Characteristics of a good year-end fundraising letter

Mississippi Business Journal, December 18, 2014

Another December day; another solicitation letter.

The end of the calendar year is approaching, and that means that fundraising letters compete with catalogues and holiday cards for space in the mailbox. Some fundraising letters are compelling. They make one want to immediately write a check, volunteer for community service or pledge some exceptional amount. And then there are those that get opened, quickly scanned and thrown in the trash. What we’re talking about here is the year-end solicitation letter, not the general fundraising letter. It is the letter that seeks to take advantage of the time of year when tax deduction just might be on the mind of the recipients.

Presented are some of the characteristics of exceptional fundraising letters as viewed by this writer. The last one on the list is based on some new research about the effectiveness of fundraising solicitation letters.