Great Copy for Good Causes

I'm a professional direct response copywriter specializing in the creation of highly persuasive fundraising campaigns for charities and non-profits in New Zealand, Australia and Europe.

Over the last two years my work has raised more than NZ$14.8mill (US$8.8m/€6.1m) in funds, and recruited over 20,000 new donors for leading charities, NGOs and community groups.

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Books
  • Made to Stick (Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die)
    Made to Stick (Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die)
    by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
  • The Zen of Fundraising: 89 Timeless Ideas to Strengthen and Develop Your Donor Relationships
    The Zen of Fundraising: 89 Timeless Ideas to Strengthen and Develop Your Donor Relationships
    by Ken Burnett
  • How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters, with CD (The Jossey-Bass Nonprofit Guidebook Series)
    How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters, with CD (The Jossey-Bass Nonprofit Guidebook Series)
    by Mal Warwick
  • Ogilvy on Advertising
    Ogilvy on Advertising
    by David Ogilvy
  • Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing
    Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing
    by Drayton Bird
  • The Grapes of Wrath
    The Grapes of Wrath
    by John Steinbeck
  • The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Oxford World's Classics)
    The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Robert Tressell
Friday
Jul302010

SOFII looks hot!

Just a quick post to congratulate everyone at SOFII on the new website design. Looks hot. Great navigation. Easy to use. So inspired I just had to donate.

For those that haven't yet visited SOFII, it's quite simply the best resource for information, ideas and tutorials on fundraising anywhere on the web.

Just go take a look yourself.

Visit SOFII at: http://www.sofii.org/

Or follow on Twitter @SOFIIisHOT

Looking forward to more great content in the future guys.

Tuesday
Feb022010

Sometimes the tail really can wag the dog: why you should inspire your copywriter to write a more powerful PS, and how...

Like a lot of direct response copywriters, I rate the importance of the PS very highly. The reason is simple - all the research conducted on the way people read direct mail letters shows that after reading their name in the address line, most people flip straight to the end of your letter. And if there’s a PS there, they read it.

In other words, your PS is possibly the first thing your donors read after opening your direct mail. Plus, if your letter hooks the donor, and they read to the end, it will also be the last thing they read (or rather re-read) before they reach for their cheque book.

Consequently, the PS is probably the single most important line in any fundraising direct mail pack. And as such, it requires special attention. Ideally it should encapsulate the core proposition of your DM campaign, your ask, plus a little something extra to boost response.

So, having dealt with the why, here's the how. Five dos and don'ts to inspire your copywriter to boost your PS potential:

1. Don’t ask for ‘ancillary information’ to be put in your PS

The job of your PS is to inform the donor exactly what you’d like them to do next, how much you’d like them to give, why you need their gift, and what it will do for your beneficiaries.

It's not a place to mention your new TV ad, your latest press release or an upcoming public event. Or any other "stuff" that doesn't seem to have a natural home in the body of your fundraising letter. There is of course, one exception. And that's if you'd prefer your donors to know this 'fact' than to actually write you out a cheque.

2. Do put a one line description in your brief stating exactly why you need one specific donor to make this particular gift

Not a paragraph. Not a background statement. A short one liner, aimed at an individual donor, for example:

“Claire, I need your gift to…

… help us bring water to a village in Bangladesh”
… give an abandoned dog like Butch a new home”
… to keep our community outreach programme running”

And having done this, be prepared to rap your creative team firmly over the knuckles if you don’t see this line rephrased in the PS of your letter.

3. Don't ignore the power of a deadline

As Samuel Johnson once remarked: “It focuses a man’s mind wonderfully if he knows he is to be hanged in the morning.” Urgent need is important to donors. And let’s face it, at any given point in time, every non-profit has an urgent need for donations. Letting this assumption slide in your PS is not good enough. Just saying the word ‘urgent’, won’t cut it.

You need to demonstrate the urgency. And nothing focuses the mind like a deadline. There will be times that you can do this explicitly, emergency appeals being the classic example. But even when you have no organisational deadlines to meet, it’s sometimes easier than you’d think to create a sense of implied urgency.

Here’s a very simple example of how you can gently introduce a deadline without being specific about consequences:

P.S. If you can rush us your gift of $75 by Wednesday the 19th of August - I’m certain Butch will find a new loving home before the month is out… could you do that?

On the other hand, if you can tie the deadline to specific consequences, like keeping a vital service going; giving a child a simple eye operation before it’s too late; lobbying government ahead of a crucial parliamentary vote, etc… so much the better.

4. Do put aside a “Bonus Proof” of benefit

Think for a minute of the kind of “Not only but also” promises made at the end of DRTV commercials for shopping channel type products. Well, the “Bonus Proof” is a fundraising manager’s less sensational equivalent of this proven direct response technique.

It could be in the form of a different ask, e.g.

P.S. Your $75 today could find Butch a new home… but for a regular gift of just $15 a month you could help many more of his furry friends to find loving homes too…

Or a different case study that demonstrates the efficacy of the gift for which you’re asking, e.g:

P.S. Butch reminds me of a lovely dog called Spike, who went to a wonderful home just four weeks ago. All it took was a $75 gift from a caring supporter like you. Could you be the one to find Butch his new home?

The idea is to give the donor something extra, something not already in the letter, a bonus demonstration of how the gift you’re asking for will directly help your beneficiaries.

5. Do provide a contact point for supporters

Even though they’re emotionally invested in what you do, your donors rarely, if ever, get to see the tangible benefits of what they make possible firsthand. But by giving them the name of a someone who does (plus a postal address/e-mail/or if possible a phone number), you can give your donors the next best thing.

A human contact point - even if they never use it - draws your donors closer to you, makes them feel more valued, adds to your credibility, and gives donors a way to ask questions, or simply to tell you how much they like you.

The PS is the perfect place for this ‘point of contact’, because it adds value, warmth and credibility at the two most important points during your donor’s interaction with your letter… when they first take it out of the envelope… and just before they reach for their cheque book and pen.

***

Needless to say, you’re not always going to be able to do all of these things - but three out of five should give you a much more powerful PS, and better response rates too. And all without affecting your budget - because it costs the same to write a brilliant PS as it does to write a bad one.

Wednesday
Oct142009

John Key needs a plane ticket... can you help him out?

I've been so busy in recent weeks that blogging has been relegated to the bottom of a very long list. But I had to take five minutes out to mention the current leg of Greenpeace NZ's excellent "Sign On" campaign.

Picture 2 With just weeks to go until Copenhagen and one of the most important climate meetings in history, New Zealand PM, John Key, has apparently decided that he might just stay home! What to do? Well Greenpeace have decided to give him a helping hand. They're holding a series of cake sales, sausage sizzles and collections to buy him a plane ticket!

Great campaigning work, great fundraising, very funny, and well worth a fiver! Just click on the pic link above if you'd like to chip in and help John on his way!

Thursday
Jul302009

Has SOFII just spawned a new breed of newsletter? I hope so...

I find myself liking SOFII more and more. Once again, they've given us some wonderful food for thought via an insightful debate. This time on the pros and cons of newsletters, with Tom Ahern for, and Sean Triner against.

I've never been a fan of newsletters myself - for all the reasons given by both advocates in this debate - but primarily because there's just so little in most of them that actually matters to donors.

Interestingly though, I found myself agreeing with, and enjoying, the arguments put forward by both Tom and Sean. But how can that be...

I can't be both for and against newsletters, can I?

I think the reason is that essentially, both Tom and Sean agree on the most important point... that most donor newsletters are rubbish.

The remaining few fall into what could probably be classed as a different category altogether. Tom Ahern would probably call them 'Newsletters done right', while Sean Triner may refer to them as 'highly personalized news-oriented letters'.

Either way, we're talking about a new breed of beast.

If not quite dead, the 'old-style' newsletter should be quickly put out of its misery, and replaced with something more meaningful and more profitable. Call them what you like, send them as stand-alones or as part of a pack, let the results decide which route works best... just make sure they do these two things:

1. Give donors what they hunger for most - evidence that their gifts are working.

2. Give non-profits what they need - engaged, happy, commited supporters... and their gifts.

Friday
Jul242009

Does your DM copy look like this?

Thanks to an old post I recently found on Jeff Brooks’ Donor Power Blog, I’ve just discovered the joys of Wordle. And I love it. Wordle generated this Word Cloud from a job I'm working on right now.
If you haven’t used it yet, try it out. It’s both fun and instructive. Just like a tag cloud on a blog it features the most prominent words used in your copy. The bigger the word... the more you’ve used it.

What you get is a wonderful snapshot view of just how emotive, warm and donor focused (or not) your copy is. A great fun tool for fundraising copywriters like me. But for the fundraising departments of some non-profits, I think it's considerably more important than that. The pressure to sanitize emotive copy in order to bring it in line with a supposed "organisational ethos" can sometimes be hard to resist.

In such situations, Wordle could prove to be a last gasp vaccine against otherwise good copy being turned into a jargon laden snooze-fest destined for the nearest wastepaper basket. Like an actual example of website copy I just found that produced this...