In this webinar, Dr. Beverly A. Browning, author of Perfect Phrases for Fundraising will discuss how to use THE RIGHT PHRASE FOR EVERY SITUATION . . . EVERY TIME. Using precise language in a fundraising campaign is an absolute must. The words you choose can make the difference between having your appeal read . . . or tossed. Learn how to craft a message that recipients will read and respond to. The author will share her time-saving tips, message-crafting strategies and ready-to-use phrases for getting results in any campaign.

1. Perfect Phrases for Fundraising
Beverly A. Browning
December 12, 2012
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4. Today’s Speaker
Dr. Beverly A. Browning
Vice President - Grants Professional Services
eCivis, Inc.
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5. Perfect Phrases for
Fundraising
Facilitated by:
Dr. Bev Browning
Vice President
Grants Professional Services
eCivis, Inc.
480-768-7400
bbrowning@ecivis.com
www.ecivis.com

6. About Your Presenter
• VP of Grants Professional
Services – eCivis, Inc.
• Director – Grant Writing
Training Foundation
• Author of 40-grant related
publications.
• Secured over $350 million in
grant and contract awards.
6

7. AGENDA – 45 Minutes Delivery/15
Minutes Q & A
• Overview of webinar content
• Fundraising letter campaigns
• Internet and social media campaigns
• Telephone and face-to-face
campaigns
• Wrap-up
• Q&A

8. Overview
In today’s webinar, Dr. Bev
Browning will share her ready-to-
use phrases for appealing to
donors and getting the funding
you need!

9. FUNDRAISING LETTER
CAMPAIGNS
9

10. Problem:
Outdated Approach
• Recipients of your standard
fundraising letters are bored and
tired of reading unordered
random appeal paragraphs.
• Approximately 95% of electronic
and hard mail appeals are reader
turn-offs.
10

11. Solution: New Outline for Email
Fundraising Letter Appeals
• Magnetizing or validating subject line
• Opening personalization line
• Continuation of the personalization
line
• Giving link line
• Closing the fundraising appeal line
• Signing off line
11

12. Validating Subject Line
• Option 1: You can simply type an
attention drawing phrase followed
by your name, title, and name of the
organization. Here’s a successful
example of one of my subject lines:
Important Information from Dr. Bev
Browning, Director – Grant Writing
Training Foundation.
12

13. Rationale
Option 1:
1. Legitimizes you as the sender of
the email
2. Announces your name, title and
organization.
3. Reduces your email going to the
junk email folder.
13

14. Magnetizing Subject Line
• Option 2: You can capture the
recipient’s attention with an urgent
need subject line: “26 FAMILIES
WITH YOUNG CHILDREN…
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15. Rationale
Option 2:
1. Immediately begins the funding
appeal conversation.
2. Uses ALL CAPS in the first few
words to shout to the reader
about a very important target
population group in dire need.
15

16. Opening
Personalization Line
• Remember, this is your lead-in
line where you connect the
organization’s need to the email
reader’s value-driven (familiar)
area of contribution history (also
known as past funding priorities).
16

17. Opening Personalization Line
Example 1: Mark, our families need
your support…
If you did your homework on Mark, you would
have found out that he is married and has six
young children. In other words, Mark is a
family man and supports organizations that
serve families.
17

18. Opening Personalization Line
Example 2: Jeff, historical works of
world renowned artists are sitting
in an unsecured storage area of
the museum’s basement!
In Jeff’s case, you read the online newspaper
archives and discovered that he attended
several museum openings in the past year
and won an auction for a highly coveted
historical work of art.
18

19. Fundraising 101
Your organization’s funding needs
must be matched to potential
contributors that have value-
driven interests in your areas of
need!
19

20. Continuation of the
Personalization Line
Write four to six bulleted sentences on
the need or problem that the
contribution will meet or solve.
Incorporate statistics and keep
your area of need within a
timeframe of the past 12 months.
20

21. Let’s Pick Up on Mark’s
Email Letter
• In the past three months, our emergency
shelter for homeless families has been
faced with some tough decisions.
• While we’ve been blessed with room for 26
king-size bed durable cots, each cold and
rainy night an average of 26 additional
Portland homeless families with very young
children (ages newborn to three years old)
have been turned away due to a lack of
cots and space.
21

22. More Bullets for
Mark’s Letter
• With a predictable cold and damp
winter season ahead, it’s critical that
we raise the funds to expand our
space and purchase more family-size
cots.
• The building attached to our west wall
is empty and meets all code
requirements for emergency shelter.
22

23. Final Bullets for Mark’s Letter
• The landlord has agreed to lease it for
$1.00 a year if we bear the cost of
removing the separating wall ($5,000).
• A local cot supplier will reduce the
costs of the family-size costs (sleeps 2
adults and up to 3 children) to $250
each.
23

24. Fundraising 101
• Your need is not a potential
contributor’s need until you
provide sufficient gloom, doom,
drama and trauma (the truth in
brief) about your need!
24

25. Giving Line Link
This is where you embed the link to
your organization’s website and
tell the reader why you’re
directing them to your site.
“Mark, you can help us meet this
critical need by making a
contribution today at
http://www.holidaycots.org.”
25

26. Closing the Fundraising
Appeal Line
As a family man, I know you can relate to how it
must feel to be homeless with a young family
living on the streets and depending on the
generosity of others to see you through this
humiliating, life-altering, seems like a never-
ending time in your life.
You’ll notice that I ended this in a series of three
hard-to-forget descriptors that I want to remain
in Mark’s mind—driving him to contribute now!
26

27. Signing Off Line
• Finish your email with one of
these closings: “Hopefully or
Awaiting Your Gift or Granting
Needs.”
Keep your signature line professional. If your
organization has social media pages on LinkedIn,
Facebook or Twitter (popular social media sites for
fundraising), provide embedded icons with direct links
for the email reader.
27

28. Solution: New Outline for Postal
Mail Fundraising Letter Appeals
• Date line
• Addressee line
• Salutation line
• Opening paragraph
• Second – fourth paragraphs
• The closing
28

29. Opening Paragraph Pointers
• Start with a compelling lead line.
• Ask rhetorical information-filled
questions that circle back to facts
about your funding needs.
• End this paragraph with three
information bullets related to cost
per service or program or
individual (client, patient, and so
forth).
29

30. Second Paragraph Pointers
• Introduce your organization.
• Link your organization to the
potential contributor (in other
words, why are they a perfect
match for your funding needs?).
30

31. Third Paragraph Pointers
• Recall the problem that the
funding will solve.
• Don’t repeat first paragraph
sentences.
• Remind the reader of the critical
nature of the problem.
31

32. Fourth Paragraph Pointers
• Make the appeal.
• Option 1: Give the specific
amount of funding needed from
this potential contributor.
• Option 2: Leave the amount of
the contribution up to the letter’s
recipient.
32

33. The Closing
• Write a compelling closing line,
followed by your signature, title, and
work contact information along with an
impacting postscript (handwritten). For
example: “Anticipating your continuing
investment in…”
• Add a postscript. For example: “P.S.
Hilda, the Frontline journalists and crew
are eagerly looking forward to their 13th
season on PBS!”
33

34. Fundraising 101
1. Thoroughly research each letter
campaign recipient!
2. Follow the outlines provided for
email and postal mail appeals!
3. Personalize every paragraph by
using the recipient’s first name!
34

35. INTERNET AND
SOCIAL MEDIA
CAMPAIGNS
35

36. Website Campaign Elements
• Who does the donation help?
• How will the donation make a
difference?
36

37. Website Campaigns
• Easy to remember web addresses.
• Critical: tab(s) for contributions with
automated shopping cart.
• Tell your audience how their
contribution will make a difference.
• Give donation level examples (and
what can be implemented for every
level of giving) starting at $50 and
up.
37

38. YouTube Campaign Elements
• Point of view
• Dramatic question
• Emotional content
38

39. Point of View
• What is important to share with
your YouTube viewers?
• Who is the target for our
message?
• Will you tell your story from the
organization’s point of view or the
client’s point of view?
39

40. Point of View Example
Arts and Culture Fundraising
• Organization View: Ballet Moscow’s
production costs have exceeded our ticket
revenues and contributions 3:1 for the past
two years.
• Client View: An audience member at one of
our ballet performances recently came back
stage at Ballet Moscow and made this
devastating comment: “What happened to
the people who used to come and enjoy the
ballet? The seats were once full; now there
are more empty seats than full ones.”
40

41. Dramatic Question
• Pose this question to create
compassion among your
YouTube audience. This is not an
actual question that you expect
anyone to answer; it’s a rhetorical
question that forces the viewer to
think about the situation.
41

42. Dramatic Question Example
Arts and Culture Fundraising
• How will Ballet Moscow survive
without event marketing dollars?
42

43. Emotional Content
• Language that includes
incidences of loss, redemption,
crisis, or change is key to keeping
your audience engaged and
interested. Emotional content is
a common denominator that
everyone can relate to, and it’s
what makes your fundraising
appeals so universally
magnetizing.
43

44. Emotional Content Example
Arts and Culture Fundraising
• Thousands of community members
have never heard of Ballet Moscow.
Because we do not have the funds for
marketing outreach, our sales are
limited to past patrons and people who
stumble upon our website or box office
by accident. You can change our
future by donating today at
balletmoscow.net.
44

45. Facebook Campaign
Elements
• Compelling impact-based
fundraising campaign.
• Regular brief updates about the
campaign.
45

46. Facebook Campaigns
• Focus on creating read me media
content within their affiliated
causes (www.causes.com)
application.
• Valuable nonprofit tool!
• Allows promotion of causes.
• Easy to set up.
46

47. Facebook Campaign Launch
• Create cause.
• Gain supporters by merging your
email contact lists.
• Incorporate marketing by using the
write note application and then post
the notes on your cause page.
• Consider pictures, quotes, videos and
links to other sites as well.
Go to Applications (on the left-hand pane of your profile),
then select Notes. You will see Notes which your friends
have written, and to write a new note of your own you can
click on the Write a New Note button near the top right-
hand corner of the screen.
47

48. Twitter Campaign Elements
• Organization profile statement for
potential followers to view.
• Fundraising needs.
• Buzz and excitement.
• Fundraising progress.
48

49. Sample Profile Statements
• NMEA for Charter Schools was
created to allow the diversity in
education, talents and resources to be
cultivated. (113 characters with
spaces)
• We, as the Nourish Team, are a
partnership of people who care for our
neighbors and the people around us.
(105 characters with spaces)
49

50. Sample Fundraising Tweets
• We need your help 2 develop diversity
education software. Please help us
change charter school education
modules! (115 characters with spaces)
• Help us nourish 100 new children in
Kentucky mining towns. $50 grows a
field of vegetables. When harvested,
200 children are fed. (131 characters
with spaces)
50

51. Tweet Buzz and Excitement!
• Weekly Buzz: Our diversity software
module received two awards from the
American Education Diversity Council!
(109 characters with spaces)
• Yahoo! An out-of-state landowner
donated 200 tillable acres to our
cause! (74 characters with spaces)
51

52. Tweet Fundraising Progress
• $50,000 in 50 days! We couldn’t have
done this without your contributions
and retweets to potential donors! (108
characters with spaces)
• 1,500 new trees were planted in a
burned-out forest. Only 4,500 more
trees to go before the next decade.
(105 characters with spaces)
52

53. TELEPHONE AND
FACE-TO-FACE
CAMPAIGNS
53

54. Elements of
Telephone Campaigns
• Catch the listener’s attention with
A-to-Z words that resonate.
• Follow basic verbal content
delivery rules.
• Create a flexible and natural
script.
54

55. Elements of Board of
Directors Campaigns
• Dialogue to encourage your
board members to give at a 100%
level.
• Fundraising scripts for board
members to use when soliciting
contributions in the community.
55

56. Elements of One-on-One
Fundraising Meeting Campaigns
• Telling your organization’s needs.
• Selling stakeholder investment to
potential donors.
56

57. Elements of Service Club and
Civic Organization Campaigns
• Fundraising appeal presentation
outline and script.
57

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