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5 reasons to ditch your annual appeal

5 reasons to ditch your annual appeal… and ask more often Are you still depending on an annual appeal – a single annual solicitation – for your individual giving program? Many smaller organizations are. But if you’re one of them, you ought to reconsider. Here’s why. 1. You need money all year round To accomplish […]

Filed Under: Annual Giving, Blog, Planning Tagged With: annual appeal, donor communications, fundraising plans 5 Comments

What are you doing for your loyal donors?

Your loyal donors matter My friend Barbara O’Reilly is that wonderful combination of truly caring and brilliant. And this post is thanks to an important point she raised in one of her emails. (You can get yours here… well worth it!) She wrote about how often fundraisers think in terms of moving donors into larger […]

Filed Under: Blog, Donor retention, Donors Tagged With: donor care, donor relationships, thank you letters Leave a Comment

How you can appeal like a Girl Scout

Girl Scouts have a great product. Do you? Sure, your organization probably doesn’t sell Girl Scout Cookies. But those cookies didn’t become wildly popular in a vacuum. They’re good. Really good. And they’re special because you can’t just find them on the store shelves. So think about: What is your organization really, really good at? […]

Filed Under: Blog, Donor communications, Thanks Tagged With: appeal writing, donor communications, donor relationships Leave a Comment

Does your thank you letter really matter?

Yes. Your thank you letter matters. I once saw an opinion that I couldn’t disagree with more. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like this: Donors should be happy with whatever thank you letter they get. Worrying about a real signature or other things is a sign of donor dominance. So much nonsense! Your donors […]

Filed Under: Blog, Thanks Tagged With: donor relationships, thank you letter, your thank you letter matters 4 Comments

You can do better

You can do better than the appeal we recently received at home. Really! And you probably do already. This was a cold appeal. And they’re definitely harder to craft. You don’t know the audience as well, for one thing. This appeal was also from a large, well-known organization. Sigh. And it’s mostly a brag-fest. They […]

Filed Under: Blog, Fundraising Tagged With: appeal writing, donor communications, Fundraising Leave a Comment

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Recent Posts

  • Communicating with your heart
  • 5 reasons to ditch your annual appeal
  • What are you doing for your loyal donors?
  • How you can appeal like a Girl Scout
  • Does your thank you letter really matter?

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