But measuring and testing your work will give you an insight into your audience and what works for them that no training resource can provide.

Put very simply, testing involves producing slightly different versions of your marketing material – say a fundraising letter with different headlines – and sending the different versions out to your mailing list. You then see which of the versions is most effective at achieving your aim (in this case to raise money).

You then learn from that ‘winning’ letter, and try to improve upon it next time.

Effective marketing is all about what works for your audiences. Testing allows you to find out from your audiences what works for them without them even knowing that your asking.

Here are some top tips for effectively testing you writing and marketing.

Get over the hump
Getting into the habit of testing can be a struggle at first. You’ve just worked hard to produce a great leaflet or web page, and now you have to produce one or more different versions as well. It may seem like more work at first, but testing will show you what is working and what isn’t for your audiences. That means when you come to write next time, you’ll already know how to get your message across more effectively. Very soon, you’ll find testing becomes a natural part of what you do.

Make sure you measure
Build into your materials a way to record which of the versions is most effective at generating the desired outcome. The return form with your fundraising letter should have a code that tells you to which of the versions they are responding. If your readers have to visit a web page, have a slightly different web address for them to visit for each version. Then measure web hits. If you don’t know (and monitor) which of the versions your audience is responding to, you won’t know which works best.

Test different methods
Effective marketing should use lots of different ways to attract people to your action: for example a leaflet, Facebook, Twitter, an advert in the paper and a seminar. Record which of the methods has the biggest impact, and which works poorly for your audience. Then do more of the effective ones and ditch the poor performing methods.

Test within methods
Once you’ve identified your two or three ‘golden’ methods, test within those methods too. Try different styles of Twitter posts for the same action, or different versions of your web page. Gradually you’ll build a picture of the approach that is most effective at getting your audience to do what you want them to do.

A/B test your email newsletter
Your charity’s email newsletter is a great way to get started in testing, because it’s very easy to do and the results are very rapid. For your next email newsletter, change only the email subject line, leaving the newsletter content exactly the same.

Version A: Super Charity Newsletter March edition

Version B: Latest news from The Super Charity

Send half of your database version A, and the other half version B. Most email programmes will tell you open rates for your emails. After 24 hours, you can find out whether the A or B newsletter was opened most. You’ve just learned what works best for your audience, so use that style from now on. Or even better, test a new subject line style against the best performer.

Test one thing at a time
When testing within marketing methods, it’s vital to change only one thing at a time. Say the headline of a leaflet, with the rest of the leaflet exactly the same. If you change too many things at once, you won’t know which of your tweaks worked best.

Take a gradual improvement approach
Effective testing takes time, so you should regard it as an ongoing process rather than a quick win. On your leaflet, you should test headlines until you stop seeing an improvement. Then keep the headline the same and change something else – the call to action, the picture, the font. Keep testing that until you’ve reached it’s optimum effectiveness, and move onto something else. Over time, you’ll start to produce the ‘perfect’ leaflet because your audience will have told you what works best for each of the elements.

Don’t stop testing
Even when you think you’ve found the perfect fundraising letter or leaflet, you should always try to improve on it. Your best performing material becomes your ‘control’ and you should continually challenge yourself to better the control by trying new things.

Use online tools
The web makes testing quicker and simpler, but you still need a methodical approach. Here are a few useful tools to help you along:

Optimizely – Allows you to create two different versions of a page and automatically forward web visitors to one or other versions at random, and allows you to track which page is most effective. Easy and intuitive to use, and an excellent place to start testing.

Google Website Optimiser – Google will allow you to enter in different versions of each of the elements of your web page – the headline, picture, body copy, call to action, buttons, links – and will automatically ‘jumble’ them for each new visitor to your page. Each visitor essentially sees a different version of your page, build from the many different combinations of your elements. Over time, Google will select the most effective elements to build your ‘golden’ web page. Incredible and addictive stuff, but only works if you have high traffic levels.

Google Adwords – Google’s advertising programme (down the right hand side of web searches) allows you to create very short test adverts. You can produce as many different versions of the advert as you like, and Google will automatically test them against each other, telling you which approach is the most effective. It’s a great tool for testing headlines and calls to action, but it does cost money.

Learn and roll out
Online tools offer you a quick and relatively cheap way to test what is working for your audiences. But you should roll out the results into your offline marketing too. As a general rule, a headline that you’ve tested as effective online will probably be effective offline too. In time, every result you get from any testing should be applied across your materials to create marketing that meets your audiences needs perfectly, and works every time.

How do you test your marketing materials? What tools do you use? Please share them below.

Are you producing your charity newsletter, magazine, website and brochures because that’s what charities do?

It’s surprising but true that many organisations spend huge resources and time creating media, marketing materials and publications without asking before they begin:

What is this supposed to do? What do we want this newsletter to achieve? What do we want people to do when they’ve read it? Donate money? Take an action? Be more engaged? Tell a friend?

Ask yourself: what will success for this publication, web page or marketing piece look like?

If you’re clear what your publication is supposed to be doing, you will naturally be more focussed about what you include, how you write, the language you use and the actions you ask people to take.

Without a clear aim, your publication risks becoming a free-for-all, where anything goes as long as you or your colleagues think it is interesting.

And if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, you will have no way of measuring the success of your publication. That means you can’t improve it, make it more effective or measure its success against other ways of reaching out to your supporters.

What other part of your organisation would get away with not having to prove what you do works?

The more precise you are with your aims, the better your publications will be.

‘Raising awareness’ is often cited as an aim for charity publications, but challenge yourself to understand what that means.

What’s the point of someone being aware of your organisation, if they don’t do something about it?

So, are you raising awareness so that people donate, take an action, vote in a particular way, change their behaviour, or something else?

These aims might seem implicit, but the more explicitly you state them the more targeted and effective your materials will be.

Charities can use the world’s biggest search engine to give you amazing free information about your audiences, search habits, what to write and how to phrase things.

The Google keywords tool is aimed at advertisers who want to find better ways to target their audiences with the little adverts that appear down the right hand side of search results.

The tool will tell you how many times a certain word or phrase – collectively called a keyword by Google – is searched for in Google globally, as well as in the UK.

The tool also tells you what other keywords like the keyword you’re interested in are searched for, and their search rankings too.

Used intelligently, this amazing gizmo can give you enormous insight into your audiences, what information they want, how they speak and write and how to meet their needs.

Watch my five minute online video first to learn how to use the tool, then read my eight ways charities can use the Google keywords tool to improve their writing, marketing and media.

Pinpoint your audiences
Start with whatever your organisation does, say ‘Meals on Wheels’. The keyword tool will tell you what other things people type in when they’re looking for things like meals on wheels. Perhaps ‘meal delivery’, or ‘reliable meals on wheels’ or ‘cheap meals on wheels’. You’ll start to build a picture of your target audiences, their concerns, needs and wants. The better you know your audiences, the more effective your writing for them will be.

Speak your audiences’ language
More than anywhere else, people type into the Google search box the way they speak. Use the keywords tool to tell you the actual language, words and phrases people use when talking about your subject. Then repeat that language back to them in your webpages, marketing and materials.

Make your web pages Google friendly
Fill your web pages not only with the most popular keyword on your topic (though don’t go overboard), but also with some of the other popular words and phrases. That way, your page will be presented as a result for a broader range of relevant searchers.

Headlines and domain names
Google loves headlines and standfirsts (basically the second headline), and adores your keyword appearing in your domain name (www.cheapmealsonwheels.co.uk). Use the keyword tool to tell you what to call your website or mini-site in the first place, as well as what to write in headlines and standfirsts, to ensure a high ranking in Google search results.

Take it offline
If a keyword or phrase is popular in online search, you can be pretty sure it’ll resonate with your audiences offline too. Use the tool to inform how you write your posters, brochures, emails, leaflets, even your annual report.

Test your current web pages
Put your web page address into the keyword tool, and it will generate a list of other phrases that people search for when they’re looking for the kind of content you have on your page. A perfect list of words and subjects to add to that page, and to your site in general, to make it more search engine friendly.

Create a list of content
Spend a good hour or two following a trail of keywords most relevant to your organisation. ‘Meals on wheels’ might lead to ‘older people’s care’, might lead to ‘winter falls’, might lead to ‘hip replacement’. As long as the phrases still relate to what you do, you have a ready made list of subjects for blogs, web articles, Tweets and Facebook posts that will attract your target audiences.

Test slogans
You’ve come up with a great nifty little phrase or even a single word you’re thinking of using as a slogan, campaign title or even the name of your organisation. Putting it into the keywords tool will tell you what other words people associate with it and the kind of things they’re looking for when they use that phrase. It might bring up some unexpected connections you wouldn’t want.

For more great (and FREE) things to do to improve your charity’s marketing, come to the Small Charities Marketing Summit, London & Manchester, May 2012.

Visit this page NOW to read about discounts and offers on the summit.

www.ngomedia.org.uk/marketingsummit

If you’re bored, you can bet your readers are too. Here are some ideas to jolt you out of the habits that could be turning your readers off.

Get out of the office
Get to a project or scheme and see first hand how the organisation works ‘on the ground’. Speak to the people who deliver your charity’s services or campaigns, speak to your supporters but most of all speak to your organisation’s beneficiaries. Be on the look out for new stories, interesting takes on an old subject and sparkling characters who’s tale could bring your copy to life.

Invite a supporter to a project
Then follow them with a notebook, voice recorder and camera. Record their thoughts and observations as they learn how their money or support is being used. Turn it into a written feature, or even a video or audio podcast, for your next supporter communication.

Get behind the scenes
Think of an original angle from which your charity or project can be viewed and carry out some interviews to get that perspective. If you run a care home or hospital, what’s life like in the kitchens? What about the numerous characters and comings and goings the receptionist encounters every day? What’s life like for the ambulance driver? For the relative? For the onsite handyman? For the accounts department?

Organise some new images
If you can, commission a professional photographer to do a tour of your projects and services, giving them a list of the types of shots you’re likely to need. Remember, you’re after a library that will keep you in images for the next year or two. If money is tight, write a general appeal to your projects and services for good, new imagery – even offering some tips on how to take great usable shots for your materials. Finally, scour some of the photo banks for stock imagery that you might be able to use.

Write a journey
Help your reader to see the complexities of your subject by giving them a beginning, middle and end. What happens when a service user or beneficiary first comes into contact with your organisation? How did they get there? What happens to them? And then what? Create a picture of every step of their journey, right through to the outcome or conclusion.

Play swaps
Find someone in your role in another similar sized charity working on a completely different subject. Offer to write a feature for their magazine or supporter communication in exchange for them doing the same for yours. The new voice will be refreshing for your regular readers, while the experience will offer you a new perspective on and new ideas for your own subject matter.

Write a Charity 101
What are the key facts or themes in your subject you just take for granted, but which you just assume your reader already knows? Write an introductory piece outlining in simple language the must-know information about your subject.

The truth is that while some of these new tools do, over time, prove to be effective (and for some charities invaluable), most new shiny tools fizzle away as quickly as they arrive.

With limited time, budget and resources, the challenge for charity communicators is to keep a clear head and not go chasing after every next big thing.

Desperate not to be left behind, we risk communications drift: shaping the way we communicate, and what we communicate, to match the new tools and channels available, rather than saying what we need to say in the way we already know works for our supporters.

Here are a few pointers to help you keep focussed:

Create a communications plan
Start the year, or a campaign, with a clear idea of what communications channels (email, Twitter, direct mail, text message) you’re going to use and when, and stick to it. Stay in control of how you communicate. Don’t be thrown off course just because a new tool emerges and is making waves. If you’re really worried about getting left behind, build space into your plan to test two (and only two) new tools during the year.

Be firm with champions
We’ve all experienced it. The chief executive’s teenage son is into some flashy new online gadget, so suddenly the CEO thinks your charity MUST use it as soon as possible, and almost orders you to get on board. Publishing your communications plan in good time should mitigate this, but you should also be firm: agree to test the tool on a small scale, before advocating its use across the charity.

Be led by testing and results
Find a way to test every new marketing channel or communications tool, before getting started. You need to know if the increase in web hits, sales, phone calls, service take-up or media interest is due to the new tool, or something else. Take a cold, hard look at the statistics, before deciding which communications tools to get behind.

Consider your audience
It’s all very well adopting a new online gizmo, but if your core or target audience isn’t using it, then it won’t work for you. Your communications should be led by how your audience gets information, not by what shiny new tool you’d like to have a play with.

Do you have to be the early adopter?
Sometimes it’s best to take a back seat and let other organisations do the discovery work. Why not sit back for six months and let the most powerful tools emerge in the sector, before you get on board. By the time you get involved, many of the mistakes will have been made and best practice will be starting to emerge.

One is not enough
However good, one communications tool is never enough. The most effective communications strategies use a variety of tools and methods for communication with supporters. You need a mix to be really effective. When you take on a new communications tool, beware simply throwing out old tools just because they’re old. If they still work, keep them in the mix.

Don’t bury your head in the sand
I’m not advocating ignoring new tools completely. If some tool is emerging in the sector as effective for communicating with certain audiences, just like Twitter has, then of course you should invest time and money in making it work for you. Just beware of chasing the exciting and new at the expense of what you already know works.

Remember the writing
Whether for the tools themselves, or for landing pages that online tools often point to, or even for video scripts, you still need to get really good at writing.  Research and get trained on effective writing and marketing skills, and make them the core of your communications campaigns. Focus on your audience, their needs and the outcomes you need to achieve. Then create compelling copy that says what you need to say to get your audience to do what you want them to do.

Announcing…

The Small Charities Marketing Summit
London & Manchester, 2012

Find out more about our information-packed, fast-paced training conference offering dozens of effective marketing techniques for charities with little or no money to spend.
www.ngomedia.org.uk/marketingsummit

It’s not about you!

That’s right. No matter how much you care about your issue, how clever you think your writing is, or how much you want others to care, your writing will not work if it does not connect directly with your audience: their needs, their motivations, their interests.

The most important person in every piece of charity communications is not the communicator or the writer, it is the person you are trying to connect with.

That means writing for the right audiences, at the right time, in the right way, and using the right language.

Whether trying to raise funds, change minds or influence behaviour, to be effective you have to stop writing about you, your organisation and what you’re doing, and focus every single word you write on your target audience.

Decide who your audiences ARE…

How many times have I heard: ‘we want to reach everyone/the general public/the world’. That’s nice, but simply can’t be effective. Try to talk to everyone at once, and you’ll talk to no-one at all.

To really work, your writing must be as targeted as possible. Give some thought to who your key audiences are, and write specifically for them every time. Your key audiences are those who are most likely to do what you want them to do (donate, volunteer, Like you on Facebook), or those you most need to change their behaviour (MPs, smokers, voters).

Build a profile

Go to a catalogue, or use the Google Images tool, to find a picture of someone as close as possible to your target audience and stick it in the middle of a sheet of paper. They should be the same age, gender, social background and life situation as the audience you’re trying to reach. Now give them a name, an occupation, hobbies, children (or not), interests, hopes and desires.

Stick your audience member above your desk and every time you write, write for that one person alone. Imagine you are writing them a letter or speaking to them. Forget that you’re writing for a number of people, and concentrate on addressing your new found friend directly. It may feel silly to start with, but your writing will be much better targeted as a result.

Research their reading

Once you’ve identified your target audience, consider what other publications, websites and media they use. What newspapers do they tend to read? What books, novels, subject matter are they likely to have by their bedside?

Try to adopt the same kind of language and tone as the publications they’re used to reading. If they read tabloids, your own copy should be short, punchy, a little sensational. If they read long non-fiction history books, consider writing in a slower, gentler but more incisive way.

The aim is to make the audience comfortable with what they’re reading. If they have to work to understand what you’re getting at, they’re less likely to read on.

Use their language and tone

Think about where your target audience is most likely to discuss the issue you’re writing about, with whom, and the language they might use. Is your subject matter the kind that partners might discuss over a family tea? Something blokes might joke about leaning up against a pub bar? A subject business people might sit around a long oak table to discuss?

In your copy, try to create the same atmosphere with the language and tone you use. Consider what actual words might be used (and what words avoided), the length of sentences and words, long paragraphs for more formal conversation – short ones for jokey, matey chat.

Keep a check on that jargon

We all have a laugh about over the top business and charity jargon, but did you know you and your team probably use your own jargon everyday and don’t even realise it?

In the charity sector, it’s very easy to fall into language that means something to us in our teams or organisation, but in the real world just doesn’t resonate with our target audiences.

Because we’re so used to it, we often fail to spot our own jargon creeping into our copy or we assume our audiences know what we mean, when they don’t.

There’s only one solution. Have your copy read and scribbled upon by someone (a partner, a friend, a shopkeeper) who knows nothing about your organisation or your subject matter. Ask them to highlight anything they didn’t easily and readily understand the first time they read it, or which made them stop reading even for a second.

My Golden Rule

It’s simply put and is so powerful it should be printed in gold leaf, framed and hung above your desk:

“Write about what your audience wants or needs to know, not what you want to say.”

If you haven’t done it already, the wind-down (or is it up?) to Christmas offers an ideal time to start planning your charity’s editorial for next year.

Forward planning will prevent last minute rushes to get copy out, and should reduce the ‘what are we going to include?’ panic a few days before your newsletter is due to go to press.

Planning will also ensure you cover all your critical messages over the course of the year, and build towards key supporter asks in the right places.

Any plan is better than none. Why not get started right now by putting down a list of the key dates, subjects and ways you will communicate with your supporters during 2012?

Here are 12 top tips:

1. Invite your team and any other interested parties into a room together to throw around ideas for editorial subjects next year. Bribe them with coffee and cake and assure them all ideas, however crazy, are welcome. If you end up with a large group, split into smaller ‘teams’ that will report back to avoid one or two voices dominating the discussion. Get all thoughts down on paper, and use them to inform (though not dictate) your editorial plan.
2. Another good source of ideas is your web statistics. What pages are most popular on your website? What stories in your newsletter got the most response? What kinds of subjects generate the most interest, clicks or donations? Give your readers more of what they already like, and you’ll build stronger relationships with them.
3. Give some thought to the key issues you will need to cover over the year. What campaigns, initiatives or projects will you be launching during 2012? What reports or research will be published? How far in advance (their ‘lead time’) will you need to start writing about them?
4. Research holidays and anniversaries you might want to mark over the year, but also gather together your own holiday dates and those of the team you work with. Consider half-terms, bank holidays and other dates your supporters and target audiences might be less engaged with your materials.
5. Consider using an Excel spreadsheet to plan your editorial, with your dates (weeks or months) down the left hand side, and your media (newsletter, blog, website, social media) across the top. You can use different colours to indicate who is responsible for each subject. Excel allows you to add in rows and columns really easily, creating a flexible plan that can grow and change as the year goes by.
6. Plan the first three months of 2012 in more detail, with only an outline plan for the rest of the year. Make one of the last actions for March to plan the next three months in detail.
7. Work out how long it usually takes to put critical communications together like your newsletter or annual report, then build plenty of time into your plan so you start work on them in plenty of time.
8. Build in flexibility to allow for printer delays, changes in focus, emergencies and other unforeseen events.
9. Circulate your plan, so people in your organisation know what’s coming up. If they see something relevant or have a story that matches your theme for the month, they can send it on to you.
10. Think about how you will build momentum in your messages and campaigns. Small mentions of a summer campaign early in the year allow you to build interest, but also test your messaging. Try to float the more difficult or controversial ideas early, to give you a heads-up for the issues you may need to tackle in more depth when the campaign launches later on.
11. Don’t forget images, video and other media. Carefully plan what extra material you’ll need to go with the writing you’re putting together, leaving enough time to commission photography or search for imagery. Planning ahead will prevent the mad rush to find something suitable or simply using the same old images again and again.
12. Don’t be tempted to veer too far from your plan a few months down the line because a subject you’d planned to write about is difficult or boring. You included it for a reason.

Here are some tips on making your charity writing believable.

Balance the tone
Try to use language that matches the urgency or weight of the story you are telling. You might be tempted to use words like ‘emergency’, ‘desperate’, ‘outrageous’ because you feel so strongly about the subject, but if your reader doesn’t – yet – see the issue in those terms, your writing will come across as overblown. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes, and imagine the language they would use.

Relate it to everyday experience
Whatever you’re writing about, try to relate or compare it to the everyday experiences of your target audience. If your copy only includes information outside of their worldview you’ll struggle to engage. As well as writing about the differences between their lives and, say, parents in the poorest countries of the world, emphasise the similarities too.

“Every morning Favinda must walk two miles to collect the water to make her children’s breakfast of flat bread and rice. With the sun still below the horizon and a sharp chill in the air, the day always starts the same way. A struggle to prize the three boys from their warm and cosy beds.”

Verisimilitude
One of the most powerful ways to write in a believable way is to drop in little throwaway details – the number of the bus your case study travels on to work, the brand of tea he drinks, the day of the week he was diagnosed. Such details won’t spring out from the text, but they have a subconscious effect of making your copy feel more real.

Use real names and places
Where possible use the real and full names of your staff, service users, volunteers and others in your copy, along with place and even street names. We all have names and we all live on streets, so these details will help your reader to engage.

Paint a picture
Avoid the shopping list description of a situation – “this part of Sudan is hot, dusty and barren” – opting instead for painting a picture that engages your reader more deeply.

“In this part of Sudan, the sand gets so hot it’s impossible to walk on barefoot. The locals wear scarves around their faces to avoid swallowing the dust that blows into every nook and piles up in corners. The vegetation that once broke up the flat horizon has dried away into cracked earth and the occasional clump of brittle grey grass.”

Give quotes a light edit
It’s perfectly acceptable to edit quotes from services users to take out the ‘umms’ and ‘aaahs’, but don’t be tempted to take what they say out of their distinctive tone of voice (replacing with your charity’s corporate voice and language). Original phraseology and quirky language can actually help get the message across better than your sanitised version – even if it’s not exactly what your charity would say.

Be honest
Your readers know life can be difficult and complex, and that no one course of action is the perfect solution. Any charity that claims to have the ultimate answer risks putting readers off who think it’s too good to be true. Much better to invite your audience on a journey towards finding the best solutions together, emphasising that with their help you are gradually finding better ways to achieve your goals.

No one likes writing about or talking about money, but for most charities the effective ‘ask’ is the lifeblood of their organisation.

Here are a few tips to help with your fundraising writing.

Start with outcomes
Your donors want to know the impact that their money will have, so always start any writing about money with outcomes and achievements. Psychologists have shown people are much more likely to do what you want them to do if you give them a reason to do it. So never just ask for money without demonstrating – and proving – that their donation is an investment in the impact your organisation has.

Keep it simple
Your organisation may do 50 different things, but when writing about money concentrate on one area only. Too many options and ideas can breed procrastination. If you ask for this money, for this project, by this date, you present the reader with a simple yes or no decision to make right now.

Be honest about core costs
We all know asking for money to pay postage, lighting bills and transport isn’t a great sell. While you shouldn’t try to hide the fact you need to pay for core costs, you can weave them creatively into your fundraising asks.

Write the truth – that these costs are core to making projects successful – rather than an optional add-on you’d rather not talk about:

“Will you give £50 to help support Simon for a week? Your money will go on simple everyday things like milk, soap and electricity. The bus fare for his support worker. The stamps we’ll use to send his housing application forms. Simple things for you, life changing for Simon.”

Turn objections into a reason to support
Before you write, give some thought to the specific objections you might face. Don’t just pluck ideas out of the air; think about your audience, their life situation, their politics, their assumptions.

What reasons could they give for not supporting you? The financial crisis; they don’t trust charities; the Government should be paying for that; one person can’t make a difference; Christmas is coming and I need to buy presents?

For each objection, write a response into your fundraising copy, helping to remove barriers to giving before they’ve even arisen.

“In a multi-media age where suffering across the world has never been brought so close, it’s easy to think one person can’t make a difference. That’s not how Simon sees it. He knows the £50 you give could help him change his life forever.”

Be specific, not general
Adding little details and specific costs for things adds a ring of truth to your fundraising copy.

Not only does adding specifics make your writing more believable, it helps your donors to engage with the outcomes that their money could generate.

Compare:

“Help us to train thousands of young people this Christmas”

With:

“Your donation could pay the £24 fee Simon needs by 23^rd January to register for the mechanics course at his local college.”

Write about partnership
Try to avoid phrases that foster the idea that you are doing something on behalf of your donor, with their money. Your donor wants to feel they are making a difference themselves, not outsourcing a problem for someone else to deal with. Use language of working together, partnership or make a direct link between your supporter and the outcome.

Compare:

“Please give us £20 and we’ll put it to work helping people like Simon”

With:

“Your £20 will help support people like Simon”

Have a plan
It is likely you will ask for money and write about how it is spent a number of times over the year, and there could be more than one of you writing fundraising material.

A simple plan will help prevent you making simple mistakes like having too many ‘emergency’ appeals in a year, asking for money for a project you’d previously said was nearing completion, using the same case study too many times, or having to dash off your Christmas campaign in a frantic rush.

At the beginning of the year, plan what fundraising asks you will make each month, the amounts you will ask for, how you will ask for them and when you will put your fundraising writing together for them. Build in some flexibility, and get everyone who writes fundraising material to agree to the plan.

It’s a numbers game
However you write about money, however you ask for it, and however you say you spend it, someone somewhere isn’t going to be happy. When you communicate with a lot of people lots of times, you’re bound to get negative feedback.

If your fundraising writing generates the support you’re looking for, the fact that you’re offending or annoying a few supporters along the way shouldn’t put you off.

If you try to please all people, all the time, your fundraising writing will not be effective.

Remember your readers
Good writing always starts with the audience. Give some thought to the language about Christmas that will resonate with your core readership. Is Christmas about tradition and religion for them? About young kids or being with grandparents? Is Christmas all about drinking and eating? TV, family walks or carol singing? Perhaps all of the above, perhaps none. The closer you write to your readers’ experiences, the more success you will have.

Avoid the cheesy clichés
If advertising is to be believed, this time of year everything from buying a new mobile phone or new washing machine to ordering a video game or eating a crisp will help ‘Bring a little cheer this Christmas’. To stand out from the noise, your charity writing needs to rise above the clichés that we’ve learned to ignore. Even phrases like ‘Help someone less fortunate this Christmas’ or ‘Christmas is a time for giving’ have become worn. Can you be more creative?

Provide something useful
Create a free gift or download that will be useful to your audience, rather than just talking at readers. Create a simple game, or instructions for creating Christmas decorations, or a recipe for killer Christmas stuffing, along with your branding and key messages. Give your readers something they’ll value to make them feel good about your charity.

Say thank you
No bells and whistles. No big build up. Simply write a message in your newsletter, or on email, or even send a card that just says: Merry Christmas and Thank You. Include a few highlights from the year that you have been able to achieve thanks to their support. But don’t use it as an excuse to ask for more.

Stay positive
Simply put, people don’t want to be brought down at Christmas time and will resent negative messages and images. Try to avoid making your reader feel guilty about their overindulgence or happiness by writing sad stories about those not so lucky. It could be counter-productive. Instead, use Christmas as a time to write about successes and positive outcomes that your charity achieves for people who would otherwise be a sad story.

Be culturally sensitive, but don’t go overboard
Of course some of your audience won’t celebrate Christmas at all, but that’s no reason to be overly sensitive about the way you mention Christmas, the traditions or creeds that come with it. You should temper your language a little, to show you are aware Christmas isn’t part of everyone’s culture, but you’ll alienate far more with language that tries to be so overly inclusive that it actually excludes everyone.

Get the timing right
Too early and you risk a groan from your readers, too late and you’re messages get lost in the end of year rush. Start your writing for Christmas early, but publish at the right time for your readers. Find out when that is by asking some.

What do you write about at Christmas? Do you agree with my tips? Leave a comment below.