Creative

As a nonprofit staff member, you need to be ready to explain your organization's overhead. High or low, be ready to tell the story. But as you’re talking with donors and prospects, don’t brag about the percentage. You don’t want to be in that conversation. And focusing on percentages cripples your board members’ ability to fundraise. Focusing on percentages and budgets makes it very difficult for board members and others to make solicitations. It stresses them out, like math tests did to so many of us in school. And that stress is unnecessary.

Think of it like juggling rattlesnakes: If done right, a properly chosen cliché can be as good as gold. But done wrong it'll go over like a lead balloon.

Ever wonder how you can destroy your fundraising program in 45 minutes with little more than a one-way mirror and a bunch of sandwiches?

I am a firm believer that receipts have an important purpose in our fundraising strategy and should be mailed quickly after (almost) every donation. Here's why.

In the February 2007 issue, then-FS Managing Editor Abny Santicola wrote about an LW Robbins direct-mail piece for the Vermont Foodbank that used a mini notecard to garner outstanding results, appropriately titled, "The Little Mailing That Did."

Remember, think before you write. And, to paraphrase Thumper, if you can't say something effective, proactive, emotional and motivating about your mission, "don't say nothin' at all."

Changes in eyesight are inevitable as human beings age, according to The Canadian Association of Optometrists. Blurred vision at close range and growing need for higher light levels affect everyone in his or her middle years. That means it’s becoming harder every year for your boomer and civic donors — your most generous cohorts if your charity is typical — to see your printed materials, e-mails and website. To keep your print pieces with these groups clear and readable, follow these tips from CNIB.

In the August 2008 issue, creative consultant Kimberly Seville wrote in her DM Diagnosis column, "Gather Ye Data — Just Be Sure to Use It Well," that, "When [fundraisers] demonstrate with every direct-marketing campaign that we do care to know [donors], and when we use what we know to show we’re paying attention, we prove to each donor individually that he or she matters."

It's not worth all the arguing that takes place over commas, spacing, underlining, bolding and which style guide trumps. It's all about communicating.

There's great power in your words. But to find it, you must, as the Second Apparition told Macbeth, "Be bloody, bold and resolute."