Fundraising or just bragging? It makes a difference

The Unbounce blog asks a question that all fundraisers should ask themselves: Is Egocentric Copy Alienating Your Prospects?

Because if you’re writing egocentric fundraising copy, you are alienating donors and potential donors.

Try this:

Turn your brags into benefits…. Go through your existing copy, and every time you see a braggy statement about your business, rework it so it concretely addresses a validated pain point with a benefit.

What’s a “validated pain point” for donors? It’s something wrong, or incomplete, or broken, or heartbreaking in the world. Something they can change by giving to your organization.

When you think about it that way, you can see how pointless typical nonprofit brags are in donors’ eyes:

• Our cutting-edge programs …
  
• We are number-one in our field …
  
• Our founder won a whole case full of trophies for his work…
  

That’s just bragging. But everything that’s truly great about your organization can be turned into something that makes your donor more effective.

Those cutting-edge programs? They cause the donor’s gift to go farther or do more. So tell her that.

Because bragging isn’t fundraising.