Donor and fundraising letters
Lapsed donor letter examples
People stop giving for reasons that are almost never about the charity: a job change, a divorce, a card that expired, a quiet decision to give elsewhere. A lapsed donor letter that implies they let somebody down will not be answered. One that assumes life happened, and makes returning easy, sometimes is.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
The straightforward return invitation
[FIRST NAME],
You last gave to [ORGANISATION] in [YEAR]. People stop for all sorts of reasons and most of them have nothing to do with us, so this is not a letter about why.
Since then we have [CONCRETE CHANGE]. If you would like to be part of it again, the form is enclosed. If not, that is genuinely fine and we will not write again this year.
[NAME], [ROLE]
Where the lapse was probably administrative
Expired cards and changed banks account for a surprising share of lapsed regular givers, and the letter that names it recovers more than any appeal.
[FIRST NAME],
Your monthly gift to [ORGANISATION] stopped in [MONTH YEAR]. Most of the time that is a card that expired rather than a decision anybody made.
If that is what happened, the enclosed form takes two minutes. If it was a decision, no need to do anything and thank you for the years you did give.
[NAME], [ROLE]
To a long-lapsed donor with a shared history
[FIRST NAME],
You gave to [ORGANISATION] for [NUMBER] years, through [PERIOD], which was the period that nearly finished us.
I am not writing to ask for anything. I am writing because the people who were there then should know how it turned out, and the enclosed page is that.
[NAME], [ROLE]
Getting it right
- What to mention. When they last gave, stated without reproach. What has happened since. A single, low-friction way back.
- What to leave out. Guilt in any form, including the soft kind. "We noticed you have not given recently" is an accusation with a polite face. Also avoid implying the work stopped without them.
- How long. 70 to 120 words.
- How personal. Generous. The letter should be easy to put down without feeling bad, which is counter-intuitively what makes it answerable.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [ORGANISATION], [YEAR], [MONTH YEAR], [NUMBER].
The last-gift date has to be right. Writing to a donor who gave three months ago to say they lapsed in 2023 tells them their giving is not being tracked, which is the one impression a charity cannot afford.
Before any run, read the piece with the longest value in your data, the shortest, and the empty one. If all three read as English the merge is sound. Personalising direct mail at scale covers the rest.
Sending these at volume
Lapsed files are large and low-yield per letter, which is exactly why the envelope has to be worth opening. A reactivation mailing that looks like the appeal they stopped reading will perform like it.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint, personalises every piece from your list, written into the sentence rather than dropped into a gap, hand-addresses the envelopes, inserts, collates and seals and lodges the run with Australia Post, or sends it back to you to release in waves.
Working a lapsed file this year? How reactivation runs work
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Writing more of these than you have evenings
Tell us roughly how many and what they say. We will come back with an exact price and a production window.