Donor and fundraising letters
Major donor thank-you notes
A major gift should never be acknowledged by the same system that acknowledges a twenty dollar one. The letter needs to come from a named person with actual authority, it needs to say something only that person could say, and it should arrive within days rather than within the normal cycle.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
From the chief executive, after a conversation
[FIRST NAME],
Thank you. I have been turning over our conversation at [PLACE] since, particularly what you said about [POINT THEY MADE].
Your gift means we can commit to [SPECIFIC DECISION] rather than reviewing it again in twelve months. That is the practical difference, and it is a larger one than the figure suggests.
I would like to show you it working. No agenda beyond that. My direct line is [NUMBER].
[NAME], [ROLE]
For a multi-year commitment
[FIRST NAME],
A gift across [NUMBER] years is a different thing from a gift this year, because it lets us hire rather than contract and plan rather than react.
I will write to you each [MONTH] with what has changed, including the parts that did not work. You are entitled to the unvarnished version and you will get it.
[NAME], [ROLE]
Where the donor has asked to stay anonymous
[FIRST NAME],
Thank you, and understood about the anonymity.
Nobody outside [NUMBER] people here will know where it came from. What it allows us to do will be very visible, and I will make sure you see that even though no one else will know why.
[NAME], [ROLE]
Getting it right
- What to mention. Something specific about the conversation that led to the gift. What changes because of it, in terms of a decision rather than a budget line. A direct line to the signatory.
- What to leave out. Anything that reads as a template with a bigger number in it. Immediate talk of the next gift. Naming them publicly without asking, which is a surprisingly common and serious error.
- How long. 80 to 150 words, handwritten, signed by the chief executive or the board chair.
- How personal. Peer to peer. A major donor is usually used to being deferred to and finds it tiring.
- When not to send one. Never skip it, but do not send it instead of a phone call. The call comes first, within forty-eight hours; the letter follows and is the thing they keep.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [POINT THEY MADE], [SPECIFIC DECISION], [NUMBER].
Major donor letters should barely be merged at all. The fields here exist to prompt the writer, not to automate the letter. If you have more than about forty major donors, segment them and write each segment properly rather than merging across all of them.
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
Major donor letters are individually written by design, so the production question is smaller: usually it is the envelope, where a hand-addressed one from the chief executive is opened and a window-faced one is not.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint and hand-addresses the envelopes.
Only the envelopes to solve? Hand-addressed envelopes
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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.