The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs

Part 1: 4 Fundraising Copywriting Tips on How to Use Verbs to Lasso Your Reader’s Attention

“The little boy went far from home to look for food.”

“The little boy traveled far from home to search for food.”

Great fundraising copywriting shouldn’t be complicated. In fact, if your copy is filled with SAT words and acronyms, chances are it’s not converting very well. But writing simplistic copy that still moves people to give isn’t as ‘simple’ as it seems.

Look at the two sentences above. Both are simple. But one is more engaging because of the verbs. Keep reading to see why this matters, and how to do it in your fundraising copy.

The Donor Audience – Who You’re Writing To

First, demographics matter. This is as true in fundraising as it is in business marketing. Your audience might be of certain age or income demographics. They might be urban, suburban, or rural. They may be highly educated or less well educated. Hundreds of different demographics can be identified to narrow down your audience.

And once you identify that audience, it affects how you’ll write your fundraising copy.

But in addition to demographics, you must also tap into the internal motivations for giving. People from all walks of life can be moved to give if faced with a need they believe they can meet. In the famous Bible story, a poor woman gets commended by Jesus for giving just two cents, because she believed the reason for giving was worth the sacrifice.

Donors give because they believe something.

It’s your job as fundraisers to tap into what your donors already believe.

When it comes to copywriting, one of your primary tools for doing this is the verb. The trick with language is to balance simplicity with emotion. And in writing, to maximize emotion and connect donors to the action you need to utilize the most visceral verbs for the situation.

How to Use Verbs to Enhance Your Fundraising Copy

Here are four fundraising copywriting tips for how to enhance your copy and engage the reader using better verbs.

1. Determine the Need. Get specific.

The need isn’t hunger.

Who’s hungry? How hungry are they? When was their last meal? What did they eat? What haven’t they been able to eat that their body needs? For how long?

The more specific you get, the more vibrant and engaging your copy will be, and the better verbs you’ll be able to use. You’ll see examples in a bit showing why this is true.

2. Write Your First Draft

Yes, there’s a lot more to this part. The focus of this article is on the verbs. So go write your first draft and come back for step 3.

3. Cut out Unnecessary Excess

In fundraising copywriting (especially direct mail), every word needs a reason for being there.

Your two main goals here are clarity and focus. Clarity of language and intent so the reader knows the situation and understands what to do. Focus on the specific need you identified in step 1. Your language, your stories, your verbs – all should be built around the specific need the donor can meet, and clarity about how to do it.

With that in mind, here are some language excesses you may have let creep in to your fundraising copy (especially if you were an English major):

• Unnecessary adjectives
• Too much context – sometimes you just need to dive right in
• Distracting metaphors
• Cleverness and humor
• SAT words

That last one is very important. It doesn’t matter how intelligent your readers are. In fundraising, there is no demographic for “smart people.” It’s meaningless. Even the smartest person in the world must be engaged on an emotional level to be motivated to give away their money. You’re not appealing to the brain in fundraising. So cut out the SAT words.

And I say ‘SAT words’ instead of ‘big’ words because some big words are actually quite simple. ‘Simple’ language just means words everyone understands. If your fundraising copy is too hard for a sixth grader to understand, you should probably rewrite it.

Now that you have your copy simplified down, it’s time to look at your verbs.

4. Change Verbs from Bland to Visceral

With the excess fat trimmed, now you can enhance your copy where it counts. In the verbs!

Here are few copywriting tips for how to do this:

• Use a thesaurus!

I still regularly flip open the massive Readers Digest Oxford Complete Wordfinder, a dictionary/thesaurus my grandmother bought me years ago. Sure, the computer seems faster, but is it really? And does it show me as many words?

Take your simple and bland verbs, and use the thesaurus to find more enlivening ones.

• Look for verbs that also communicate the emotional impact of the action

Of all the copywriting tips in this article, this is the most important one.

Great verbs communicate emotion and action at the same time.

Get the idea? These are all simple verbs everyone knows. But the emotional component of the first group – and the specificity that comes with them – make them far more powerful for use in fundraising copywriting.

That’s why you must first specify your goal.

Suppose you’re raising money for an urban mentorship program. What verbs communicate the impact of your program?

Are the mentors just ‘helping’ the kids? Or are they ‘empowering’ them?

Do the kids just ‘wish’ they had someone fighting for them? Or do they ‘crave’ having such an ally?

Verbs touch the heart more than adjectives and other descriptive language. Why is that true? Probably because action means something is happening. There’s a feeling, an emotion, paired up with the action. And as a reader, it helps me relate to this person more.

I have craved food. So when I read that these kids crave time with their mentors, I understand how much this mentorship program matters to them.

You couldn’t convey that idea very well with adjectives and metaphors:

“The desperate kids look forward to seeing their caring mentors like a plate of their favorite food.”

No.

“The kids crave every moment of time they spend with their mentors.”

It’s better. And it’s shorter.

• Use Active Verbs, not Passive Ones

There are instances where passive language actually works better, so don’t take this fundraising copywriting tip as written in stone. But in general, active language engages the heart and the emotions, and passive language engages the mind.

Most donors give from the heart, not the mind.

Take these two sentences:

“Aspiring students are prevented from attending school by restrictive laws.”

“Restrictive laws prevent aspiring students from attending school.”

The second one just feels more urgent, doesn’t it? The oppositional force is clear: restrictive laws. What those laws are doing is clear. Who it’s affecting. Why it matters.

All the same information is in both sentences, and yet how each one makes you feel differs. Isn’t language interesting? Active verbs just have more punch. They feel more immediate. Use them as often as you can.

My Example from Screenwriting

I’ve done a fair amount of screenwriting and spent quite a lot of time learning the craft. Enough to know a few things.

In writing scripts, I got tired of writing ‘walk’ all the time. So, I got out the thesaurus and found other words for walk that also convey the emotional state of the person walking.

Check out these synonyms for ‘walk’:

Amazing!

Notice how, just reading some of these verbs with zero context, you still feel a tinge of emotion. From just one word! Imagine what they do when used in an actual fundraising story.

Also, screenplays are always written in present tense. Consider writing your fundraising stories that way too. They sound more imminent, as if it’s happening right now.

Compare:

The first already happened, putting one more barrier between the reader’s emotions and the story. Barriers prevent action. With the second, you feel like you’re right there with her.

In your fundraising copywriting, go and do the same.

See These Fundraising Copywriting Tips Applied in Part 2 of this Series!

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