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.
What K-Pop Demon Hunters taught me about better writing
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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 its lesser-known songs between the two main characters—a poignant ballad called "Free"— there’s a clever little lesson about how you can use grammar to help bring your writing and storytelling to life. During the course of the movie, Hunrtix’s lead singer, Rumi, loses her singing voice. So there’s a line in "Free" where she sings: "I tried to sing, couldn’t hit the notes. The words kept—catching in my throat." My first instinct was my singer-self being indignant that she took a breath in the middle of a phrase. (That’s not how people talk!) But then my writer-brain quickly realized how clever that tactic was. By disrupting the phrase with a long pause, the lyricist had brought the struggle of being literally unable to sing to life. I’m guilty of being a real stickler for grammar. My husband actually had to stop me once from asking a Ben & Jerry’s to fix their sign that touted "frozen froyo." But the point of nonprofit writing is to sound human and conversational. When we rigidly adhere to grammar rules, we can lose sight of that authentic humanness. So give yourself permission to write the way people speak. Embrace fragments. Use em dashes to insert thoughts within thoughts. Simplify your word choices. Leverage punctuation in a way that captures the cadence of your story subject's speech. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not a complete rebel. Grammar is there to provide structure and clarity to writing, but in the words of Aunt Eller: So go ahead, get a little loose—just don’t go too crazy. And let me know how it goes. Interesting Nonprofit LinkI recently finished the third season of Loot on Apple TV. If you’re not familiar, it’s a comedy about the philanthropy world starring Maya Rudolph as a MacKenzie Scott-type figure (if MacKenzie Scott were a lovable hot mess). The show spends more time on the quirky characters and their relationships than on changing the world, but it is definitely a fun watch. Her Super Bowl ads in the last season alone make the whole series worth watching. Check out the trailers. Nonprofit Good NewsSpeaking of MacKenzie Scott, she downplayed her mega contributions in her year-end essay to focus on the power of small acts of kindness. Apparently, science backs her up. Researchers carried out experiments that found small, consistent gestures improved both the giver’s and the recipient’s sense of happiness. Read the article here. See you next month! Lee O'Connell, nonprofit copywriter and communications strategist 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’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...
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...