What is it?
An appeal letter is a letter you send to donors to ask for money.
When to do it:
Quarterly or yearly around December.
You’ll need:
sense of timing,
successful letter samples,
two pairs of fresh eyes on your letter, an up-to-date donor database, and solid systems of cultivation and stewardship.
What to do:
Write your letter, get people to look it over, and consider printing it out in batches at your office, rather than sending it to a mail house. You can also send letters to targeted donor groups, to experiment with what works and what doesn’t in terms of length, wording, timing, etc.
For more details and samples of how to do a direct mail appeal, read or download my chapter on Writing the letter.