Creative

"Sometimes teasers are like bad pick-up lines. And with the split-second decision your donor makes when she glances at your outer envelope, you don’t get a second chance to talk your way out of a poor first impression … you’ve already been round-filed."

I learned how to fundraise scared. As a nascent nonprofit, we didn’t have brand recognition, or existing donors to steward and cultivate. We had to ASK. FOR. MONEY. As just four individuals who comprised the organization in the early days, our reputations — social, professional and political — could be lost along with the zoo. Our neighbors, colleagues, families and constituents knew who to blame if we didn’t pull it off.

Did you know that every good nonprofit fundraiser is a storyteller? As development professionals, we cast real life stories for donors that excite and intrigue. We show the world as it is, and as it could be, and then ask our listeners/prospects to jump right into the story and take the reins by investing in our vision for the future.

At least, that’s the way fundraising should be. So often, though, we get mired in the details …

Continuing our journey through the alphabet, here are five more things to pay attention to as you do your work as a fundraiser this week and passionately share your organization's mission with supporters and prospects.

In this guest column, "Blending the Art and the Science," from the August 2009 issue, Cathy Finney, then associate vice president at MINDset direct, explains that it might be important to bring creative talent to the table earlier in the development of direct-response campaigns.

I’m including the usual annual caveats about this list of words, especially this: If any word on the list is truly the most effective choice for reaching your reader, please go ahead and use it. I would simply suggest that you ask yourself if it’s truly the most effective choice. And, with that, here are a few words that Big Duck recommends you avoid (or at least be fully conscious that you’re using).

In her March 2008 column, inspirational fundraising consultant Katya Andresen, a member of the FundRaising Success Editorial Advisory Board, explained why it's best to focus on the positive to motivate donors to hope and action.

"If you love your donors, treat them well by mailing letters they can read easily. Please, I implore you." That was the admonition that copywriter and creative strategist Kimberly Seville offered up in her DM Diagnosis column in May 2006.

It's a fact of fundraising that some donors only give once and never again. Others give multiple times but then stop giving. But just because that's reality, fundraisers should never calmly accept it. Instead, we need to fight to the death to keep our donors, using the weapons of creative strategies that are designed to retain or re-acquire our donors.

In October 2009, it looked like things were finally starting to look up as far as the ecomony was concerned, and nonprofits were shaking off their recession malaise and looking for ways to reinvigorate their donors. In this article, "Copywriting for the Post-Recession," Willis Turner, senior copywriter at Huntsinger & Jeffer, offered seven rules for "learning to write like a winner again."