In direct mail (and sometimes email), the PS is the most important thing you write. It’s one of the most-read parts of your message. It’s worth spending some time on to make it really sing.
Here’s the P.S. from a fundraising letter I got the other day:
P.S. None of our acheivements could have been attained without the sustained and dedicated support of contributors like you.
The sentiment is good: “We can’t do it without you.”
Everything else about this P.S. is broken:
- It’s abstract — not specifically about anything, just the idea.
- The writing is stilted and awkward. Read it out loud: It’s almost a tongue-twister.
- It looks like they used a thesaurus to pick the longest possible word in every place they had a choice.
- Even though it’s aimed at donors, it’s also self-focused bragging.
It’s good that it’s aimed at donors, but it should also have a call to action.
Who knew one 18-word sentence could make so many mistakes?
Think you could do it better? Let’s see your work in the comments!
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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