Your mission is powered by people. Give them a reason to stay. Most nonprofit comms feel like a series of transactions instead of a genuine connection. I’m here to help you build a relationship engine instead. Every month, The Supporter Connection delivers practical, high-ROI strategies to help you:💪 STRENGTHEN LOYALTY: Build deeper connections with donors, members, and volunteers through consistent, meaningful communication.🎭 TELL BETTER STORIES: Borrow tips from my background as an Actor + Fundraiser to find the emotional hook that inspires long-term commitment.⚙️ FOCUS ON WHAT WORKS: Get result-driven insights designed for small-to-midsize teams who need their comms to work as hard as they do. Join a community of mission-driven leaders moving from transactions to true connection.
My ✨favorite✨ year-end giving email 💌
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If you’re like me, you got A LOT of nonprofit emails in November and December. And many of them communicated similar things Support our cause Help us reach our goal Your gift will be matched Give before the deadline Don’t get me wrong. These emails came from worthy organizations with missions worth supporting. And many sent stories in addition to cut-and-dried asks, which is great! But if you’re getting a half-dozen or more of these emails every day for two months, it feels almost sanity-saving to start to tune them out. Especially if the organization hasn’t been working on building a relationship with you throughout the year. One email, though… One email jumped out of my inbox and demanded—with warmth and humanity— that I open it. The email did several things very well.
Was there a donate button? Yes, at the bottom, after a separator, like an afterthought, just in case you needed it. There was a tiny box underneath with some legal information (“we’re a 501(c)3", etc.), but zero copy asking you to donate. The focus of the email was entirely on thank-you notes. It’s so easy to silo your supporters into different groups: volunteers here, donors there, members or subscribers over there. But they’re all humans coming together to support the same mission, even if they do it in different ways. Finding opportunities to connect them, like Moms Demand Action did, is a beautiful way to unite all of the pieces of the puzzle that is your organization and help bring them to life. Interesting Nonprofit LinkIt’s so, so easy as nonprofit professionals to say the things WE want/need/are “supposed to” say, without really thinking about what your supporters need to hear. I love this post from fundraising copywriting pro Jeff Brooks, who outlines a whole thought process inspired by an envelope teaser as he ponders how to make it more donor-friendly. Nonprofit Good NewsAfter the LA wildfires last year, an eighth-grader from Altadena turned to Instagram to help her classmates. Her family had lost their home in a flood a few years before, so she knew what to do. She specifically asked for items that would help teenage girls feel good about themselves after a disaster: makeup, hair products, clothing, and personal care items. The post went viral, leading to tons of donations, a new nonprofit, and a brick-and-mortar support center for teenage girls. It’s a true testament to the power of understanding the people you serve, and how clear, specific asks can rally supporters. Read the story. See you next month! Lee O'Connell, nonprofit content and copywriter If someone forwarded this to you, you can snag your own subscription here. |
The Supporter Connection Newsletter
Your mission is powered by people. Give them a reason to stay. Most nonprofit comms feel like a series of transactions instead of a genuine connection. I’m here to help you build a relationship engine instead. Every month, The Supporter Connection delivers practical, high-ROI strategies to help you:💪 STRENGTHEN LOYALTY: Build deeper connections with donors, members, and volunteers through consistent, meaningful communication.🎭 TELL BETTER STORIES: Borrow tips from my background as an Actor + Fundraiser to find the emotional hook that inspires long-term commitment.⚙️ FOCUS ON WHAT WORKS: Get result-driven insights designed for small-to-midsize teams who need their comms to work as hard as they do. Join a community of mission-driven leaders moving from transactions to true connection.
📣Last email’s poll results 📣 It’s unanimous, y’all, polls are a go! Look out for this month’s poll after the main article. I shared in my last email that I’m focusing on nonprofit communications that help build stronger relationships between an organization and its supporters. To do that, I try to ground my writing in three simple ideas: Write from a person. Write to a person. Write about a person. This month, I’ll break down the first one: how to write from a person. First of all, I get it....
If you follow award show season, you may have noticed Huntrix—the fictional girl group at the center of the movie K-Pop: Demon Hunters—has been topping the best song nominations and awards. (I promise I am not here to get “Golden” stuck in your head… oops.) As someone who listened to the soundtrack on repeat for months last year, I can tell you that the honor is well-deserved. To quote another parent friend of mine, the soundtrack is, fortunately, "all killer, no filler." But inside one of...
Did your high school English teacher tell you not to use clichés? Mine too. Tropes and platitudes are frowned on in formal writing. They’re unoriginal, even lazy. But while you had plenty of space to express unique analogies in a high school essay, you don’t always have that luxury in nonprofit writing. When you have to grab your supporter’s attention and tap into their emotions quickly, clichés can be a useful shortcut. Especially if you use them to launch a new idea. I saw the Broadway tour...