SolveYourProblem eBusiness Series:
Fundraising Essentials For Your Non-Profit:
How To Raise All The Money You Want
( 34 pages )

Communicating with Donors:
The Best Way to Raise Money

In simplest terms, fundraising is really about communicating. You will want to reach your donors and communicate why your non-profit group deserves money and why your purpose or efforts are worthwhile. The groups that do this successfully generally manage to make more money than the groups that do not.

If you want to raise money, you will have to work hard on communicating with your donors. There are several ways that you will be communicating with donors:

• Advertising: Through advertising, you will try to catch donor’s attention and will try to explain why your non-profit is crucial enough to deserve donor money. In advertising, you will communicate through words and images and sounds (if you are advertising through radio or television). Non-profits can advertise fundraising plans through radio, television, Internet, posters, newspapers, and magazines.
  
• Letters: Every non-profit uses words to communicate with donors, grant providers, and others through letters. Letters need to be well-written and professional. Direct mail letters may require “extras” such as photos or images to really capture attention.
  
• Email/Internet: Today, you can expect to use the Internet or email to give information to donors. Use the same techniques and rules in email and Internet communication as you would in letters.
  
• Telephone: You will be using the telephone to call donors, follow up with workers, and to finalize details of fundraising efforts. You will need to use pleasant and professional phone manners to use the telephone effectively.
  
• Thank-you notes: You should never overlook these. Every person who helps you non-profit should be made to feel appreciated through a thank you.
  
• Person to person: You will need to speak to people in order to convince them of the importance of your non-profit.
  
• Grant proposals: Grant proposals are a very formal and precise way of communicating. Grant providers will tell you in their application exactly what they want to see from you in order to make a funding decision.
  
• Press Releases: Press releases are sent to the media and tell newspapers, radio, and other media the latest news about your non-profit and your fundraising efforts.
  
• Campaigning/Marketing/Public Relations: A more subtle form of advertising, marketing has to do with gaining exposure for your non-profit’s fundraising through articles, radio spots, and interviews.

You may not use each technique each time you communicate, but you need to master all these forms of communication in order to get a steady source of fund for your group. Luckily, learning to master these areas is not hard. There are many books about communicating effectively at your library and you may in fact have someone in your group already who is good with words and who can communicate effectively.

Let’s consider each area of fundraising communication separately...

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