7 Tips to Help Your End of Year Appeal Get Seen

With the end of year fundraising rush just around the corner, chances are that, if you’re a 501(c)3 organization, you’re in the midst of feverishly drafting your year end appeal.

Generally I focus on the story and content for appeals, but the fact is that it doesn’t matter how great your story is if you don’t follow a few best practices when it comes to format, layout, and structure of your print appeal.

Here are a few that sometimes get missed (based purely on the letters I’ve been getting over the past week or so). This is far from comprehensive, so feel free to reach out with a few of your own:

1. Design your mailing with the reader experience in mind. What is the first thing they see? How does the mailer open? Where will their eyes go first, second, and third? How does it all build to the call to action?
2. Your outer envelope is part of the story. What invitation or words will be on the envelope? What colors? Is it hand-addressed? Hand-stamped? Especially these days, folks are much less likely to open an envelope that is machine stamped.
3. Your major contributors should not get the same letter as everyone else. It doesn’t have to be completely different. Perhaps you add a handwritten note. Perhaps you cross out the amounts on the reply device and say that you’ll be in touch soon. How can you make your strongest allies feel special?
4. Always include a P.S. statement. Folks have spent a ton of money on research that tracks how people scan letters. They look at the salutation first (bonus hint: if their name is misspelled, you’ve lost them) then their gaze flits to the PS statement. If you want to be fancy, put that P.S. in the bottom right corner because that’s where your reader’s eyes will go first. What will it be? If all they see is the salutation and the P.S., what will they know or be invited to contribute?
5. Place larger amounts first on your reply device. And make your smallest amount so low that it’s almost insulting. Most people will tend towards the middle.
6. Use bold, underlining, and generous spacing to make reading your appeal easier. If people were only to read the bolded sections of your letter, would they get a complete story? What would they miss? See if you can write the appeal in such a way that the bolded sections convey the core message and the rest enhances.
7. Speaking of formatting: don’t be afraid to use a large size font. You know what almost no one reads? Small letters packed together. Bonus tip: use one or at most two fonts in your letter. More than that looks messy.

Again, none of this is about the core content. These are simply evidence based structural and formatting best practices that increase the chances that folks will read your appeal. After all, the best stories are the ones that actually get seen.

Please note: this is only for print letters. Electronic appeals have a very different vocabulary and rhythm to them.

I’m curious: how do these resonate? Is it useful? What other tips do you have?

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Michael Kass is the founder of Story & Spirit and is passionate about helping individuals and organizations harness the power of story to create a more just, equitable, and viable future for all beings. He is defiantly not a fundraising consultant. . .and does have over 20 years of experience in fundraising that tends to rear its head when he gets poorly designed appeal letters. Learn more about his work at www.storyandspirit.org