“Tutorial” fundraising: bore your donors into giving

Here’s part of a direct mail appeal I recently got. I’m a donor to this organization. I want to show you part of the two-page letter. This comes after thanking me for my past giving and bragging about their “trailblazing research.”

What follows is the bulk of the letter, starting about four paragraphs in:

Please continue your support today to help us:

Accelerate Research

Although an estimated 10 million people around the world live with [DISEASE], there is still so much we must learn about [DISEASE] in order to find a cure. At the [DISEASE] Foundation, we are committed to closing the funding gaps in research by providing essential grants, furthering drug discovery and advancing our global genetics study.

We continue to strengthen the [DISEASE] Virtual Biotech initiative alongside [Partner Agency] to invest in emerging therapies and fund early-stage [DISEASE] medications. We are also expanding clinical trials with by increasing recruitment efforts to reach diverse communities across the U.S., Canada, Latin America and beyond. To date, we have provided genetic testing and counseling to nearly 18,000 people with [DISEASE], at no cost! With your support, we will continue to reach more people, gain deeper insights into [DISEASE] genetics and get one step closer to a cure.

Improve Access to Care

Each year, more than 300,000 people with [DISEASE] receive hospital care in the U.S. We are committed to leading the national effort to improve hospital care for [DISEASE] by aiming to eliminate preventable harm and help people receive more reliable care. To drive this initiative, we published Hospital Care Recommendations for healthcare professionals and a new Hospital Safety Guide for the community, distributing 19,000 copies, at no cost!

Through our Global Care Network, we are increasing access to high-quality care by training [DISEASE] specialists and working with local partners to reach people who are medically underserved. In 2024, through 64 designated centers, 192,928 people received specialized care.

With your support, we will continue to advance our crucial efforts in the coming year to reduce barriers and close the gap in care. Especially among women, people of color and residents in rural areas.

Okay, I’ll stop here. There’s a third section, headlined “Empower through Education,” and it is of similar length and complexity to the first two sections. You get the picture.

This fundraising appeal is built on a faulty premise: If we can make donors fully understand the complex workings of our organization, they will feel compelled to give.

So they create messages that are virtual tutorials on the things they do. It might as well say at the top: Memorize this. There will be a quiz.

They think that way because there is a group of people who really do need to know and thoroughly understand these things: The leaders and employees. They’d better be on top of all that. They wouldn’t be effective otherwise.

What they can’t seem to get is that donors don’t need to be on top of it. Most of them will never really understand. In fact, left-brained consideration of what and how the organization works is a barrier to philanthropic response. It’s the wrong frame of mind. Because when you are thinking rationally, one of the core jobs is error detection. And when you look for errors, you will find them.

Good bye, donation.

Donors to this organization are largely people who have been touched by the disease. They’ve suffered. Or lost a loved one. They have an experience of pain. They have felt the loss. They’ve felt the blossoming of hope for new treatments or even a cure. They hate the disease the way they hate a mortal enemy.

When you speak to that right-brained part of them, you are speaking to what motivates donations.

Ditch the tutorials! They may seem like a good approach, but they don’t do the job.

Donors don’t give to fund your organization and your excellent processes and project. Donors give to fund your outcomes.

To get more people to give, speak to that: The change they’re giving helps bring about, not the process it takes to get there. Tell stories, be inspiring, break their hearts and give them hope. That’s how you raise funds.