Don’t write over the heads of your donors……write conversationally and tell them one person’s story and how they, the donor, can help.
Fundrasing copy should not necessarily be grammatically correct and you should use the least complicated word not the most.
From the FutureFunraisingNow blog.
“A lot of fundraising writing suffers from this problem. It’s grammatically flawless. Carefully created, edited, and proofed. Completely clean. But utter nonsense to the donors it’s aimed at.
Because its creators are talking among themselves. Not to the donors. Using their internal jargon and priorities instead of using the language of their non-expert donors.
Are you writing colorless green fundraising?
If you’re talking about “stakeholder engagement,” “food insecurity,” “marginalized individuals” … if you’re trying to sell abstractions like hope or wholeness instead of realities like food, shelter, or medicine … if you focus on thousands or millions of people rather than one at a time … your fundraising might as well be “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” Your fundraising might as well be an example in a linguistics lecture.”
http://tinyurl.com/z8em8h6
Remember to stay away from statistics demonstrating how big the problem is and tell the story of one individual affected by the problem…and how your organization can solve their problem.
