Three Donor Newsletter Mistakes to Avoid.

By Alan Sharpe, CFRE
Every healthy direct mail fundraising program balances asking with informing. Appeal letters do the asking. And donor newsletters do the informing.

But your donors will only read your newsletters if each newsletter is donor-centered and engaging. You can’t simply present news. Instead, you must write every issue with your donor in mind. To do that, avoid these three common mistakes in donor fundraising newsletters.

Mistake #1: Focus on the institution, not the donor.
If your newsletters are filled with stories about board member retreats, staff appointments and promotions and accounts of what goes on at head office, you are writing about yourselves. And donors don’t want to read about you. They want to read about themselves, and the things that interest them. So before you touch a key on your keyboard, ask yourself if the story you are about to publish in your newsletter is about you or about your donors.

Mistake #2: Cliché photos.
You’ve seen them. The staff and volunteers standing behind an oversized cheque. Or the mayor cutting a ribbon in front of the new library. Or a bunch of men in suits, wearing hardhats and holding shovels, bending over and grinning as they pretend to break ground for a new building.

These photos are so tired and overused that city newspaper editors hate them. So avoid them in your donor newsletters. Instead, capture your staff, volunteers and donors doing something original. Only publish newsletter photos that tell your story in creative ways.

Mistake #3: No captions under photos.
A picture is never worth a thousand words. Would you buy a house from a photo only, however informative? Would you take a new job if all you had to go on was a terrific photo of the person who is in the role presently?

Just about every photo you publish in your newsletter requires explaining. Why is that tall man chained to the railing of the US embassy? Who is that boy receiving that gift? Where in the world was this photo taken? When did this event take place? Answer these questions that your photos evoke by captioning every photo. Think who, what, why, where, when and how.

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