Bullet points: friend and enemy of your fundraising

Lists with bullet points are powerful. They grab eyeballs. They’re easy for readers to process. They can make complex information easier.

Bullet lists are so powerful, they can be dangerous.

Here’s why: if you create a bullet list in fundraising, and each bullet is uninspiring, uninteresting, or irrelevant to the reader, you’ve drawn a lot of attention to stuff that is unlikely to move people to donate.

Let me know you an example from some real-life fundraising. It’s a longish bullet list in a direct mail fundraising piece. It’s explaining what the donor’s gift will put into action:

• A budget prioritizing essentials like food and rent, which removes pressure.
• A tailor-made plan to get out of debt.
• A personal Financial Mentor to support them and find the best solutions.
• Money skills – via hands-on learning of budgeting and saving.
• A Christmas box, full of essentials and treats.

It’s just an explainer. A list of activities. Only the first bullet gives a sense of the value of the item.

Fine if you’re explaining how your program works.

Not so much when you’re hoping to inspire people to donate. Because people don’t give to support program activities. They give to make good things happen.

Here’s another bullet list. This one is part of a message raising funds to supply impoverished families with solar cookers. Instead of listing the features of the technology, it’s about what the donor’s gift will help accomplish:

• It allows families to spend more on food and less on fuel to cook it.
• It saves women and girls the time spent gathering wood — and reduces risk of attack.
• It allows families to send their children (especially their daughters) to school … and you know that when you educate a girl, you change the future for the whole community!
• It reduces respiratory diseases that so many children and women get from the smoke of cooking fires.
• It protects the environment because people aren’t chopping down the trees. That means more habitat for wildlife.
• It protects the land from erosion.

See the difference?

Instead of just listing things, it using the power of bullet points to be about the donor’s impact.

When you create a bullet list, remind yourself: It’s likely more people will read this section than the paragraphs around it. Am I filling the list with inspiration, or with explanation?