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 the recipient.

But here’s the good news:

You don’t want “anyone” to read your stuff. As a nonprofit with a mission, you want people who are moved by the impact your nonprofit has on the world, and want to help you succeed.

There’s only way to attract and keep those people: Learn to write headlines.

One of the most famous copywriters of all time, David Ogilvy, had this to say about headlines:

Ogilvy wrote some of the most profitable ads and famous headlines for businesses during the 40s, 50s, and 60s. But what he said then is still 100% true today. Every social media post, every click-bait ad, every magazine and newspaper ad, every direct mail fundraising letter – they’re all using headlines to get our attention and compel us to look deeper.

Even the smallest nonprofit must write headlines for all their web pages, any brochures they create, emails they send out – any donor communication at all – it all needs a headline. (Though, email subject lines are a slightly different animal. See 7 proven subject line types here).

Guide for Writing Headlines for Nonprofits

Walk through the next six steps to help your nonprofit’s letters, emails, blogs, and other content get seen, read, and acted on by more readers.

Step 1: Find the Question Your Content Answers

A headline is like the ‘question,’ and the text below it is the ‘answer.’ Make the question so compelling, and more people will read on to discover the answer. Please don’t misread that. Headlines don’t have to be actual questions. But they function like an unanswered question. For example here’s a famous Ogilvy headline:

It’s not a question, but it begs to be answered. How do you tour the USA for such a small weekly sum (even small at that time)?

Headlines for nonprofits must do the same thing. Here are a few made-up ones to show you how this can look:

Do you see the ‘questions’ behind each of these?

How can I feed 250 people? Why at Thanksgiving?

What did the teen do? Why does he have a new job?

Which fish? Why is it tragic?

I want to know the answers. So I’ll keep reading to find out.

Step 2: Choose a Type of Headline

The goal of every headline is essentially the same: Get them to keep reading.

But you have many different types of headlines to choose from, and sometimes one format will be more appropriate than others.

For example, a common headline type these days is the ‘list post’ style of headline. The fish example above is a list post. It promises information about seven different kinds of fish, presumably that face some kind of environmental threat.

While not common, even list style of headline can be used to open a fundraising letter. The fish one immediately creates a feeling of wanting to help prevent whatever the tragedy is. But in general, you see these kinds of headlines more often when the goal is to get clicks online, or get people to download a free report, like this made-up headline:

‘10 Investor Secrets the IRS Doesn’t Want You to Know About’

A few other headline types include:

• Donor dependent headlines: There’s Only One Way Our Museum Won’t Close Forever
• How-to headlines: The one at the top of this page; How You Can Rescue 7 Girls From Human Trafficking
• Promise-focused headlines: Give More Kids In Myanmar the Chance to Attend School (these kind usually lead with the verb of what the reader can do)

Many more exist, and there isn’t room for all of them. But choose a headline type (yes, you can try out more than one), and then move to step 3.

Step 3: Find Your Active Verbs

No passive language in headlines. Look at the difference here (these headlines are again made up to focus on the point):

Read them again. What do you feel when reading each one?

For me, Headline A makes me think more than feel, because it’s simply conveying information. I think, “This is sad.” But I feel little. This is why academic approaches to fundraising fail.

Nonprofits need to do more than just supply information. You’re not sharing a bunch of facts. Statistics don’t motivate people to give away their money. Emotion does. (See 15 reasons why people give to charity)

Headline A asks nothing of the reader. It just tells me something that, while a sad situation, isn’t really my problem

Headline B produces a completely different feeling. Now, I’m asked to “meet” homeless families. That one verb focuses me on a specific action – I get to meet them. Now, I feel like Keanu Reeves: “Whoa.” It has my attention. If I keep reading, I’m looking forward to reading about real people, and what it’s like for them to not have enough food.

Headline A is passive. You want to avoid words like ‘are,’ ‘is,’ ‘am,’ and ‘was’ in headlines for your nonprofit.

Headline B is active. It tells me what to do and what to expect. It implies that I can do something to help if I want to. It promises a story that will make me feel emotion.

Headline A is academic. Headline B is relational.

In fundraising, relationship always beats academia. Every single time.

Step 4: Use Simple Language

Here’s a great quote from Ogilvy (keep in mind the era when he wrote this and who this particular product was likely advertised to):

Is it any different today?

Your headline is not the place for SAT words that only 10% of the population knows. It’s also not the place to be clever, use wordplay and puns, or try to be funny. If your reader has to think – at all – just to understand your headline, you’ve failed.

Why? Because of Step 5.

Step 5: Speak to Your Target Audience

Equality Now is a nonprofit that regularly excels at this. They know their target audience. Look below and see how they help their audience immediately connect with their headline and mission.

Here’s a sampling of their headlines and email subjects:

Notice the words they use:

Law. Misogyny. Daughter. Wedding dress. Sexual assault. Death sentence.

What does Equality Now do? They fight for justice for women and girls around the world. You can see their mission just from those few words. Furthermore, it’s usually a terrible idea to use acronyms in headlines (or almost anywhere in your copy). But Equality Now can get away with using FGM in theirs, because their audience knows what that stands for.

The more mission-specific language you use in your headlines that your audience understands, the more likely they are to engage with it.

They use several other effective strategies:

• Vary the topics – if you’re sending out regular communication (which you should be), don’t say the same thing every time
• Use names – they tracked the story of Noura for months, so anyone who’s been following that story will certainly read this.
• Arouse mountains of curiosity – almost every headline uses the question-answer approach discussed earlier
• Continuously calls for specific actions

Equality Now uses words that will trigger the emotions of their audience, and action messages that will appeal to them. Your nonprofit can do the same.

Step 6: Get Specific

Here’s the final step for today: Be specific in what you’re saying. You saw some great examples of this in Equality Now’s headlines. In the next to last one, they could have said:

“Protect students against sexual assault.”

But they got specific. “On campus. In the U.S.”

Why do that? Because the more specific your language, the more of a difference the reader believes they can make. The more real the problem seems. The more they can relate to it.

The statement above is very general. Of course we all want to protect students from sexual assault. Duh, who doesn’t? And I bet there are a lot of great government programs and charities doing it. Now what’s for dinner?

But when you add in campus and the U.S., this becomes targeted enough that it feels like a problem I can actually solve. Donors want to solve problems. Specificity helps them believe they can.

Also, make your verbs specific too. Which sentence below arouses more emotion for you?

Now, both are decent headlines if you’re starting a P2P campaign or a social media blitz. But the word ‘expose’ contains far more emotion than ‘show.’

Earlier, I said use simple language, and ‘show’ is simpler. So there’s a balance to be found here. But emotion trumps simplicity, so if in doubt, choose the word that contains more emotion.

6 Steps to Writing Headlines for Nonprofits

Here’s a recap of the six steps for writing headlines for your nonprofit’s outreach communications.

1. Find the Question Your Content Answers
2. Choose a Type of Headline
3. Find Your Active Verbs
4. Use Simple Language
5. Speak to Your Target Audience
6. Get Specific

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