"Don't put that in there!"
This is how Julie replied to my beloved first idea for a subject line for this newsletter.
She deemed my idea "gross" and "not good."
She was right, of course. (As she usually is! 
)
Still, I can't resist telling you my bad idea anyway...
Skip over the ...
Our son Baye was once a beneficiary – at age 7, when he lived in an orphanage run by an American nonprofit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
He has many stories to tell.
But turning beneficiary stories into moving fundraising stories of need for an appeal letter is more challenging than...
I love a good cliffhanger – don't you?
Question: are you using cliffhangers in your fundraising?
More on the why soon. But first...
(spoilers ahead... for those of you still avoiding Star Wars)
Consider the power of a good cliffhanger.
–Star Wars: The Empire Strikes...
You can find a lot of cool stuff tucked away in the nooks and crannies of a person's brain.
For example...
Before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak introduced the Apple Macintosh, computers did not offer multiple fonts. You got 1 font and 1 font only. (Don't like it? Too bad!)
In a way, subject lines are a microcosm of fundraising.
Writing them can be maddening, mysterious, marvelous...
They are tantalizingly short. They can be infuriatingly tricky. But, if you're up for a challenge, they're good fun.
That's why I like to study subject lines, to turn them...
In your donor appeals, your endings are so important!
A misplaced story ending means your appeal might not end well.
Here's an except from page one of a pretty typical appeal letter story.
It’s a terribly sad story of a boy named Ian who has nightmares of a parent killing him....
As a donor, I sometimes daydream about the charities I support and wonder what it would be like to be there to see my gifts at work ...
… to see a child as she wakes up from a sight-saving surgery on the Flying Eye Hospital …
...
Your name is important to you. It's true, isn't it?
Even if you are in a room with many people chatting, you likely have "selective hearing" for your name.
When someone says your name, your brain has an amazing ability. It can focus on that one bit of information while simultaneously ignoring...
Need a little inspiration as you approach the busiest fundraising season of the year?
I got you!
Here is a playlist I curated with you in mind. You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Music, or watch each music video on YouTube. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed...
I received an important appeal-writing question from newsletter subscriber Miriam.
Miriam writes:
All the fundraising appeal trainings I’ve attended say the best appeals talk about an immediate need, and the more dire it is, the better.
That tenet goes against all our messaging, which is...
My son Mickey was reading a heartbreaking book for his high school English class. The Other Side of the Sky is a memoir of a girl who grew up in war-torn Afghanistan... and her perilous journey to the United States.
Mickey looked up from the book asked, "Why do they make us read depressing...
Some things just go better together...
... peanut butter and jelly
... Scooby-Doo and Shaggy
... the Covid vaccine and your left arm
Writing and editing are two peas in a pod, too.
Putting words on the page is an ugly task. (You should see this blog post in its first draft. It ain't pretty. )...
