Jan52023
Rocket launch, NASA

Do You Have the Write Stuff? Top 5 Nonprofit Attention-Grabbers.

Rocket launch, NASA

Take your writing into the stratosphere!

 

Want your writing to take off more this year?

Ann Wylie, editor, author, interviewer, teacher and more, is one of the folks I look to for writing tips. And recently she offered 8 tips I believe all nonprofits should take to heart. At least if you want to be persuasive and drive people to take the actions you desire.

You DO, right?

Okay, good.

Allow me to share my favorite of Ann’s tips, together with my own thoughts on how they pertain – in spades – to nonprofits.

Some of these I write about a lot. They’re that important and, IMHO, rather obvious.

  1. Stop writing about “us and our stuff.”
  2. Hit return more often.
  3. Don’t stop at the subject line.

Still, it pays to keep these tips top of mind. Because sometimes the obvious stuff can be the easiest to miss, unless we focus our attention (a bit like remembering to smell the coffee, thereby more fully enjoying the experience).

Other tips I’ve thought about less, though I realize I do employ them a lot.

  1. Make it a metaphor.
  2. Steal a tip from the New York Times.

I share them with you to bring them into your conscious writing toolbox.

Top 5 Nonprofit Writing Tips

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Dec222022

Why Donor Wooing Requires WOWing

Woman checking out at cashier

The Unfair Exchange Bernadette Jiwa, The Story of Telling.

“That will be eight dollars,’ the woman, who is carefully weighing and wrapping two serves of freshly made fettuccine for us to take home, says.

As my husband is about to hand her the cash, she takes another handful of the pasta from behind the glass and adds it to our package.

She doesn’t announce that she’s giving us twenty per cent extra for free.
She doesn’t even invite us to notice the gesture at all.
It’s enough for her that she knows she has added value.

We think of value as a hard metric—the anticipated fair exchange of this for that.

But value can be a surprising, generous, unfair exchange.

Something that is given because we can, not because we must.“

Ah… value.

Wow, wow, WOW!

This is what all fundraising, fundamentally, is about.

A value-for-value exchange.

Yet one side of the exchange is a hard metric: The donor’s cold, hard cash.

While the other side of the exchange is something decidedly less tangible: Freely given gratitude from you and your organization.

Or at least that’s how it should work.

The Difference between ‘We Must’ and ‘We Can’ 

What does your donor love and loyalty plan look like?

Do you even have such a plan?

If the only reason you acknowledge donations is because you feel you ‘must,’ it’s likely your donors aren’t walking away from the encounter feeling much more than matter-of-fact. The transactional receipts many organizations send out are registered by the donors as “Ho, hum. Guess I’ll go file this with my tax receipts.”

This kind of exchange is fair, sure.

But it’s not generous.

WHAT ELSE DO YOU HAVE TO GIVE?

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