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Attention Nonprofits in the Pacific Northwest

Attention Nonprofits in the Pacific Northwest

Attention Nonprofits in the Pacific Northwest: Are You Coming to the 2020 AFP Annual Conference in Seattle? See Below for a Special Conference-Exclusive Way to Improve Your Fundraising Copy ProActive Content will be back at the 2020 Association for Fundraising Professionals Annual Conference this year, and this year’s event is looking like yet another great […]

14 Fundraising Writing Tips – How to Raise More Money without Spending More

14 Fundraising Writing Tips – How to Raise More Money without Spending More

14 Fundraising Writing Tips – How to Raise More Money without Spending More If you’re doing your own fundraising writing, you probably wonder sometimes if you’re doing it ‘right.’ Or if there even is a ‘right’ way to do it. Perhaps a better way to think of it is, there are more effective ways to […]

Help! Our Nonprofit Is Too Small to Write Emails Consistently

Help! Our Nonprofit Is Too Small to Write Emails Consistently

Help! Our Nonprofit Is Too Small to Write Emails Consistently Your Guide to Steady Donor Communication and Fundraising Through Email Email remains the single best media to frequently communicate with your donors and supporters. It costs nothing to send them. You can vary the length, content, purpose, and interactive features with relative ease. You can […]

Why Donation Page Content Turns Away 83% of Potential Donors

Why Donation Page Content Turns Away 83% of Potential Donors

Why Donation Page Content Turns Away 83% of Potential Donors New Donation Page A/B Testing Data Reveals 7 Ways Nonprofits of Every Size Can Increase Their Conversion Rates How much more donation money can your nonprofit collect just by improving your donation page content? Look at it this way: Suppose your donation page gets 1000 […]

Why You Should Rarely Use Jargon in Your Fundraising

Why You Should Rarely Use Jargon in Your Fundraising

Why You Should Rarely Use Jargon in Your Fundraising Don’t Let the Jargonasaur Scare Away Your Donors Maybe it’s my background in education, but I can’t stand jargon. I’ll never forget reading about the school board candidates in my voter’s pamphlet one year. One of their descriptions was so packed with industry jargon, buzzwords, and […]

Fundraising Tip: Aim for the Heart, Not the Head

Fundraising Tip: Aim for the Heart, Not the Head

Fundraising Tip: Aim for the Heart, Not the Head Behavior Research Confirms: Donors Don’t Care About Your Facts and Figures A more fun headline for this article might be this: Research confirms that donors don’t care about research. An article in The Guardian examines several research studies of donor behavior and concludes that donors respond […]

How Much Copy Should Be on Our Donation Page? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 1

How Much Copy Should Be on Our Donation Page? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 1

How Much Copy Should Be on Our Donation Page? Plus: 4 Donation Page Copywriting Tips –Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 1 NextAfter performs fundraising testing experiments to help nonprofits improve their online fundraising. In support of using data to make better fundraising decisions, ProActive Content will be reporting on some of NextAfter’s experiments for the […]

The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs

The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs

The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs   Part 2: Fundraising Copywriting Smackdown: Verbs vs Adjectives See Part 1:  4 Copywriting Tips on How to Lasso Your Reader’s Attention with Verbs What language best engages readers and motivates them to give your cause How do you tell fundraising stories well enough to evoke a […]

The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs

The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs

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 […]

How to Write ‘Can’t Look Away’ Headlines for Nonprofits

How to Write ‘Can’t Look Away’ Headlines for Nonprofits

How to Write ‘Can’t Look Away’ Headlines for Nonprofits 6-Step Guide Reveals How to Engage and Inspire Your Readers to Action In this media-saturated age, getting anyone to read your nonprofit’s content and fundraising appeals presents an unending challenge. Each new piece of content you send out requires a fresh motivation to be read by […]

Ripped from Hollywood: The Anatomy of Fundraising Storytelling – How to Insert Donors into Your Narrative

Ripped from Hollywood: The Anatomy of Fundraising Storytelling – How to Insert Donors into Your Narrative

Ripped from Hollywood: The Anatomy of Fundraising Storytelling – How to Insert Donors into Your Narrative 6 Components Every Well-Told Fundraising Story Must Have The power of story in fundraising is well-known. What’s less well-known is how to tell a story well, such that it motivates donors to want to take action. Besides fundraising copywriting, […]

7 Nonprofit Newsletter Examples and Ideas from Real Charities

7 Nonprofit Newsletter Examples and Ideas from Real Charities

7 Nonprofit Newsletter Examples and Ideas from Real Charities See Screenshots and Analysis for 7 Types of Email Newsletters Some nonprofits get a little too stressed about the idea of email newsletters. Allow me to simplify it for you. An email newsletter is really just an email. There was a time when nonprofits tried to […]

Have You Started Planning Your Giving Tuesday Campaign Yet? You’re Late!

Have You Started Planning Your Giving Tuesday Campaign Yet? You’re Late!

Have You Started Planning Your Giving Tuesday Campaign Yet? You’re Late! 4-Step Fast Action #GivingTuesday Planning Guide Fortunately, you’re not too late though. But the moment you finish reading this, go plan your next Giving Tuesday campaign. What’s so great about Giving Tuesday? #GivingTuesday is a rejection of holiday consumerism, so the ‘sales’ pitch is […]

How to Build Your Nonprofit’s Email List (and Spend $0 on Advertising)

How to Build Your Nonprofit’s Email List (and Spend $0 on Advertising)

How to Build Your Nonprofit’s Email List (and Spend $0 on Advertising) Walk Through This Tried and True 5-Step Email List Building Funnel Email list building should be one of your nonprofit’s top priorities. If it’s not, talk to your board and show them what I’m about to tell you. Why? Because email remains the […]

The 7 Best Email Subject Line Categories Every Nonprofit Should Be Using

The 7 Best Email Subject Line Categories Every Nonprofit Should Be Using

The 7 Best Email Subject Line Categories Every Nonprofit Should Be Using How to Make Your Subscribers Itch to Read Every One of Your Emails Getting opened and read is not about email subject lines. It’s about email subject line categories. In the never-ending quest to get your emails opened, you need a diverse blend […]

4 Reasons Why Long Fundraising Letters Beat Short Ones 90% of the Time

4 Reasons Why Long Fundraising Letters Beat Short Ones 90% of the Time

4 Reasons Why Long Fundraising Letters Beat Short Ones 90% of the Time Are You Ready to Let Facts Confront Your Beliefs About Donors? Yes, long fundraising letters work better. It’s true for nonprofits. It’s true for direct mail in many for-profit industries. It’s generally true in email too (though not as often). But don’t […]

“Help! My Nonprofit’s Home Page Stinks!”

“Help! My Nonprofit’s Home Page Stinks!”

“Help! My Nonprofit Home Page Stinks!” 12 Home Page Do’s and Don’ts for Every Nonprofit that Wants to Put Donors and Website Visitors First  I’ve got good news: You’re not alone. I’ve got better news than that: There’s help. If your nonprofit is like most others, your home page isn’t just failing to get the […]

Copywrite Or Copyright?

What Is Copywriting? It’s becoming comical, but many times when I tell people I’m a copywriter, they start conjuring images of angry consumers and artists battling it out for content ownership. They remember the Napster-Metallica fight in the 90s, and the more recent conflict in which movie studios put the illegal downloading and file sharing […]

 
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