Creative

If you're a fundraising copywriter, you already have most of the tools you need to go from good to great. The rest are available to you. All it takes to get them, and the persuasive power that goes with them, is a lot of hard work.

It's not the actual number that matters — it's the ability for a donor to feel like he or she can make a real difference.

The key message running through NextAfter's "5 Ways to Cut Through the Clutter With Your Year-End Fundraising" report (in my opinion) is that over time, when everyone adopts "best practices," they become overused. My personal beef is when a great concept that makes perfect sense for one organization is adapted — and jimmy-rigged — by another. Think about the dime used by March of Dimes; it makes perfect sense for that organization, but most of the other coin mailings seem to me to be a major stretch. Or the brown lunch bag used as the outer envelope for a food bank; it loses something when it's used by an organization that doesn't provide food, I think.

"Help" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. You use it often in your fundraising copy, but are you keenly aware of its nuances?

You might think infomercials are corny and campy. Maybe so. But they’re also gems of direct response. Let’s take a look at the role the demo plays in an infomercial, and then we’ll see how to apply it to fundraising.

Always include the impact of the gift when you ask for money. This makes your ask feel not about the money but instead about the wonderful work your organization does in the world.

There's a lot of talk about the need for innovation in fundraising. As there should be. But before new ideas are introduced, we should make sure the old ideas from which they spring are true.

If you are hoping for a personal copy of Hermione's time turner, I can't help you (sorry, non-Harry Potter fans), but if you are already using outside resources (writers, designers, full-service agencies, etc.) for your donor communications, there are ways you can free up more of your time without spending more money. Here are some "system tweaks" that may help.

True, you can use the handle of a screwdriver as a hammer, but it is harder and does a less effective job. Here are four key challenges I see to trying to use social media as a fundraising tool.

Check out the winners of the 2014 FundRaising Success Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence Email (Less Than $10 Million) category from Guide Dogs for the Blind, NARAL and People for the American Way.