12 Tips for Writing a Successful Fundraising Letter

Follow these to help you draft an engaging letter that will move your donors to action:

1. Just do it! Don't be intimidated by the task of writing your letter. Imagine you're speaking one-on-one to a good friend and simply write what you would say. Avoid sounding corporate and institutional - be personal, conversational, friendly and passionate.
2. Be brief. Use short, concise sentences, with no more than four or five sentences to a paragraph. Use space in between each paragraph to add the "white space" that makes your letter more inviting to a reader.
3. People give to people. When possible and appropriate, incorporate a personal story that shows your organization impacting a life or lives. Tests consistently show that donors respond more readily to appeals that include personal stories than to appeals that neglect to show the charity's impact on real lives.
4. Go ahead and ask. Request your donor's assistance early and often. The main reason donors give is that they're asked. Tests have shown that the more you ask, the better your response will be.
5. Make your donor the star. Write "donor-centric" not an "organization-centric" letter. In other words, as you write, remember, donors respond better when it's "about them, not about you." Even as you share your achievements and goals, share them in a way that ties back to the donor. ("Your support has allowed us to accomplish x, y, z..." "Your gift today will help us carry out a, b, and c, in the coming year...")
6. Balance success & need. Don't spend more time trumpeting accomplishments than asking for help. Letters that overemphasize how brilliant your organization is and how all is going so well make a donor feel they're not needed. Do let donors know that you're a good steward and accomplishing goals, but make it clear that needs are still great – and they're essential to your good work.
7. Bullet points are best. Use them to list specific accomplishments and goals. A reader's eyes are always drawn to lists.
8. Write like you speak. You're not writing a term paper, so forget what you learned in English 101. Your goal is to engage your reader's attention, inform him/her about your work and to secure a donation - not to get an "A" for good grammar. Sentence fragments, liberal use of ellipses, ending sentences with prepositions, and many other English class "no no's" are welcome here. Again, the letter should be conversational and personal - not formal.
9. Fine-tune your formatting. Use bolding, underlines, and italics to draw attention to the most important points of the letter - including but not limited to "the ask." This formatting also serves to break up the text and attract a reader's eye.
10. Single signatures rule. Have just one person sign. Dual signature letters come across as institutional and impersonal.