queer ideas

Three things you need to get right in mid-value fundraising

There has been a surge of interest in mid-value fundraising over the last year, so I thought it might be worth sharing a few thoughts about the technique.

For those who don't know, mid-value fundraising is a focused, engaging and highly personal version of direct marketing that asks wealthier (or more generous) people for gifts of between £250 and £5,000 ($500 to $10,000).

I've used this approach for appeals since way back in the early 1990s when I worked for YMCA England. We developed a cold mailing pack asking for £5,000 that generated an initial ROI of 15:1. But more importantly, the donors were exceptionally loyal (and often very generous). The highest gift that was ever given by a donor originally recruited by that first pack was £5,000,000.

So it's a powerful technique. However, you need to use it with care.

As well as seeing plenty of successes, there have also been a few failures. And if you are thinking of testing whether it is right for you, you'll need to know that it's important that you get your approach right. To help, I thought I'd share the Bluefrog mid-value triangle that focuses on the three key elements we've found to be a major driver of success.

Audience

Who are you writing to? Get this wrong and you could be facing a disaster.

You can obviously source prospects from third-party list brokers, but they need to be squeaky clean in terms of accuracy. In the good old days you could get names from registers of share-holders and you were pretty certain just how wealthy they were. This is no longer the case. Nowadays, most lists of 'wealthy' individuals are compiled from a range of sources and sometimes those lists are not quite as good as you need them to be. At Bluefrog we aren't currently engaged in any cold direct mail aimed at mid-value donors because of this risk.

This leaves you with your current supporter file. This is a great place to start but please remember, just because someone has given you a large gift once, it does not mean they will – or can – again. We've had to develop some very sophisticated propensity models to identify those donors who can afford to give more and actually want to.

So, be very careful who you ask. Many large gifts from individuals could well be the result of in-memoriam collections or community fundraising activities. So look out for unusual amounts in your data. Anything like £870, £2,145 or even £2,783.48 should raise alarm bells – particularly if you've never asked for gifts of that specific size before. If in doubt, call the donor up and ask why they gave before you mail them again. It can save a great deal of upset.

And, on the other side of the coin, if someone gave a large gift once and they were dropped into your standard mailing programme or passed to the high value team where they were lost because they hadn't given quite enough, they may not have a very high opinion of your charity. The sudden appearance of appropriate asks – even in a very good mailing pack – may not actually be noticed or welcomed. All is not necessarily lost, but you may have to kick-start the relationship again before making a request for a significant sum as the donor may well feel unappreciated or unrecognised.

Further to this point, a regular mistake that people make is to mail this pack solely to high value donors that the major donor team has been unable to motivate to give. Don't! You need engaged donors for this to work well. If you aren't willing to focus on your best donors, don't even test it.

Signatory

Who asks matters. I've seen a change in signatory to an appeal dramatically improve and dramatically reduce income on more than one occasion. Your CEO is not always the best person to sign your letter. Wealthier people are much more likely to give if someone they know – or know of – asks for their help. This is particularly true if that person moves in the same social circles as the potential donor or works in the same industry.

And remember, you don't always need to restrict yourself to one signatory. A mid-value mailing can include more than one letter or even have multiple signatories.

Offer

Why you need the money is very important. A general appeal for unrestricted funds is highly unlikely to work. You have to feature projects that a donor will be interested in and be inspired by. I've seen mid-value appeals fail because an initial project that sounded exciting was watered down to the point that it failed to convince a donor that their money would do anything useful at all.

Even if you are focusing on a real project, choose it with care. Not all projects are equally valuable to a donor. Try to focus on work that you know they will want to fund. You need something that will excite and engage. For example, funding the training and equipping of a rural health worker is highly likely to generate a much better response than training an urban social worker in rights' provision.

Once a mid-value donor is engaged they may well give you unrestricted funds, but, it is highly unlikely this will happen with the first mid-value gift. So focus on the donor's specific needs first. And remember, with appropriate treatment, they may even move to regular giving, but only after a relationship exists.

Is it for you?

If you still think the mid-value approach is right for you and your charity, please test first. A mid-value focus can dramatically change the relationship your donors have with you. And once it works, you can even use your appeals for donors who have given smaller gifts as well. It also helps to have a custom landing page as increasing numbers of mid-value donors may well be prompted to give by a mailing, but the process of giving is often undertaken online.

My final advice is to move forward carefully, particularly if you can't meet every requirement in the triangle. Asking for a large gift will make you stand out from the crowd. Just make sure it is in a good way.

It's time to listen to the Hamster of Fundraising Wisdom

When I was child, we lived in a flat (that's an apartment or condo for my north American readers). Like any small boy, I wanted a pet. I'd have liked a dog or a cat, but the architectural restrictions we lived under meant this was impossible.

So instead I got a hamster. I called him Herman. Both because of the alliterative quality of the name and because I liked Fred Gwynne's character in The Munsters.

Getting him was far from easy. I only got the go ahead after an extended period of pleading and negotiations that meant I had to agree to a series of tough conditions.

I had to feed him and change his water, I had to make sure he received plenty of exercise and most importantly, at least in my mum's eyes, I had to make sure he didn't smell. That meant that I had to regularly clean out his cage.

I readily and excitedly agreed to every single one. And I kept to them too. For or at least the first month. It was then that my mother realised that I needed "support and encouragement" to ensure that Herman had the nice clean home and interesting life that he deserved.

So a whole range of privileges became dependent on how well Herman was treated. A request for a little extra pocket money was met with the suggestion that it might be forthcoming once his cage was cleaned. Asking for a bar of chocolate would generate a response that focused on me being asked when Herman was last given a good run outside his cage.

In short, I discovered that having a hamster wasn't like having a toy that could be put away and forgot about until the next time I decided that I wanted to build Thunderbird 2 out of Lego.

No. A hamster came with responsibilities. It was all well and good having Herman as a little playmate, but it was when my mum said that if I wasn't prepared to actually care for him, I shouldn't have asked for a hamster in the first place, that I actually started to understand.

Having a pet, was as much about care as fun. And the more care I put in, the better my relationship with Herman became and the more fun we would both have. We even developed a trick where he would climb up my trouser leg and finally emerge through the neck of my T-shirt.

So, what's this got to do with fundraising?

To get the most out of your relationship with donors, you need to look after them.

So many of the complaints that we've seen from donors over the last few months are based on the fact that many charities aren't bothering to build a relationship with them and instead are replacing engagement with repeated requests for a regular gift and upgrades.

Back in 2004, nfpSynergy found that the fundraising method that irritated donors the most was direct mail. Today, it is what can be broadly termed as interruption techniques – face to face, telephone and text messaging.

The fact is, these techniques can raise significant amounts of income. But it's really hard to engage people recruited through these methods. I've written about my thoughts on the type of donors these routes can generate before.

A focus on them tends to build a file that is highly unresponsive to anything other then telephone calls. Cash appeals, legacy campaigns and newsletters struggle. The result is that fundraisers often give up and just focus on upgrade calling, keeping their fingers crossed that regulars givers won't cancel. It's got to the point where some charities are attempting to upgrade regular givers every nine months.

This sort of misses the point. Just because these donors aren't direct mail responsive, doesn't mean that they should be treated like living ATM machines. If they only respond on the telephone, use that to engage them. Ring them up and say thank you. Ask them why they support you and concentrate on that in your future communications – this is particularly important for healthcare charities.

As a sector, we are in danger of building a feeling amongst the next generation of donors that we don't really care about them.

In Bluefrog's private research we still find older donors tend to be very forgiving when it comes to charity communications. The fact is they actually don't expect that much from us. It's a far different situation with younger (middle-aged) people. They are much more likely to actually get angry when they feel they are being treated poorly by charities.

We need to remember that donors are not 'ours'. We share them. We need to consider the fact that we are all responsible for caring for them. A poor experience can hurt us all. And though an over-reliance on interruption techniques might recruit more donors for your charity in the short-term, that may well come at a significant cost to the sector.

Which might make all our good ideas, hard work and innovation a waste of time. When we look at the numbers, we'll see that we resemble a hamster on a wheel. No matter how fast we run, we simply don't get anywhere.

Which brings us to a little friendly advice from the Hamster of Fundraising Wisdom...

And if you are thinking of calling your donors with a thank you call, now might be a great time to start. Many telephone fundraising agencies are struggling as charities cancel their campaigns. I know that they would be glad of the business.

The fact is we don't have to stop using the telephone. We just need to use it differently.

This is not fundraising

Over the last fifteen years or so, we've seen a fundamental change in how we raise money. For most of the twentieth century, fundraising was about engagement.

It was about recruiting new donors, nurturing them, getting a second gift, then a third and then moving them to regular giving (which we used to call committed giving). We would maintain their support with feedback that showed them the impact of their generosity until finally we received the ultimate gift – a legacy.

It was hard work. It wasn't cheap. But when done well, it produced great returns.

But in the late 1990s, things changed. We discovered face to face fundraising and the power of interruption.

Face to face fundraisers would stop people on the street and sign them up as regular givers. At a stroke, we could cut out the hard work (and expense) needed to engage people before we gained their 'commitment'.

We soon worked out that these donors were different to the traditional donor. They were younger and they didn't give to our DM appeals. But because they gave through a Direct Debit, that didn't matter. After all, these donors gave twelve times a year.

There was the growing problem of attrition, but the face to face agencies introduced guarantees and it became something we learned to live with. After all, if these new recruits weren't responding to mail packs, what could we do?

And slowly the structure of donor bases changed. Rather than recruiting older supporters with an engagement to the cause, many charities were increasingly likely to be funded by younger people who didn't seem to want much of a relationship. They were regular givers. But they couldn't necessarily be described as supporters.

And if these donors didn't want to engage, charities were a bit stuck. Crossing fingers and hoping for the best, replaced old-fashioned fundraising. Donors grew to resemble a commodity where they were bought and sold for up to £100 each. Ironically, if they were the sort of person who was too busy or too disinterested to cancel a Direct Debit, it increased their value.

This all created something of a problem.

If you look at what's happened over the last five or six years, the income from individuals for many charities has stagnated. Yes, the recession has had a great deal to do with this but so has the fact that many charities have been primarily recruiting unengaged donors for the last fifteen years.

CAF figures show that the percentage of donors who give via Direct Debit has been stuck at about 30% of people who donate to charity since 2006/07. When the PFRA reminds us that face to face recruited 2.2 million new regular givers between 2009/10 and 2011/12, it makes you think we might be simply swapping donors on some form of philanthropic merry-go-round.

And the implications appear to be worse for legacy income.

Remember a Charity reports (PDF) that the number of Wills that include a charitable gift at probate has increased by 10% in the first part of this century. But take a visit to the Charity Commission website and have a look at what's happened to the legacy income of many of the big charities over the last five or six years or so. You'll see that legacy income is, by and large, flatlining or even in decline.

The fact is that the legacy prospect pools for some of our biggest charities are rapidly shrinking.

So what should we do?

I think it's about time for a change of focus. To value instead of cost.

Cheap regular givers are usually cheap for a reason. They have low levels of engagement. Commitment doesn't happen overnight – it is the result of hard work.

This isn't a criticism of face to face. As a technique, it has recruited hundreds of thousands of new supporters. Without it, we would be poorer.

My concern is simply an over-reliance on interruption – in all its guises. And the long-term implications of the technique.

Mobile, for instance, has been presented as the future of fundraising. Like face to face, it recruits donors cheaply. But the levels of loyalty and interest demonstrated by mobile donors are also incredibly low. Click through rates are tiny. And if a donor isn't going to click through, it doesn't really matter what information we put on our mobile responsive website, it's unlikley to be read. All for an average gift of £3 a month.

So where are the most valuable donors?

They can come from any source (even your own warm file) but perhaps direct mail, press and online offer the best return, particularly at the moment. And particularly direct mail. At Bluefrog, for example, we've seen responses of up to 5% on cold mailings in 2013.

They work because engagement requires time and space.

These techniques (when done well) allow you to not only present your case, but to also show the beneficiary as a real person and to give the donor what they need  – a taste of the joy of giving (and perhaps even a chance to show off about what they have done).

These donors might not be the cheapest to recruit. They might require a great follow-up after recruitment. And they might not all become long-term supporters. But there are at least four good reasons why they are more valuable than a donor who only gave because they were interrupted.

They recognise the value of giving to you and give freely.

One of the problems with interruption techniques is that social pressure comes into play. Though this can be valuable in gaining that first gift, it can leave the donor feeling uncertain. It's one of the reasons so many face to face cancellations happen in the first few days after recruitment.

They give a sum that matters to them.

Great fundraising isn't just about asking for smaller and smaller sums until you reach a point where the gift is so small it doesn't really concern your potential donor. Consider increasing the amount you ask for, rather than reducing it.

They are happy to share their address and contact details with you.

Donors who feel bombarded by charities who send inappropriate communications are not neccesarily in the right place to embark on a new relationship, even if it is going to be one that they might enjoy.

It's one of the problems that we face with mobile giving.

Mobile donors tell us that they value the ease with which they can skip and stop. They also value the anonymity it offers them. It is ironic, but they value the fact that they can use their mobile to keep charities at arm's length.

They are responsive.

Donors who are interested in your work, are far more likely to read your communications. If they aren't interested, they won't read anything you send them. And if they don't read, they aren't going to give. 

In short, we need to make giving enjoyable for the donor again.

After all, that is our job. That is fundraising.

The day George Smith showed me the finger

I've not always been the all knowing guru that I shamelessly pretend to be on this blog.

It may be hard to believe, but I was once a fundraising cretin who thought that putting a good appeal together was simply down to listening to your gut.

And sadly when I look back at some of the things I said and did at the very beginning of my career, it was obvious that most of my thinking was happening at the far end of my alimentary canal.

Heaven knows what the poor account handlers and creatives who had the misfortune to work with me must have gone through, but just thinking of some of the absolute rubbish I spouted as a young client is painful enough to make me physically cringe and groan out loud.

As a result, I'd like to make a public apology to the staff at Yellowhammer Direct, Grey Direct, Burnett Associates and FCB Impact for the many, many stupid things I said over the years (including once even complaining about the shape of a D - what was I thinking?).

But before I get completely off the point let me get back to the real reason for this post.

I wanted to share a short story about how George Smith influenced my career. Unfortunately I didn't know him very well and can add very little to the tribute from Ken Burnett in The Guardian and those from his many friends and colleagues that can be found on SOFII.

But I thought this recollection about how he changed the way I looked at fundraising might serve both as a thank you and a cautionary tale to young fundraisers tempted by the dark side.

The first time I met George was back in the early nineties when I paid my only visit to the Smith Bundy offices in Kennington. I was an over-promoted Head of Direct Marketing at YMCA England and we were looking for a new agency.

It wasn't long before I started sharing my frustrations that fundraising was broken and we had to re-invent it.

As the meeting went on, George seemed more interested in the surface of his desk than in what I had to say. As I watched, he slowly started tracing the grain of the wood with his finger, finally looking up when my lecture finished.

He smiled, then wished me the best of luck in searching for this new approach and assured me he'd love to hear the results when they were available.

Needless to say, we didn't end up working with Smith Bundy.

But his influence stayed with me. He'd been polite, but without saying a single word had told me he thought I was being bloody stupid.

It got me thinking. And reading. What did he know that I didn't?

I kept an eye out for George's articles in industry publications and started ordering books written by old school fundraisers and direct marketers – many from the USA. My reading list included Ken Burnett, Drayton Bird, David Ogilvy, Lester Wunderman, Harold J. Seymour, John Watson, Jerry Huntsinger and Denison Hatch.

George's Asking Properly became one of my favourite publications and still holds the record as the book most likely to be stolen from the Bluefrog library. I trawled our building this afternoon trying to find a copy only to discover there wasn't a single one to be found. As a result I've just put my order in to the White Lion Press for yet another copy. How long it will last is anyone's guess.

The result of this research was that I worked out what George knew that I didn't – fundraising wasn't broken. We just hadn't been doing it very well.

So we started writing and designing our own appeals based on what we were learning from George and his peers and our packs worked. Often very well. We even won an award.

As a result, I received a number of phone calls from different charities asking who was doing our creative work. They gave me the confidence to resign in 1997 and set up Bluefrog.

All because of George's finger.

Many years later, George visited the Bluefrog offices to chat with us about our work. it was a great opportunity and I wish I could have spent longer with him but 'urgent' meetings on long forgotten campaigns got in the way. I thought about sharing this story with him, but we'd run out of time. It's something I imagine I'll always regret.

Luckily George wasn't like me and regularly shared his thoughts in his writing. And for those of you who never got the chance to chat to George, you can do yourself a massive favour and read George's last publication, Up Smith Creek which features a selection of his writings going back to the 1970s.

It's not as concise as the advice George gave me with his finger but it's every bit as valuable.

Online donors have letter boxes too

Here's another couple of charts that Damian O'Broin from Ask Direct and I shared at IOF London on our international mystery shopping exercise.

It gives a few more insights in to how charities are integrating email and postal communications.

One of our most surprising findings was that relatively few of the charities we surveyed put a thank you letter in the post in response to an online gift.

Just 5% of British charities did. American charities came next at a little over 20%. Canadians were better at 40%, whilst Australian charities provided over half of online donors with a 'real' thank you.

And when it came to subsequent appeals, things weren't much better.

As you'll see from this chart (showing results just from the UK), emails were often flying thick and fast – though not in all cases. But what surprised me most was that many charities didn't send out any postal appeals in the six to seven months following receipt of an online gift (purple columns).

A number of people questioned this point in our session, asking whether it was appropriate to mail someone who had chosen to given online. And luckily we included a few recent studies on online giving that surprised a few people and demonstrated, once again, that DM is still alive and kicking.

The first is a piece of US research from last year that found that 14% of online donors gave an online donation in response to a mailing pack, whereas just 6% gave in response to an email.

And when it comes to preference, you'll see below that over a third of those surveyed were happiest using a charity website to give to DM appeals.

TNT found UK donors had similar attitudes in a study they also undertook in 2010. You can read more on this survey here.

I'll ensure that we have the complete presentation of the mystery shopping survey up soon.

Are you suffering from a royal wedding hangover?

Having analysed the results for a number of appeals and spoken to fundraisers from throughout the sector, it looks like we are suffering from a royal wedding DM hangover.

Fundraising campaigns that were mailed in the run up to Easter or shortly after the wedding (29th of April) seem to have generated some pretty rotten results.

Year on year comparisons of warm and cold campaigns are showing a significant downturn.

Though we can't ignore the economic situation, I think there are three environmental factors surrounding the wedding that have combined to create the problem…

1. People took the opportunity of the late Easter, May Day and wedding holiday to take ten days off work for the price of three.
2. Post was slow (postal staff take holidays too) resulting in many mailing packs being stuck in the system and not dropping until the second week in May.
3. Many charities rushed to beat the Royal Mail price rise deadline (May 7th) increasing the glut of mailing packs hitting the mat in that same week.

Tania Cohen mentioned on Twitter that she remembers poor response rates being discussed the last time Easter was close to May Day (2000). She also pointed out that it wouldn't be until 2038 that it happened again.

Another reason why direct mail isn't going to die

Should no one be able to fundraise until they learn direct response?

A presentation from David Ogilvy on the importance of direct marketing.

As I watched it, I couldn't help but be reminded of the relationship between advertising people and fundraising people today.

Well worth a few minutes of your time.

Thanks to the Jewish Donor Blog.

The tragedy of the commons

I studied development studies at university (at UEA) where as fresh young undergraduates we were introduced to Garret Hardin's concept of The Tragedy of the Commons (first published in Science magazine in 1968).

Hardin described a situation where a group of livestock owners share a pasture which can only support a finite number of cattle. But in order to maximise their personal benefit from the land, each owner increases their herd size whenever possible, worrying that if they don't take advantage of the land they might 'lose out'.

The result is that the number of cattle gradually increases to the point that the animals actually get thinner and start to die as there isn't enough food to go around. Eventually the land becomes so degraded that the topsoil is blown or washed away and the once lush grass turns to scrub.

I was reminded about this a week or so ago when the Fundraising Detective featured a letter from a donor that pointed out that he, together with his wife, had received 491 mailing packs from 115 charities in the previous twelve months. That's pretty much ten packs a week landing on their door mat!

Craig summed up the impact of this approach...

"when you look at the whole (and I'd guess there are thousands of other donors receiving similar volumes of mail) it is simply unjustifiable and unsustainable in the long term.  By continuing to act in this way, good causes risk driving donors to extinction by completely turning them off donating and alienating the very people who are happy to give."

But it isn't just mail. There are also the telephone calls, the knocks on the door, the face to face fundraisers in the street and the text messages on our mobile phones. Then there are the ads on the television, in the newspapers, on the radio, at the cinema, online and on billboards.

If our pasture is the population of donors, it would appear that fundraisers are some of the worst kinds of industrial farmers who are only managing to keep the grass growing by using ever more fantastic technology to eek out the last remnants of generosity from those upon whom we depend.

Even with the the massive potential of the web, with all the opportunities it offers us to engage and inspire, most innovation is nothing more than another variant of the donation form.

So what should we – as fundraisers – do?

We can't just stop mailing. And if we change our approach, we don't have to. But I agree with Craig that we can't continue like this. We need to stop the more egregious examples of bad practice that turn donors off.

And in their place, we should perhaps adopt some of the techniques used by the more sensible herders who decide to effectively manage a dwindling resource.

Cull the unproductive members of the herd

That might sound a little over top, but I simply mean that we must stop repeatedly mailing donors who are never going to give.

This can be achieved by using our data intelligently. 'Knowing the donor' is central to any good fundraising operation. And when you have too many donors to get to know individually, it's important that you use data so you can identify your best and worst prospects.

The result is less unwanted mail and less pressure on the collective population of donors. Some might say it's an expensive solution to employ an agency to manage your data. But when you use data effectively you reduce your mailing (or calling) quantities and costs. You also increase your income by improving your relationship with those donors who actually will give.

You'll be abe to identify the people who are most likely to convert to a regular gift, who will respond positively to your appeals (and at what time) and who might actually be interested in leaving you a legacy. You'll also be able to identify those people who are likely to put your mailing in the rubbish and avoid upsetting them in the first place.

This is actually covered within the IOF Code of Direct Marketing Fundraising Practice, but how many complaints have been made about poor data management? Not many.

Protect and care for the calves

Younger donors who aren't direct mail responsive tend to have some of the worst experiences of giving to charity. They get signed up to a direct debit on the street and... well that's it really. Some might get a few appeals asking for more money or newsletters telling them how great the organisation is but the result is that the best part of three-quarters of these youngsters cancel their gift in the first year.

So rather than give them the treatment that works for the mature members of the herd, we should focus on showing them exactly what their gift has achieved and remind them that they are part of an important and valuble movement. We should give them the materials to demonstrate that fact to others. And don't think that leaflets explaining why you need the money are going to work. Focus instead on providing regular communications and engagement devices that enhance their self-image. 

That way, when younger donors move into the real 'giving age' they will have a far more positive impression of the whole charitible sector.

For more on why younger donors give, you should read the millenial donors report (PDF) from Johnson Grossnickle Associates and Achieve. 

Oh, your older donors would also love the same treatment. It works on them too.

Keep the land free of pollutants

In a pasture, everything from plastic bags to buttercups can hurt cattle that eat them, so we need to ensure our environment is protected from the sector's equivalent of poinsonous plants and rubbish. This is something that the IOF codes of practice don't take into account – irrelevant and self-obsessed creative. Work that fails to take into account the needs of the donor has a slow but insidious effect as it makes opening mailing packs an unpleasant experience. 

Forget about the few mailings containing umbrellas that get sent out, it's the over-designed packs full of statistics and jargon that worry me.

Provide care for the injured

If a cow is injured it will need some individual care. It's the same with donors when their feelings are hurt. And that's when you should listen to them and respond. Craig was the first charity representative to call the very generous donor who wrote to him about his experience of charity mailings (even though the charities on the list include some very illustrious names).

Listening requires a change in mentality - but it works. Why not start by asking your donors if they are happy to receive appeals from you? Those that don't want them are probably never going to give to you anyway.

Care USA send a customer care piece to new donors as part of their welcome and regular giver conversion programme. It offers donors the opportunity to choose how often they receive communications. Less than 0.1% of donors asked to opt-out completely whereas the conversion rate to monthly gifts increased by 16%.

The fact is that there aren't that many people in the UK population that sign up to direct debits or respond to mailing packs. If we want to keep their support (and add to their numbers), we need to make giving to charity more rewarding and enjoyable. And after reading Craig's post, maybe that's what the IOF should be focusing on the next time they review their codes of practice.

How to judge a fundraising letter

One of the many great things on SOFII is Jerry Huntsinger's series of fundraising tutorials.

Jerry started writing fundraising letters in 1962 and over the years has probably written more of them than most people you could think of.

Every single one his tutorials can improve your fundraising, but number 30, might be particularly useful if you work for an organisation that struggles with the approval process, where deadlines slip and costs mount as growing numbers of your colleagues tweak, adjust and re-write copy in an effort to 'improve' your appeals.

Jerry has eight suggestions on how you can improve the process. You can read the complete version on SOFII, but here's a synopsis...

Give yourself some positive reinforcement

Remember, your donors actually like you and value your work. Supporting you makes them feel good. Why deny them that feeling?

Get your mind off the complaint letter that you received this morning

If you are angry when you read a letter, you are going to be on the defensive. The result is that you'll overlook what it should be doing in order to raise most money.

Don't try to edit the letter so it 'sounds like you'

If you write business letters and use jargon you'll come over as 'cold and sterile'. Donors want you to be warm, caring and positive. Let your writer use that style of language.

Trust your writer's technical expertise

If your writer uses short paragraphs, starts sentences with And or But, uses non-technical language and adds human anecdotes you should relax. They know how to raise money, so trust them.

Make sure your writer opens the letter with a strong beginning

The opening of the letter should be dramatic, emotional or personal. If you feel the opening could be stronger, don't comment any more. Send it back. A small change in an opening can have a huge impact on the entire flow of the piece.

Don't get hung up on the length of the letter

Some should be short, some should be long. Though people who really care about your work can't seem to get enough information (as long as it is interesting, accessible and relevant) sometimes a short letter can do particularly well. I've seen some very short reactivation letters that have achieved great results.

Be sure the letter asks for a specific donation amount

What you ask for will vary according to the donor's previous gifts and the work that you feature, but unless you tell the donor what you want, you leave them guessing and those guesses can often be well below what they can afford.

Don't pass the letter around the office for further approval, unless it is absolutely necessary

Keep the number of people who approve the letter to a minimum. And make sure that the people who do approve it are trained in the basics of editing a fundraising letter.

All others should only be allowed to change inaccuracies.

I'd add a few additional tips to Jerry's...

The first time you read it, hold the letter and nothing else

If you start making comments immediately, you are likely to miss the overall impact of the piece and might find yourself forcing 'important' matters into the opening parts of the letter when they are covered off later - this can really destroy the flow. So put down the pen and concentrate on the emotional impact of what you are reading.

Does the letter concentrate on telling the donor what they have done  – not what your charity is doing?

You should say you or your far more often than you say we.

Read the letter in a minimum of 16 point

I was given this advice years ago by a newspaper proof-reader. It really does help you spot typos, mistakes and poor phrasing.