Special Appeal Week -- Choosing Your Theme

Welcome to Special Appeal Week, a series of posts on writing dynamic, money-raising, and compelling special appeal letters.

A core part of any direct mail fundraising program is the Special Appeal – those asks the organization sends in between acquiring a donor and renewing her. They’re usually issue-specific and hard-hitting, rather than the more general Acquisition and Renewal asks.

So when I sit down to work on a Special Appeal letter, the first question I usually ask is, What's the money for?

It's sometimes a harder question to answer than you'd think, particularly in terms of direct mail. I often hear answers like, "Well...we need to travel to Washington, D.C." or "We want to put a cool thing on the Web that talks about our issue."

And while these may be worthwhile endeavors and absolutely critical to your cause, they're not going to make anybody fork over their hard-earned cash. You want to open wallets? Choose a good theme.

The theme is the foundation of your mailing campaign, the reason for sending the letter. And while putting good information on the Web and sending advocates to D.C. may be a part of that, you need a really exciting and important idea around which to rally your supporters first.

Campaigns are fantastic way to do it. Say you want to fund some research into new medicines to fight obesity. Great. Let's call it The Campaign to End Obesity and include four or five concrete actions you're going to take to accomplish this lofty-sounding goal. They can be things you're doing already -- education, advocacy, research funding, outreach -- but put them under a Campaign umbrella, and you sound like a mover-and-shaker with a real strategy.

I work with a lot of activist organizations, and that’s another fantastic appeal angle. What kind of advocacy work is your organization doing? Build your appeal around a Petition or a Declaration of Support, and your donors will feel like they’re helping you out in an even bigger way.

And don't forget the incredible opportunity appeals give you to alert your donors to what's going on in the organization. Give them the information, as much information as you can throw at them in four pages.

Appeals are all about getting your donors to give more than just their yearly gift. And so you have to promise them something a bit more, as well.