ABSTRACT
A fundraising letter is an unsolicited business letter sent to potential donors on a mailing list. Nonprofit organizations use fundraising letters to raise money, identify new donors, increase visibility, boost public relations, identify potential volunteers and publicize new programs. Like traditional sales letters and direct mail, fundraising letters require a highly targeted mailing list. Organizations can use their own in-house databases of donor and potential donor information. Fundraising e-blasts are becoming more common, but experts say that the most successful fundraising emails remain individual messages sent from current donors to their friends. A successful fundraising message delivers a personal, emotional, benefit-driven message directly to individual recipients. Like sales letters, fundraising letters often highlight key passages with design elements such as boldface type, different-colored type, underlining, capital letters, subheadlines—and even handwritten sticky notes, prepared and attached to the letter by a machine.
