Do you want your donors to “give” or to “donate”?

When raising funds, should we ask people to “give” or to “donate”?

My answer: Both.

Here’s why:

• Give is a warm, personal word. It’s what we call it when we give something to someone close.
• Donate is what most donors call it when they give to charity.

So I tend to go back and forth between those two words: The one I want them to feel (give) and the one they most likely use to describe the action (donate).

A third word for the same thing is contribute.

Here are two words I avoid:

• Gift (used as a verb): Please gift us whatever you can today
• Contribute. This word is less warm, and somehow feels smaller. Plus: 3 syllables long!

To my ear, these words are jargony and bureaucratic. They don’t hold a candle to give or donate.

The challenge with word choice is that it’s almost impossible to test it. Testing a letter with versions where only a single word is the difference is sure to return statically insignificant results. So unless you are mailing in the millions, you have to rely on instinct and other people’s experience.

This particular word is an especially important one in fundraising, so give it a little extra though when you write your message.

(This post first appeared on April 8, 2019.)