Copywriting

Here are three ways to make sure your fundraising appeal stays on-message for maximum impact and response.

Remember that you're sending engagement communications to donors. Your most important job is to keep them motivated to donate.

Connecting with your audience is harder than ever. How do you cut through the noise? How do you get donors to donate and supporters to take action? You make your messages relevant. Empathy Maps are powerful tools that help you reframe how you can connect with your audience.

The Empathy Map, developed by information design consultancy EXPLANE, helps you develop a better understanding of the environment, behavior, concerns and aspirations that affect your supporters. This understanding helps shape your communications with them so you can drive them to take the action.

Nancy Schwartz, publisher of Getting Attention, shared "5 Ways to Get Relevant and Get Personal" with donors and supporters in the October 2013 issue of FundRaising Success.

After the call to action, the element of a direct-mail piece that matters most for response is the outer envelope. If you want to move the needle in direct-mail response, test changes to the envelope.

Here's something to consider when you're thinking about that envelope: copy and design are not the only elements you can work with. The envelope is a physical object, and you can change the physical properties of it, and that can be a very effective way to improve your fundraising results.

In the July 2008 issue of FundRaising Success, Katya Andresen, then with Network for Good and now CEO at ePals, spoke with Kivi Leroux Miller, president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide, about how to take nonprofit and fundraising newsletters "From Snoring to Soaring."

What’s the factor that will have more impact on the success of your fundraising campaigns than anything else? It's not your brand. It's not your campaign creative. And it's not your budget either. So, what is it then — this secret ingredient for success?

It’s what marketers call "the audience": the donors and potential donors that contribute from their own pockets to help your charity achieve its mission. Or, putting it another way: People.

I gave a workshop on newsletters. People from Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul, Minn., attended. Their donor newsletter, mailed quarterly to 20,000 people at that point, racked up an annual net loss of $40,000. Was there a better way, they wondered?

Something amazing happened post-workshop: Giving to Gillette's newsletter increased 1,000 percent (not a misprint), after a few changes.

The old way, the foundation received about $5,000 in gifts per issue.

The new way, the foundation received about $50,000 in gifts per issue.

Kivi Leroux Miller, author of "Content Marketing for Nonprofits," discusses her book. She will present on content marketing at the second annual FundRaising Success Engage Conference.

If creating compelling content can help you make the case for giving and hold the attention of supporters, exactly how do you come up with the best stuff for your nonprofit? Creating content for content’s sake won’t do much for your cause and may have a negative effect when done poorly. A lot goes into making and effectively distributing quality content, but ideally your nonprofit content should be URGENT: useful, relevant, genuine, edited, necessary and tested.