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How to Improve this Fundraising Letter
The letter shown in the sample above contains most of the elements required in a fundraising letter. I have itemized these in the following legend:
Content or informational Elements
Content refers to the factual information the donor needs in order to consider the request and make a decision. The proposal should contain an introduction to the organization, a description of its programs and services, basic financial information that supports the request, governance of the organization, a description of the request and the reason for the need, a description of how meeting the need will impact the organization and the people it serves, how the organization intends to assess and measure this impact, and how the donor will be recognized. I have highlighted the contents of the proposal above in the following legend:
Introduction to Organization
A Description of the Programs and Services Provided by the Organization
Financial Information Related to Request
Description of Governance of Organization
A Description of the Request
Impact of Program that the Donation will Fund
How the Organization Intends to Measure the Program
Recognition and Benefit to Donor
As you can see by comparing the colors of the content elements above with the colors highlighted in the text of the proposal, all of the content elements are there. There may be better ways to state these elements but the basic information is included in the letter.
Persuasive Elements
Persuasive elements refer to using the ways people tend to be influenced to make your proposal more persuasive. These are urgency (related to scarcity), social proof, authority, liking, consistency with self-image, and reciprocation. It is not necessary, and sometimes is not possible, to include all of these elements in every proposal. But at least three should be included to make the proposal more persuasive. The proposal above contains only one persuasive element, the testimonial that introduces the proposal, which is a form of social proof. The proposal would be strengthened by the addition of more persuasive elements, as shown in the sample proposal below.
Readability
There are two tools available in MS Word that measure readability. One is the Flesch Reading Ease which is provides a grade level and the other is the Flesch-Kincaid scale which provides a numeric value between 0 and 100. If you enable this function, it will occur automatically after you run the spelling and grammar check accessed by the “Tools” button on the Word menu. After the grammar check, the readability analysis will show up in a window that looks like this:
As you can see in the picture above, which is the actual window that came up when the tool was run on the sample proposal shown above, the sample proposal has a Reading Ease of 60 and a Grade Level of 9.7. Both of these are good indications of readability. Generally, a high school grade level makes something easier to read. If your proposals scores high, then you should redo it to reduce sentence length, decrease paragraph length and decrease the number of passive sentences until the readability score is in a good range.
Psychological Elements
It is likely that a fundraising letter to a corporation will be read by several different people, each of whom may influence the decision. People of different personality types tend to process information differently. So each personality type should be accommodated. There are different ways of describing personality but for the purposes of this exercise, the four basic personality types are:
Bottom line oriented people – they want the basics easy to find - like bolding and bullet points
Amiable, social oriented people – tend to be motivated by stories and personal touches
Expressive, self-concerned orientation – like to know how this will make them look good
Analytical orientation – like facts and figures to support decisions, look for graphs and charts
The sample letter above uses a few bullet points, but could be better if a few key things were bolded to make the proposal more suitable for bottom line types. The testimonial basically appeals to the amiable types. The donor recognition may appeal to the company, but the addition of a media conference with the opportunity to meet a celebrity associated with the charity would likely appeal to the self-concerned types. The sample proposal does not contain any charts or graphs and has very little for analytical types.
Graphic Presentation
The sample fundraising letter is on the boring side of visual appeal. Other than a few bullet points, there is little that is done to make the proposal appealing to the eye. The sample below will show how a few simple changes could make this proposal better.
How Can We Make It Better?
As you can see by now, the sample letter shown above is not too bad. This might be acceptable in some situations, but it likely will not be as effective as it could be, with a few simple changes. So how can we improve this fundraising letter to be more effective if it actually was used? The following example shows how a few additions can be made to make it better.
Click here to get a copy of the revised letter. As you can see, a few graphic elements were added to make the proposal more visually appealing. We have also added some of the missing persuasive elements and psychological elements:
- The testimonial was moved to a sidebar that now includes a picture of the person who provides the testimonial.
- In addition to making this more visually appealing, it also makes the proposal more “likeable”, adding another persuasive element.
- The introduction is made briefer and the programs highlight a few of the key points instead of the longer list.
- We have also added a graph for the analytical types.
- The graph is followed by a statement that expresses some “urgency”.
- There are more phrases bolded throughout to appeal to the bottom line oriented people.
- We have added the mention of the media conference and celebrity which may appeal to an expressive, self-concerned personality.
- There is a text box with an authoritative statement that serves the dual purpose of the persuasive element of “authority” with the additional visual appeal.
Compare the revised fundraising letter and see how these changes have made made a difference.
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