Creative

Writing fundraising copy should be detailed and painstaking for you. Reading it should be fast and easy for your donor.

To get a handle on what’s in store for 2015, NonProfit PRO rounded up some of the nonprofit industry’s finest, who were kind enough to share their nonprofit trends for 2015. Here are four trends on nonprofit messaging.

Writing fundraising copy takes concentration and focus. There are a lot of elements, strategic and creative, that have to be accounted for as you write. It takes up a lot of your headspace.

The 10 tips below are basic copywriting guidelines that will help you every time you write a fundraising letter, email or blog post.

I'm a firm believer that empathy has the potential to solve more problems than war and peace put together. From a more practical one, boosting your empathic ability could give your fundraising results a shot in the arm.

In communicating with your donors, whether it be a website or mailing — electronic or physical — focus on the relationships. Risk a little. Risk looking foolish. Make your investors smile. They'll love you for it. When you ask them to step up their support, they'll sense the human connection and respond.

Today I'm sharing with you the three most overused, most boring and least useful words ever to be used in fundraising appeals.

Success stories in fundraising focus on the positive outcome. They give you the opportunity to tell the reader how fabulous you are. It's a seductive proposition and a great way to steer your ship into the rocks.

For those of us who are tasked with providing information that encourages giving, the right story can make our jobs go from impossible to possible. So how do we get those compelling examples that help our donors and prospects grasp the importance of the work we do? Following are things that I have found can make my task as a copywriter a joy — or a job.

Here's how nonprofits should do cross-marketing without being creepy or it feeling forced … and how not to do it the way "The Bachelor" did.