How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters
(Book Review)
Title: How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters.
Author: Mal Warwick
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Details: 304 pages, includes index, book list and phrase lists, suitable for fundraising letter writers
This book is a valuable guide to writing fundraising letters. Within the preface, the author does a remarkable job of summing up his own book, calling it “a bag full of treatments for the dread disease of writer’s block.”
Are you learning to write fundraising letters for the first time? Or maybe you already write great fundraising letters but are looking for ways to speed up the process? Either way, I recommend keeping this book on your desk within easy reach.
This paperback contains 304 information-packed pages, including helpful lists of sample phrases, lots of real examples and insightful analysis and reviews of other useful books and resources. This book explains the purpose of each component of a direct mail fundraising package and how to make the whole package work together.
You can use the book as a source of examples and inspiration. Or you can use it as a quick-and-easy guide to different types of fundraising letters. Or as a collection of resources and crib sheets. Warwick, who invites you to “steal his ideas as you see fit,” provides the following highly useful tools in his book:
- Sixty successful outer envelope teasers
- Fifty-four strong leads for a fundraising letter
- Ninety ways to use the word “you” in a fundraising letter
- Sixty-three ways to handle awkward copy transitions
- Forty-one powerful ways to end a fundraising letter
- Fifty-eight ways to start a P.S. in fundraising letter
- Ten other books to help you write successful fundraising letters
While this book is a great tool for fundraisers, many of the tips and resources it contains will help you with other writing as well.