<p>Your fundraising letters need to be different or you're dead. In no area of their lives do generous, faithful donors settle for vanilla. They don't watch TV reruns all day. They don't read yesterday's news. They don't return to websites that are updated monthly. Today's direct mail donors demand variety. Fail to give them variety and they will fail to give. Prepare for battle. The competition for your donor's attention has never been greater. Blame it on Survivor and American Idol. Blame it on cell phones, iPods, Blackberries, digital TV, satellite radio, junk mail, spam and telemarketers. Blame it on the thousands of other charities competing for your donor's loyalty. But don't blame your donor. Your donor, like everyone else, will only read fundraising letters that are, in a word, breakthrough. And breakthrough fundraising letters are different. Radically different. They aren't addressed to ''Dear Friend.'' They don't have a P.S. They don't have a premium. Breakthrough Fundraising Letters teaches you the proven techniques that professional direct mail fundraising copywriter Alan Sharpe uses to craft breakthrough letters for his clients. You'll learn the mistakes to avoid, the best practices to implement right now, and the tips, techniques and shortcuts that you can use for years to come. Study full-page, full-color examples of fundraising letters written by the author for leading non-profit organizations, including: Daily Bread Food Bank, Doctors Without Borders, Evangelical Tract Distributors, Greenpeace, Habitat for Humanity, Hope for Children Foundation, Metro Health Hospital Foundation, Saskatoon City Hospital, Street Kids International, Teen Challenge Farm. Learn how to write the three most important letters in fundraising (and study samples of each): (1) Donor acquisition letters; (2) Donor renewal letters, (3) Lapsed donor recovery letters. See samples of just about everything you could want to include in a fundraising letter package, including: carrier envelopes, letters, reply devices, reply envelopes, brochures, buckslips, liftnotes, freemiums, premiums, involvement devices and surveys.</p>

Breakthrough Fundraising Letters

Alan Sharpe

Andrew Spencer Publishing

Learn the insider secrets of running a profitable direct mail fundraising letter program. How can you raise money with direct mail when you never seem to have enough hours in your day or money in your budget to do the job properly? You need a plan. A step-by-step plan that helps you save time, reduce costs and still meet your fundraising goals. In Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program, you'll learn the tested methods that leading charities use to raise money through the mail. You'll learn the mistakes to avoid, the best practices to implement today, and the tips, techniques and shortcuts that you can use for years to come. Running a successful annual fundraising letter program is getting harder by the week. There are more non-profit organizations today than there were a week ago. And competition for your donor s dollar is increasing along with costs of printing and postage. And yet direct mail fundraising remains one of the most cost-effective ways to raise funds. Many non-profit organizations depend on the mail for over 50% of their contributed income each year. Over the years, successful direct mail fundraisers have discovered that the route to results lies in following some time-tested principles. You'll learn them in this book . . . * how direct mail fundraising works * why you should plan to lose money on your acquisition mailings (and why your board shouldn't mind) * four goals of every renewal fundraising letter * response rates, net profit, cost to raise a dollar and other vital signs of your success * key steps you must follow every year to retain donors * why donors give and what makes them stop

Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program

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Books by Andrew Spencer Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Andrew Spencer Publishing publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Breakthrough Fundraising Letters

Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program