Here’s a happy story from Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog: How Overhauling Our Print Newsletter Helped Us Become More Donor Centric.
It’s about how an organization called Workers Interfaith Network overhauled their newsletter — and the dramatic improvements that happened.
Here are some of the changes they made:
- Went from 8 pages to 4.
- Changed from one color (printed on the office copier) to two colors.
- Went from a self-sealed mailer to mailing it in an envelope.
- Changed from a neutral, journalistic tone to a “direct mail” style of copy (using the word “you” a lot).
- From long, complex articles to articles written for skimming.
- Shifted from focusing on what WIN was doing to making it about what donors accomplish.
The results: Donations attributed to the newsletter have tripled.
You can do this too, and quite possibly see similar improvements.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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