Writing a great newsletter is an important part of partnering with your donors.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to actually accomplish your number 1 goal when sending a newsletter (see here)… getting it READ! Although there is no magical formula (surprisingly) there are a number of things you can do to get your newsletter read and even get a response from those you are trying to communicate with about your ministry.

1. Write For Your Readers. Although your life and ministry is extremely fascinating to you (and rightly so), try to ask yourself if what you are reporting is really important to those who pray and invest in your ministry. Although it is tempting to share every detail of your month to those who help make it happen, remember that what supporters want to hear more than anything else is a story of how people are being impacted by your ministry!
2. Keep It Simple (or in this case, Short) S****d. Although this adage is slightly insulting it will serve you well. How short? Think 300 words for emails and 500 words for paper newsletters. In other words, very short. You want people to open your newsletter and decide right then and there that they will take the time to read it because if they decide to “read it later”… well, they most likely won’t. Remember, your goal is to get your newsletter READ.
3. Choose Exceptional Pictures. The first thing a reader looks at when they open a newsletter is the pictures. Make sure your pictures are of good quality, tell an interesting story and leave people wanting to know more. Obviously this can be a tall order, but try… try hard. And enlist the help of others if this isn’t one of your strengths, because you just might know a co-worker or student or someone who loves taking exceptional pictures.

If you can do these 3 things your newsletter will get read more often by more people and that’s the whole reason why you are writing your newsletter in the first place! For most people this will actually be a serious challenge, but I always considered it a (spiritual?) discipline when I was on staff and I was never sorry when I did it right.

I ask staff this question fairly often. What is your #1 goal when you send a ministry newsletter out to your supporters? I’m always surprised at the blank stares I get back in return. When I press them to think about it I usually get something to the effect “to update them on the ministry” and / or possibly “make prayer requests known”.

Both answers are good. But neither answer should be your top priority when it comes to sending out a prayer letter. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

So what should your #1 goal be? Read More

The following comes from a book written by a Navigator staff called Funding Your Ministry. I liked this newsletter example derived from the chapter entitled “How to Write Newsletters People Actually Read.” It also made me a little hungry…

“September 16 at 4 p.m. I accompanied our Wisconsin staff member to campus to visit a friend of his. We met him at the door to his dorm room; he was carrying two cans of Old Milwaukee and a package of bratwurst-Schweigert, I think.

He welcomed us warmly, and we started talking as he poured the 2 beers into an electric frying pan. One of the beers exploded onto his books and clothes. ‘Someone must have shook this one up,’ he said. Then he dumped the Schweigert bratwursts into the beer (on simmer) and kept turning them while we talked.

His roommate soon arrived carrying a can of Del Monte cream-style corn. He scraped it into an electric coffeepot already plugged into the wall. Naturally, the pot was too hot, and soon he was futilely trying to stir the burning corn at the bottom of the pot.

“Nice balanced meal,’ I said. ‘Beats dorm food,’ they replied.

Will you join me in praying for Wisconsin students?”

Below is the age of your recipients. No big surprise as the 26 to 35 age category was over 1/3 of all the people who receive your updates. What was a surprise, was that the 56 or older group was the second largest. However, this may be misleading because it was an open ended age group.

Read More

Now that I have been offering this service for a few months, I have started to notice “sending” trends. For instance, many of your emails revolve around specific events, including conferences. Since there is a limit to how many photos can be included in any given email update, one way to share a more extensive photo album is to set one up online. If you have a ministry website set up, post your pictures from Spring Conference and provide the link.

If you don’t have a website, there are good online photo-sharing programs out there such as the popular Flickr. Here are a couple of links for you:

http://www.flickr.com/

http://picasaweb.google.com (not to be confused with the Picasa software program)

You will want to avoid using a site that requires a donor to set up a username and password. Whilst Facebook might seem like a natural place to post pictures (and it is if you spend time there), the chance that Aunt Betsy and a majority of your donor list have pages themselves is unlikely.

Update: May 29, 2009 – The Henri Nouwen foundation asked that we remove the lecture notes taken of Henri Nouwen’s lecture on “The Spirituality of Fundraising” in August of 1992. They now sell a small booklet based on his thoughts on the matter that you can purchase at their website.

http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/fundraising_booklet/

When was the last time you really proofread your newsletter? If you are like many staff you consider “writing it” proofreading it, but that just doesn’t cut it, here’s why:

During my college years in the school of business at the University of Montana (go griz!), I took a communications class from a Mrs. Mary Ellen Campbell. We went over a lot of things – building a resume, giving presentations that don’t put people to sleep, etc, etc. One of the most valuable lessons I learned from her had to do with accurate proofreading and the reason I remember it so well is because she gave an absolutely embarrassing example from her own career. She was sponsoring a public lecture to be given at the business school and had to sign off on the invitation that was sent out. She quickly gave her OK and hundreds of those little invites were sent out only to find out a couple of days later that the word “public” was missing the letter “l”. I’ll let that sink in for a second…

Now, mistakes happen, right? We are people of grace and understand that. Having said that, it is VERY important that you proofread all correspondence sent out to your donors.

1) It will communicate to them that what they are receiving was important enough to proofread, hence important enough for them to read.

2) The meaning of the text won’t be misunderstood because of typhos.

3) Most likely, your text will be more concise as proofreading allows you to see redundant phrases, run-on sentences, etc.

Before you send staff monkey that great NSO update, remember to give it one last hard look!!