The Gift of "No Details"

Would you agree that when you write your appeals, it’s very natural to tell individual donors more about your organization than you realize or intend to?

When you do this, the result is:

• Founded in 1965, we’ve been…

• Our four pillars are…

• Our programs include uplifting the homeless by addressing their needs, such as…

What these do is educate the donor because of a belief that “if our donors know more about us and how competent we are, they will give us more.” That’s a false belief!

In 34+ years of looking at fundraising results, what we’ve seen is that appeals raise lots more money when they educate less. In fact, the most successful appeal letters are those that don’t say a word about the organization.

By eliminating the education, you remove content that is unimportant to a donor’s decision. In appeals where most of the content is relevant, the result is increased giving.

Don’t Be Confused

What we’re talking about here is communicating with individual donors and nondonors in the mail and email. Not at an event, not at lunch with a major donor, not on a tour, etc. That’s different.

Think of it this way:

It’s really generous of you to simplify your mail and email fundraising for individual donors. They don’t need to know the details. If you have the chance to interact with donors at an event, they are showing interest, so it’s then very appropriate to go into details. And if they keep giving faithfully through the mail or email without ever interacting in any other way, well, that’s okay too.