{"id":1366,"date":"2009-11-13T08:53:44","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T16:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2009\/11\/is_our_fundraising_writing_wro\/"},"modified":"2009-11-13T08:53:44","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T16:53:44","slug":"is_our_fundraising_writing_wro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/is_our_fundraising_writing_wro.php","title":{"rendered":"Is our fundraising writing wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many arts organizations work really hard to craft the perfect fundraising message in their letters, their brochures, and their online communications. They strive for strong evidence that what they do makes a difference, they anguish over the specific words they should use to convey that evidence, and they hope to close the deal by making the rational case for financial support. But somewhere in there, many of us forget to tell a compelling story.<\/p>\n<p>So discovered <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewrittenvoice.org\/\">Frank C. Dickerson<\/a> in his dissertation research on the language of philanthropy. After running more than 2000 fundraising letters through a text analysis system, he found a frightening consistency with a similar, smaller study, which discovered that fundraising discourse:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>failed to connect with and involve readers on a personal and emotional level, and<\/li>\n<li>failed to tell stories about real people whom readers might actually care about<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Instead, messages were clinical, detached, evidence-based, and academic.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I&#8217;m a big fan of evidence, and supporting your impact with sufficient credential to prove your point. But that evidence need not be exclusively rational, linear, or statistical. A good story &#8212; the transformation of a key constituent or participant, the revelation of another, the influence on a child&#8217;s daily life &#8212; is evidence of a different kind. But also of a more compelling kind when asking people to support you with their attention, passion, and cash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many arts organizations work really hard to craft the perfect fundraising message in their letters, their brochures, and their online communications. They strive for strong evidence that what they do makes a difference, they anguish over the specific words they should use to convey that evidence, and they hope to close the deal by making [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}