queer ideas

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.

Tone of voice

Having written and overseen the writing of hundreds of charity communications, I've come to the conclusion that the instructional approach that so many brand guidelines take to defining 'tone of voice' simply doesn't work when it comes to specifying how non-profits must use language. Most direction is either unnecessary or confusing.

If we look at just a few examples of the adjectives that regularly appear in 'tone of voice' guidelines, you'll see what I mean.

Positive

What's the point? I'm writing for a charity. I'm hardly going to be negative about what a donor can achieve with a gift. Neither am I going to present the challenge a charity faces as being insurmountable.

Honest

Cripes, lucky this was there otherwise I'd just lie about everything the charity does.

Respectful

And there I was just about to kick off with a long tirade of patronising and sarcastic abuse. Phew! That was a near miss.

Passionate

If we are going to get people to act, passion is central to our offer. I don't need to be told it has to be included.

Caring

You mean you don't do this for the money?

I could go on, but hopefully the point is clear. Certain characteristics are shared by all charities and using them to define your 'tone of voice' is a waste of time. Simply saying "we are a charity" is enough to have your organisation associated with these traits.

There's a great presentation by John Ford – packed full of research findings – on the relationship of brand personality with giving behaviour. It's available here if you'd like more information on this area of work.

So what should go in a 'tone of voice' section?

Barnarby Benson makes a great point when he says that when people talk about tone of voice, they usually mean its register.

"Register is the, ‘degree of formality and choice of vocabulary, pronunciation and syntax’ (to quote the Oxford Concise Dictionary definition).

"As most brands are approachable, they aim to communicate like their customers. This means a fairly relaxed, informal register: contractions (‘can’t’ instead of ‘cannot’), pronouns that suggest people rather than an institution (‘we are the best…’, rather than, ‘Joe Bloggs Ltd is the best…’). And they’ll probably allow you to start sentences with conjunctions.

"The trouble is, there isn’t a huge choice of registers. You’re either formal or informal. There are varying degrees of each, but these aren’t hugely distinctive. Indeed, most companies in any one market adopt the same register because it makes sense to talk like your customers. It becomes a ‘hygiene’ factor – something everyone does just to be a player in a market. So the register of language isn’t really a source of brand differentiation at all."

His recommendation is that you concentrate on building empathy with your reader rather than use a certain style of language. It's an approach that I agree with, particularly if you take into account that the medium you are using and the message you need to get over is going to have a huge impact on what you write.

For example, a four page letter from a chief executive asking for a bequest is obviously going to be very different to a 50 word web page aimed at getting people to buy tickets to a rock concert. To be successful, both might require you to completely ignore the tone of voice in the brand guidelines.

So in your 'tone of voice'  section, I'd recommend concentrating on three points:

• You need to talk like the audience you are writing for.
• Use simple, direct language.
• Offer a few tips on how to achieve the register you are looking for.

The easyGroup brand manual does this very well.

Once that's done, 'tone of voice' can be covered off in the creative brief for each piece of work you're developing.

I'll leave the last word to Gary Duckworth on this, as taken from his piece on creative briefing from Excellence in Advertising...

"I always try and give myself a rule that you can only use two words for tone.  Even one will do fine as long as it is well chosen. So what you don't write is:

Tone

Warm, reassuring, yet jaunty and audacious.

Because it is nonsense."