Creative

In this guest column, "Blending the Art and the Science," from the August 2009 issue, Cathy Finney, then associate vice president at MINDset direct, explains that it might be important to bring creative talent to the table earlier in the development of direct-response campaigns.

I’m including the usual annual caveats about this list of words, especially this: If any word on the list is truly the most effective choice for reaching your reader, please go ahead and use it. I would simply suggest that you ask yourself if it’s truly the most effective choice. And, with that, here are a few words that Big Duck recommends you avoid (or at least be fully conscious that you’re using).

In her March 2008 column, inspirational fundraising consultant Katya Andresen, a member of the FundRaising Success Editorial Advisory Board, explained why it's best to focus on the positive to motivate donors to hope and action.

"If you love your donors, treat them well by mailing letters they can read easily. Please, I implore you." That was the admonition that copywriter and creative strategist Kimberly Seville offered up in her DM Diagnosis column in May 2006.

It's a fact of fundraising that some donors only give once and never again. Others give multiple times but then stop giving. But just because that's reality, fundraisers should never calmly accept it. Instead, we need to fight to the death to keep our donors, using the weapons of creative strategies that are designed to retain or re-acquire our donors.

In October 2009, it looked like things were finally starting to look up as far as the ecomony was concerned, and nonprofits were shaking off their recession malaise and looking for ways to reinvigorate their donors. In this article, "Copywriting for the Post-Recession," Willis Turner, senior copywriter at Huntsinger & Jeffer, offered seven rules for "learning to write like a winner again."

First, FundRaising Success columnist Jeff Brooks, creative director at TrueSense Marketing, warned fundraisers of the seven deadly sins of fundraising. Now he looks at the antidotes, the seven heavenly virtues of of fundraising.

Ted Hart speaks with nonprofit communications expert Tom Ahern about donor communications in this archived episode of his Nonprofit Coach radio show.

Here's an October 2006 column from Tim Burgess, who was  one of the founders of The Domain Group (and is now a city councilman in his hometown of Seattle). In "Newsletters Done Right," he shares five practical tips to creating revenue-raising newsletters.

The thank you is so important and it’s the one written communication, done well, most donors will read word for word. A thank you lines up your next gift. Weren’t you taught to write and say thank you to Aunt Edna if you wanted another present next year? You should invest time on crafting your thank you(s).