everything your English teachers taught you? Not at all. If your teachers were any good, they taught you to write with vigor and precision. They showed you how using language can help you marshal your thoughts. They made you believe in revising your work until it’s better.

But if your job is fundraising, your goal isn’t just to please a teacher. It’s to get regular people to join you in changing the world. That’s a tall order — much trickier than pulling down an A in your English class. And it needs a different set of rules.

Here, a former English teacher’s new rules for fundraising copy:

● Keep your writing at a low grade level. That doesn’t mean talking down to your readers. It just means showing them the courtesy of making it easy to read. Short sentences. Circumscribed utilization of multisyllabics.

● Be colloquial. If that means breaking grammatical rules, that’s OK. Clichés, exclamations and informal constructions are OK, too. Semicolons should be avoided.

● Be specific. Never generalize. Find the details that make what you’re saying come to life.

● Be repetitive. Whatever your main point or call to action is — say it over and over again. (Nobody reads every word you write. Make sure they get your point nonetheless!)

● Write to your audience. It’s all about them. Nothing really matters until you connect to their world. The word “you” should meaningfully outnumber the words “I” and “we.” FS