The NAPRP Blog

Sep 25

Written by: NAPRP Admin
9/25/2009 3:47 AM

This week, I had a few emails from people who were confused about the date of the teleseminar with Jessica Stout about how to use social media to promote your organization. It is on Tuesday, September 29th at 1 pm (Pacific time) and we'll send the call-in information to you on Monday, so it will be right at the top of your email in box. If you aren’t already a free Helping Paw Member or a Golden Paw Insider (even more benefits!), you can sign up here.

I've been thinking a lot about marketing, PR, and fundraising lately, and one thing that seems to come up repeatedly is the need to be interesting. Many of us tend to worry about "what other people think" so we hold back our creativity.

Everyone is creative, and it's when we stifle that creativity that we become boring. (12 or 16 years of school can also nuke a lot of creativity, but that's another story.)

To be interesting, you must be bold. Whether you are working on a fundraising event, advertisement, or even a lowly article, you have to get people's attention first.

For example, here are two sample opening sentences for a fundraising letter:

"Here at Rescue XYZ, we often find that it's difficult to find enough money to feed our dogs. We hope that you will consider making a donation."

versus:

"Two days ago, a small brindle dog named Frank was hiding next to a dumpster in an alley off Main Street. It was raining and Frank was shivering and trying to figure out how to crawl underneath the dumpster for shelter. A man named Milo working at the pizza restaurant went outside to dump the garbage and noticed Frank curled up in the dank corner of the alley. Milo called us and we brought Frank to Rescue XYZ. Dogs like Frank come in every day and they desperately need food. We just don't have enough. Can you help?"

Although the second opening isn't exactly great literature, it is far more interesting than the first option, which is a generic vanilla letter. Rescue XYZ could be any rescue. But when you tell Frank's story, you've created an image in the reader's mind. It's specific and vivid, so it's more interesting.

When you find yourself writing boring prose, see what you can do to liven it up. Maybe you need to tell a story. Or maybe you just need to remove wishy-washy qualifier words like "maybe" and "there is." When you start writing in simple, powerful sentences, your writing sounds less like a boring college paper, and actually persuades someone to do something. After all, your goal is to move people to take action.

As always, thank you for all you do to help the animals ;-)

 

 

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