Step 2: Stop writing for the masses

📣Last month's poll results 📣

It looks like a lot of you participated in the poll last month, but the responses weren’t recorded. I found a way to change the settings so your vote is recorded as soon as you click in the email, without having to click a submit button on a new page. Hopefully, this will avoid future issues. If you’d like to try sharing your response in the email senders poll again, you can do it here.

Welcome to part two of three in a series about writing 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.

Last month, I covered writing from a person. This month, I’ll focus on the second one: how to write to a person.

When you sit down to write, do you think about who you’re actually writing to? If you’re staring at a mailing list of thousands, it’s easy to start writing for the numbers. You come from a place of, “What are the levers I need to pull to get solid metrics?”

When we get bogged down in open rates and conversion metrics, we lose the human on the other side of the screen (or letter). We end up with copy that feels flat, institutional, and easy to ignore.

If you want to move your communications from transaction drivers to relationship builders, you have to write to a person. Here's how:

Tone 💬

Write like you're talking to one person, whether you use a persona or just think about your favorite donor or volunteer.

And I mean it when I say write like you're talking. Keep the text conversational. It'll make the writing easier for your reader to connect with (and more likely to fall in an easily readable 6-8th grade Flesch-Kincaid range). If you read it out loud and think, “I would never actually say that,” try again.

Topic 💗

Write about something the reader actually cares about.

If they volunteer? Focus on volunteers, or the beneficiaries they'd meet while volunteering. Get a sense of their passions by seeing the emails and appeals they respond to. Or, even better, survey them to see what aspects of your work ignite their interest.

When you show up in an inbox or a mailbox, you're entering their space. Respect that by honoring their preferences.

Format 👓

Design is part of the relationship.

Use large fonts, high-contrast text (black on white is best), and plenty of white space.

Leverage strategic bolding to guide their eye down the screen/page.

👉Make your CTAs clear and easy to spot. The goal is to keep your reader from struggling to understand what you want them to understand. That clarity is a gift.

If you want to build a connection that inspires true loyalty, you have to stop writing for the metrics. Write every communication like it’s a letter to a friend, and your supporters will feel the difference. And ironically, that’s exactly how you get those metrics to move.

We’ll finish up with part three next month. Don’t forget! You can download The Supporter Connection Cheat Sheet, a super-handy checklist to help you write from, to, and about a person every time.

How do you humanize your reader for yourself when you write?

Ron Burgundy from Anchorman saying, "I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal."

Interesting Nonprofit Link

I’m tooting my own horn this month! I wrote a guest post for Donorbox about building a relationship-first email strategy. If you want a deeper dive into the relationship-building framework I talk about here, this post is it.

A woman gives a passionate slow clap with the words, "You deserve a standing ovation!"

Nonprofit Good News

I’m super excited to share good news from one of your fellow subscribers this month! Richard is a development department of one with a background in major gifts, which he’s been putting to use in building donor relationships. He stopped treating donors like accounts and started treating them like partners by simply asking for their views:

“Not long after I started, I was meeting with a couple who have been generous donors to the school for several years in terms of time, talent and treasure. I set up the meeting with the sole intent of getting their perspective on how things were going. Early in the meeting, the husband said that there had been several development directors, but I was the first one to meet with them to get their perspective. I felt very validated in my approach after this.”

Please join me in cheering Richard for his great work! And if you have a little good news you want to share, you can email it to me anytime.