Improve Your Direct Mail Fundraising Letters: Donate to Your Competitors

By Alan Sharpe, CFRE
One of the quickest ways to learn the craft of direct mail fundraising is to donate money to your strongest competitors. Pick the Top 10 organizations you admire and mail them a donation of at least $20. Then watch your mailbox. What you’ll get is a correspondence course in raising money with paper and postage.

First of all, the organizations will mail you a thank-you letter. How quickly do they mail it after receiving your gift? Make a note. Is the letter hand-signed or generated by a machine? Is it a postcard instead of a letter? Compare all 10 gift acknowledgement letters, decide what the best ones have in common, and do likewise.

Sooner or later, probably sooner, the charities will mail you an appeal letter. Do they address you by name or as “Dear Friend”? Do they acknowledge that you are a brand new supporter? Do they thank you for your last donation?

Is their package creative, compelling and, as far as you can tell, cost-effective? Do they offer you a premium? The best organizations in your Top 10 will use the same industry best practices. Now you can, too, provided you borrow a tactic and don’t lift any phrases or images.

Pay attention to how your competitors present their case for support, how often in their letters they ask for a gift, how they describe the need, and how often they use testimonials and stories from the people they help.

Count the number of enclosures in each package. Watch for common practices that are obviously working (business reply envelopes, for example). And watch for unusual inserts. World Vision recently mailed donors a blanket.

Count the number and type of appeals you receive in one year. Which competitor mails the most often? Which one the least? Which one is more successful? Why?

Count the number of pages in a typical letter. Count the number of colours.

If you want to see how charities try to recover lapsed direct mail donors, mail one donation only and keep watching your mailbox for a few years. If you need ideas for creative ways to renew members, join a few member-based charities and let your membership lapse.

The keys to improving your direct mail fundraising program are borrowing and brilliance. Borrow the best practices that all the leading organizations have in common. But create your own original, brilliant look, message, themes and inserts. Above all , make every word and image your own.

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