Covenant House’s Email Focuses on Solutions

How can you get a donor to support your mission? With an email like this one, which puts the spotlight on the right place.

Mailer Name: Covenant House
Date Emailed: June 11, 2015

For decades, Covenant House has been dedicated to helping runaway and homeless kids. Its Bed for Every Kid’s Head campaign, supported by this and other efforts, neatly distills its mission into just a few words. And with a fiscal year-end goal looming, this effort gets to work.

The top image in the email, like much of what the group sends across its channels, is a stark reminder of the harsh realities facing kids on the streets. The headline, “A safe place to sleep is just the beginning,” doesn’t dwell on the negative.

Rather, it emphasizes how the donor helps Covenant House solve problems. A line like “But it’s what happens after they come through our doors that makes your support truly life-saving” provides a nice amount of curiosity.

The next block down illustrates how the group takes care of a child’s immediate needs with four pictographs (e.g. a fork and knife). Then four images are shown, each paired with a single-sentence description, to describe how “we can rebuild their lives.”

Although there was a call-to-action button near the top, there’s another one in the next box. It goes with a more urgent ask to help the group reach its funding goal: “With your help, we can transform the life of every homeless child.”

This block is followed by a few paragraphs (and links to the donation page) reinforcing the message of the previous blocks: that “your support is felt” in every step a child takes at Covenant House.

To download a free PDF of the entire email, courtesy of Who’s Mailing What!, please click here.

The takeaway: Tell donors what they want to hear—that they can make a difference—not what you want to say.