Creative

In the February 2007 issue, then-FS Managing Editor Abny Santicola wrote about an LW Robbins direct-mail piece for the Vermont Foodbank that used a mini notecard to garner outstanding results, appropriately titled, "The Little Mailing That Did."

Remember, think before you write. And, to paraphrase Thumper, if you can't say something effective, proactive, emotional and motivating about your mission, "don't say nothin' at all."

In the August 2008 issue, creative consultant Kimberly Seville wrote in her DM Diagnosis column, "Gather Ye Data — Just Be Sure to Use It Well," that, "When [fundraisers] demonstrate with every direct-marketing campaign that we do care to know [donors], and when we use what we know to show we’re paying attention, we prove to each donor individually that he or she matters."

Changes in eyesight are inevitable as human beings age, according to The Canadian Association of Optometrists. Blurred vision at close range and growing need for higher light levels affect everyone in his or her middle years. That means it’s becoming harder every year for your boomer and civic donors — your most generous cohorts if your charity is typical — to see your printed materials, e-mails and website. To keep your print pieces with these groups clear and readable, follow these tips from CNIB.

It's not worth all the arguing that takes place over commas, spacing, underlining, bolding and which style guide trumps. It's all about communicating.

There's great power in your words. But to find it, you must, as the Second Apparition told Macbeth, "Be bloody, bold and resolute."

If we want to motivate readers — get them to the emotional state we want them be in when we ask for money — this is how we have to talk to them. "We've got to. It's all we can do. We have no other choice."

In today's multichannel marketing world, you need to be able to write communications and donor solicitations in every medium out there. In her e-book "Big Impact in Small Places," Kivi Leroux Miller, president of NonprofitMarketingGuide.com, provides nine tips for writing better e-mail subject lines, headlines, tweets and Facebook updates, and in February 2011, FS interviewed Leroux Miller about the book.

Flesch-Kincaid is a small tool that can be a big help. Readability stats won't do your writing for you, but they can definitely make the writing you do stronger!

Think of the hook as, well, the thing you hook your thinking on as you write the article. Or the thing that will hook your reader into going past the first sentence or two. It’s like the organizing principle that you write around. Or the most important point. Or the one-liner that you think everyone will want to tweet. It’s what snags both you and the readers into the piece.