The Little Words Mean the Most

Notes to self. RE: Your New Book

testing staff and board knowledge of donor communications

Donor Communications 101: The TEST

for boards, bosses, and fundraisers: to promote a common understanding of profitable best practices in appeals, newsletters, and thanks; both printed and digital

ZERO rancor; make friends

The best use of this test will be to set a standard for donor communications, by establishing where we are RIGHT NOW in best practices from all English-speaking countries. So it has to be crowd-sourced

A 2nd use will be to horsewhip idiot bosses and lame boards

Traveling through some of earth's most serene landscapes

The Lake District in the UK has no edge on the Berkshires (MA, CT, NY) for natural and human-cultured beauty. Horse farm after horse farm. Spectacular gardens. Fortunes invested in the human habitat. For 2 weeks I've gladly visited, teaching local NGOs about profitable donor communcations. Paid for by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. [GREAT website.] Orgs brought key board members. Happy to say we probably killed at least 7 "communications committees." Reason and disdain are your chief weapons. No one likes committees. L-r: a public library assesses its audience; an architectural charity demonstrates what a bored teenager looks like; the full assembly at the Red Lion Inn (est. 1773) in Stockbridge; preparing the show, using Ken Burnett's new book as a way to level the LCD; the fresh flower in the bathroom. Click any image to expand and view the truth! Kassel Nightt made a difference. Carrie Colodner made a difference. Maeve O'Dea made a difference. Justin Burke made a difference. Vroom vroom Cathy Glasner made a difference. Thank YOU ALL!

Is it time to start the Artisanal Fundraisers Network?

 

The same theme that's driving food: artisanal (i.e., not formulaic).

Are ANY of YOU up to something new and different? I'm thinking of Agents of Good (Canada), Pareto (Australia), Bluefrog (UK), whatever the heck Ken Burnett is doing with Howling Alan Clayton, Sargeant & Shang, Jeff Brooks, Rory Green, some crazy (effective) nonprofits?

First step in world conquest: give out awards.

MORE TO COME as your opinions appear. Good idea? Bad idea? Idea-ish? Better name?

Feel free to wake up with a unicorn attached to your forehead

Fundraising star — and graphic designer — John Lepp, founding partner at Toronto's trail-blazing Agents of Good, says, "It's hard work to design things as ugly as we do.

"To me, COURIER is the most beautiful font in the world. When I tell other designers that, I usually get a bit of dry heaving and laughing. When I explain WHY — they just shake their heads. My design will never win awards, because it just ain't pretty."

But John's designs make good money for his charity clients, I know. Which is ALL that matters: Are we funding the mission ... or are we choosing pretty design instead and betraying the mission, by raising less than we could?

Budget limitations (and narrow searches) land charities in the hands of designers who have never had to succeed in direct marketing or mass journalism. Those are blazing cauldrons, where you learn how design does the hard-nosed work of selling. Nobody hides behind pretty there.

And without that background, sorry: you're second-tier until proven innocent. Fundraising is sales. Graphic designers who can't hack that cost their NGOs money. Feel free to wake up with a unicorn attached to your forehead, graphic designers ... but making money is the first law in sales.

How to know you might arrive eventually

Your name's mentioned twice in the "name index" of Sargeant and Shang's 2010 masterpiece, Fundraising Principles and Practices.

What's my job?

"I was hired because I am pleasant, I am presentable, I am affordable, and I will do the work that everyone else despises doing. I'm happy to have found such great purpose. It is wonderful, creative work that eases pains and builds things. It's work that makes beautiful souls and rewards compassion. It's the great human enterprise of doing good ... or better, anyway."

"I was hired because I am pleasant, I am presentable, I am affordable, and I will do the work that everyone else despises doing. I'm happy to have found such great purpose. It is wonderful, creative work that eases pains and builds things. It's work that makes beautiful souls and rewards compassion. It's the great human enterprise of doing good ... or better, anyway."

What my Reference Library of Experts contains

This took FAAAAAAAAAAR longer to get to than you should have had to wait, Stephanie.

 

Please accept my apologies for my long delay in commenting.

Here's the thing: your donor newsletters have one glaring problem that has to be fixed before anything else is done.

If this glaring problem isn't fixed first, other changes and fixes won't matter.

The problem? Your donor newsletter is horribly hard to read, thanks to things like colored type. PS: get a new designer, someone who knows about readability; your current one's a flower arranger, not a type-wise hand.

In short: your current design drives away readers autonomically. They can't help themselves.

Readers have to labor to penetrate it. So they can't connect easily.

There's really nothing else to say. Until you fix the design, the contents won't matter.

Sorry!

My best, tom

OBE orphan idea ~ I don't have a client right now to try this on but I'm pretty sure it would work because there's interactivity: I release you to the world! FLY! FLY!

 

[so the envelope says]

Are you the kind of person who enjoys helping out?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Take test inside...

 

[ = it asks for interactions /// = it offers a game ]

The word “you” is a pleasure to the brain because the reader is the center of attention. We like that feeling. It keeps us attentive.