Offer every donor something important to do, no matter what size gift they can make: good advice from Jeff Brooks.
"You wouldn't think a $10 mosquito net could save a life. But there it is. Meet Enrico. Happily studying away to become an engineer by 2020 because ... he avoided the most common cause of early death in his village: mosquito-borne malaria. Thanks to somebody's $10 net he finished school ... as so many others without nets didn't.
"These nets don't grow on trees. They don't get delivered by tooth fairies. We do that part. But we can't do it without you. A net in your name will cost you $10. Please, will you do that ... for some kid like Enrico you don't even know?"
The Fred Hollows Foundation in Australia discovered the power of small amounts when they began promote these sorts of messages: "4 out of 5 people who are blind in the developing world don't need to be. Routine treatment costing as little as $25 can restore sight and hope."
Fred Hollows was an eye doctor, a skilled surgeon of international renown and a social justice activist. His signature good deed was removing cataracts and restoring sight for the poor, in Indigenous Australia, then in Asia and Africa, too. The Foundation reduced the cost of that signature cataract operation to just $25 in some places.
The simple, affordable offer — "You can restore someone's sight for just $25" — proved to be a winner. Donations to the Fred Hollows Foundation poured in. Huge numbers of warm-hearted people seized on the $25 offer to cure blindness. And Fred Hollows rose to national standing in Australia as a brand-name charity.