Drawing Attention to Your Cause

To pull it off, you must strive for believability. You want the reader to look at the piece and wonder how it was done. You want him to treat it as a keepsake, to feel lucky to have received the mailing.

One way to do that is to use a multipanel format for the cartoon, where the captioning is done in handwriting as part of the art. We, for instance, have used several fonts of handwriting to personalize the piece for an utterly surprising and believable effect.

So, does humor have a place in nonprofit fundraising? I’ll let you decide. At least now you have a different perspective and entirely different test basis than you’ve probably been receiving from the usual experts. FS

Stu Heinecke is president of Seattle-based Stu Heinecke Inc. and CartoonLink.