If you’re not convincing people with your fundraising appeal, even the most important cause can sink like the Titanic.
Good copy is the backbone of your fundraising appeal.
Whether you’re writing for your newsletter, direct mail, website, or brochures, you need to be dang sure that your fundraising materials are persuasive.
It’s so important, in fact, that Tom Ahern – fundraising copy genius – wrote a book about it: How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money. He says to imagine “four sets of ears” listening to your fundraising appeal. You need to persuade all of them.
These personalities are amiable, expressive, skeptical, and bottom-liner. Most of us favor one over the other, but still, have elements of all four wrapped up in our brains.
Here are some copywriting tips to appeal to these four personality types:
These are the friendly, sympathetic people. They respond to the “human element” in fundraising – they care about helping, they care about people, they care about the community. To get their attention, you should:
Expressives want to know what’s new, what’s different. Get their attention by stating your news right upfront – your first paragraph or the front of your website. Create excitement to draw this group in. So, what qualifies as news? It could be:
This is a cautious group. While they make anecdotes well enough, they’ll need a lot more convincing. They are probably suspicious of your motives. So how do you overcome their skepticism? Work out what their doubts are ahead of time and respond to them.
This group is action-driven. They want to know what to do next and how. So make it easy for them by being specific.
If you write your fundraising appeals with these four personality types in mind, you will win people over by tugging on their heart-strings, getting their attention with fresh news, overcoming their skepticism, and giving them concrete instructions.
Put some strategy into how you write your fundraising appeals. You don’t need to be an amazing writer to apply these best practices – just a smart one.
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