Donation request letters need strong main character, says Fundraising Company
Make your donation request letters lack a protagonist? The most compelling appeal letters feature is a man or a woman, a boy or a girl that captured the attention of donors and makes the attractiveness of people, movement, and profitable.
The most memorable novels, movies and TV shows feature strong protagonists. The protagonist in a drama or story is the main actor, the main character. Some examples:
BOOKS
The Hobbit: Bilbo Baggins.
Moby Dick:Ishmael.
Great Expectations: Pip.
War and Peace: Pierre Bezukhov.
Catcher in the Rye: Holden Caulfield.
MOVIES
Out of Africa: Karen Blixen.
The Ten Commandments: Moses.
Star Wars: Luke Skywalker.
Gone With the Wind: Scarlett O'Hara.
My Fair Lady: Eliza Doolittle.
If you are a hospital, you can guarantee your protagonist a heroic cancer patient.
If you are a relief and development agency, you can your protagonist, is an aidEmployees serving AIDS orphans in Nigeria.
If you have an environmental advocacy organization is, you can have your protagonist, an activist chained to the railings outside the Indonesian Embassy in Ottawa.
If you are an opera house, your protagonist, you can be your most recent, promising singers.
A strong protagonist takes your fundraising letters alive because the donors who give the people helping people. You do not want to read about programs and policies. You wantto read about people, people to help you and your people doing the helping. A protagonist can help you tell your institutional history in human terms, translate your case for support in flesh and blood.
Here is an example of a thank-you letter to donors of a hospital that had recently joined the hospital's monthly program will be sent to:
Dear Mr. Sharpe,
I shook with the youngest heart transplant patients in our country the other day and he asked me toThank you. You are now plays a vital member of the team that keeping Brad alive.
Brad Phillips was only a few weeks old when the doctors here at the Bendix Memorial Hospital gave him a new heart to save his life. That was in 1985. Since Brad is was rushed into hospital in air ambulance to recall pneumonia often mind received a second heart transplant, diagnosed with CMV disease, suffered kidney failure, and fell in love with the hospitalStaff.
"I actually spend more time with them than I do with the family that raised me," says Brad. "I'm sure glad that we are so good!"
Your donors will quickly understand and embrace it when you show your cause, in a dramatic way, who you are and who to serve you, rather than describe what you're doing, making note of your programs, or listing of your services. And do the intuitive way that in a fundraising letter is only one person who can help you or a personto your employees (or volunteers), and tell your story through the characters and show them in action.
© 2006 Sharpe Copy Inc. You can order it online and printed edition, provided the links remain live and the content remains unaltered (including the "About the Author" message).
Tags: Benefits, character, Company, Consolidation, Donation, Fundraising, Letters, request, strong, Student
