The best fundraising email I've ever received
Yesterday I received the best fundraising ‘ask’ I have ever received. (The full letter is at the end of this article). In this article I tell you how to use their approach for your work.
It came from Future Crunch who, to me, were just some well-informed dudes writing a fortnightly summary of proactive, positive, newsworthy initiatives happening around the globe (that are barely being reported). Part of the ‘reasons to be hopeful’ movement.
Why I think this ask letter is superb:
1. They drew me in with a sucker-punch question: is spreading positive news just giving us all an excuse for apathy as the world burns around our ears?!
2. They gave a compelling answer: good news, about initiatives that achieve positive change, gives people enough hope to take action themselves.
3. They showed me the part they play in this answer, saying: we are a community coming together to take tangible, positive action. You trust us to search out and tell you about some other positive actions people are taking across the world.
4. And they invited me in: we, the readers, can become members, coming together as a force for change, supporting excellent initiatives.
Applying it to your cause: here is what I think all fundraisers can learn from it, and how you might use some of this brilliant approach to speak to your supporters.
What Future Crunch did:
Value and trust: they used the fact that I value and trust what they do - and that I think they produce a quality product - as their jumping-off point.
1. Know your value. Who are the stakeholders who value what you do and trust you? Would they want to play a bigger part in the change you’re trying to make in the world?
What Future Crunch did:
Faced a critical question and answered it: they tackled head-on the reservations that people have about their work and reframed the objection. They (gently) held up a mirror to me, explaining that if I misunderstood their mission, I was part of what’s wrong in the world! I did not like that image of myself.
2. Suggesting and solving a problem: can you show your supporters the danger of not addressing the problem with you? Can you show them that by joining you, they can become a change-maker, part of making the world what they want it to be?
What Future Crunch did:
Fostered an opportunity to join a community: everyone wants a community of like-minded individuals. A community with a shared purpose is even better!
3. Offer the hand of friendship – and impact. Build places and ways for your supporters to have a collective impact, and to feel the bigger difference they are making.
Conclusion:
Awaken your community of supporters to feel more hopeful about changing the things they worry about, by coming together to support your work.
And here’s the full letter:
Earlier this year, we linked to an article by an English professor who admitted that there’s nothing more depressing than positive news. The world, she argued, is quite obviously an awful place (just look around) and the ecosystem of blogs, newsletters, articles and podcasts that have sprung up to convince you otherwise are masking the problem. They’re either too lightweight, or motivated by political or religious ideologies.
What yokes the ‘intelligent optimists’ together with your kooky aunt who posts relentlessly about surprising animal friendships on Facebook is the idea of what we are supposed to do with the information they provide: precisely nothing. According to this professor, “the throughline of positive news and re-branded conservative intellectualism is the reassurance that action is not necessary.”
Look. We get it. We watched and read and debated and worried about many of the same things you did this year. Kids in cages? Detention camps for an entire culture? How the hell is this kind of stuff still going in the year 2019? Emissions going up again, seriously? What is it going to take to turn the tide?
That said, we hope you don’t ever get to the end of one of our newsletters and feel complacent. This has never been about the warm glow, or creating a false sense of hope. We understand as well as anyone that the challenges facing the human family right now are big and scary and there’s no guarantee we will overcome them.
As you’ll see in this year’s list of 99 stories though, millions of people have demonstrated in the past 12 months that action is possible, that better solutions are available and that a better future can be built. That’s the whole point of Future Crunch, to play our part in telling the story of change, and inspire people to leave the world a better place than when they came into it.
Together, this community of readers made a tiny dent in the universe this year, giving away $42,000 to people who made real change happen. People who decided that it wasn’t enough to just post stories about falling unemployment or improving maternal health or exponential decreases in the price of solar, and took matters into their own hands.
We want to thank all of you for joining us in that journey, and in particular our Patreon subscribers, who made the donations possible. You all know who you are.