What’s your letter look like?
Your fundraising letter must sell itself right off the bat. The first thing a donor is going to do is scan it, and in an instant, they’ll decide whether your letter looks inviting to read…or whether you’ve made it look like a task they can easily put off — maybe forever.
The most important thing to remember is — you are not your donor. As a fundraiser, you’re accustomed to seeing fundraising letters that were forced onto one page by shrinking the font, making long paragraphs and eliminating white space. You can safely assume your donor won’t like the looks of such a letter, and if you mail one, it will probably end up in the trash. Such a letter looks — and is — hard to read.
We tested the direct mail “style” — short paragraphs, indentions, underlining, lots of white space — while working with one of our university clients. A professor making a matching gift wrote a fundraising letter, and it fit the description above with long paragraphs and little white space. It was visually unappealing. We rewrote it, much to her dismay. She was appalled by our short paragraphs, underlinings and indentions and refused to sign it. The university decided to test our “easy-to-read” letter against hers. Ours won the rate of response contest by a 5 to 1 margin.
Remember the importance of selling your letter to your donor so it will pass the scan test. A first impression is probably all you’ll have!
