Creative

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.

Testimonials allow your reader to see your organization through the eyes of someone you've helped. It's a first-person, ground-level view of how you change lives.

For some reason, fundraisers or their bosses often put too much weight on the opinion of an audience of one. Rather than thoughtfully considering it in light of the whole picture, the response is too often wholesale change.

Communications best practices merge the "fundraising" function and the "marketing/communications" function. So if you want to be successful at fundraising, you have to master some marketing skills and become a master at "fund marketing."

It takes a little extra effort, and often some extra homework, to make case studies compelling enough to persuade a reader to reach for her wallet. But that's what you're there for, right? If it were easy, anybody could do it.

Steve MacLaughlin, director of analytics at Blackbaud, goes to great lengths to provide insight to us all, and he has done it again with his annual review of year-end fundraising email subject lines.

We copywriters have powerful tools at our disposal. Microsoft Word probably leads the pack. It makes our jobs faster and easier. But in today's business-centric world, Word has evolved into an implement for corporate use. As writers who specialize in fundraising, this presents a challenge.

The best way to earn readers' attention, and keep it, is to tell them what they want to know. Not what you want to tell them.