Your Fundraising Letters Need a Villain
by Alan Sharpe
Published on this site: September 13th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
Anger is one of the best emotions that you can arouse in
a donor. Anger is a healthy emotion, particularly when your
fundraising letter offers donors a way to assuage their anger.
“Individuals are more prone to respond to a genuine feeling
of anger than to any other emotion,” says Roland Kiniholm
in his book, Maximum Gifts by Return Mail.
To make your donors angry, you need a villain. Villains are
good. They help you focus your donors’ attention on one
problem that needs fixing. That villain can be a person or
a problem.
My advice is that you never name a particular person as your
villain, since doing so is not very charitable, excuse the
pun. Plus, you might get sued for defamation of character
or slander. Instead, you should attack the catastrophe that
the villain has created, or simply make the catastrophe the
villain.
- Mothers Against Drunk Driving has a villain: drunk driving
(not drunken drivers)
- The Coalition Against Gun Violence has a villain: gun
violence (not gun owners)
- Oxfam has a villain: poverty (not the wealthy)
- Habitat for Humanity has a villain: unaffordable housing
(not landlords)
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the United States
last week. The response by the US federal government to the
plight of tens of thousands of refugees stranded in New Orleans
was so slow that hundreds likely perished. For days, we saw the images on our television screens of stranded citizens
dying in New Orleans while help tarried.
In your fundraising letter to raise funds for these hurricane
victims, you could name President Bush as your villain. You
could blame the plight of the displaced people on Federal
Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown, who many
are saying is responsible for the delays that caused so many
deaths. Or you could blame the mayor of New Orleans. But these
attacks would sound unkind. And painting any of these men
as the villain right now would be premature.
Instead, a successful appeal letter would paint the hurricane
as the villain. Or point the finger at the flooding as the
villain.
Your fundraising campaign can have a villain and still be
positive. The Red Cross, for example, is running a fundraising
campaign right now with this theme: Hope is Stronger than a Hurricane. There’s only one thing wrong
with that theme. I didn’t think of it.
If you want to stir up one of the strongest human emotions
to your advantage, chose a villain that your donors can get
angry at. Then show how your non-profit organization can alleviate
that anger by eliminating (or, more realistically, weakening)
that villain.
Alan Sharpe is a professional fundraising letter writer.
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