What is the best way to write fundraising appeals?
Recently I spoke with CauseVox about the core elements of effective fundraising appeals, how the best appeals are centered around stories of one, and even touch on lessons you can pull from your favorite works of fiction when you’re writing your appeals.
Mazarine Treyz is the author of The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising, and founder of WildWomanFundraising.com, a popular fundraising resource with 50,000 monthly readers. She also wrote The Wild Woman’s Guide to Social Media and Your Fundraising Career Empowerment Guide, both which were given a 5-star review by Nonprofit.About.com. Mazarine has co-founded a nonprofit and worked in fundraising roles for 10 years. She’s raised millions for small, national and international charities via grants, events, sponsorships, crowdfunding, appeals. She’s trained over 12,000 people from 2011-2016 and helped nonprofits raise millions more.
Additional resources mentioned in the podcast:
- My year-end fundraising masterclass (Starts tomorrow!)
- Fundraising staff attrition cost article by Mazarine
- A Brutally Honest Appeal Letter Critique: This appeal letter was a piece of crap (my first one!)
- A Brutally Honest Appeal Letter Critique: Watch me tear apart this healthcare appeal
- A Brutally Honest Appeal Letter Critique: This letter ALMOST told me a good story
- Rewriting an appeal letter: How to Cut out the Gangrene
- A Winning Formula to write your Appeal Letter
- A Tale of 2 Cities (in your appeal letter)
- 11 Tips on how to write original appeal letters
- This hospice appeal made triple the amount they had ever made before (with my edits)
- 9 ways to tell an old story in a new way
- This annual report helped their appeal letter raise $460,000
Want 43+ more tips on how to write successful appeal letters? Just go here!>