This article was originally published in Canadian FundRaiser
English is becoming a series of tribal patois, discreet, usually fashion-driven and often adversarial. Computer science may be forgiven. But why does sport have to develop a new vocabulary? And why can’t you find Johnny Nash in Tower Records? To switch genres (see how easy it is!), how many people actually saw the two Tarantino films? Clever people use clever-speak; not-so-clever people read the tabloids. These distinctions have never been greater. Our societies may be re-assembling themselves along linguistic lines.
Why should fundraisers worry? Because we start talking about “resources” and “infrastructure.” It sounds posh but it’s meaningless.
No one says what they mean
We live in a world where words serve as code. Hence those strange acronyms from classified columns, the curious language of the hookers’ postcards (hands up who really know what Swedish massage is!). And all those new signs that we don’t understand.
And how did advertising get so masturbatory? Advertising only has one role in life: to sell goods and services. So, how come we have increasingly to de-code the stuff? Kingsley Amis once said that the only sensible beer ad would say “Our beer gets you drunk” and that the only other sensible beer ad would say “Our beer gets you drunk quicker.” Now a beer ad shows you maps of Prague.
Current advertising is self-referential, which is good for the short careers of the award-winning practitioners but bad for anyone primitive enough to believe that is a proven component of selling things.
And why is direct marketing playing with itself? It gets worse. Time was, when we horny-handed direct marketers used to sneer at the guys in pink shirts. We knew how effective our advertising was. You counted the cost and you counted the response. But their mores have now invaded this citadel of statistical purity. Direct marketing, especially direct mail, has become precious as well as intrusive and unwelcome. This is why a car manufacturer will mail you a piece costing several dollars with lots of sepiatone pictures and mannered typography. You want to know how much? Try phoning – the brochure won’t tell you.
And we’ve become lazy, too. We have adopted wholesale the tradecraft of a previous generation and sanctified it. We indent paragraphs, underline them, treat them to second colour, stick daft messages on the envelope and do a dozen other things to create a piece of communication that only exists in direct mail, which really isn’t good enough for the importance of a fundraising appeal. Or are we happy that the vast majority of people never respond to the damn things?
Are you committing self-abuse with words? I bet you are. Remember Smith’s Worldly Maxim: And remember what Orwell said (in 1946!) about Modern Writing:
“Modern writing at its worst does not consist of picking our words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images to make the meaning clearer. It consists of gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”
Memorize that last sentence. Worry about it every day.
And listen to the six questions Orwell said any writer should ask him or herself:
- What am I trying to say?
- What words will express it?
- What image or idiom will make it clearer?
- Is this image fresh enough to make an effect?
- Could I put it more shortly?
- Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
Or try another Orwellian list:
- Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive when you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word or jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules rather than say anything outright barbarous.
A right old curmudgeon was Orwell. He also railed against Dying Metaphors (ring the changes, play into the hands of ….) And against Verbal False Limbs (make contact with, give grounds for, have the effect of …. ). And against Pretentious Diction (utilize, constitute, primary).
The practice of Writing. First, have the humility to believe these two things:
- Nobody pays to listen to you. Most intelligent people have better things to do than read direct mail or ads.
- The reader is not always stupid. In fact your readers are rarely stupid. I’m truly keen on the importance of demotic writing, especially for fundraisers. When you’ve written something, read it out loud to your partner, to a motorbike messenger or whoever. If their eyes glaze over and they start squinting, you’ve bored them. If they giggle, you’re guilty of unwitting parody. If they stay silent, you’ve probably written some good copy. If they start to blub, you’ve got it!
The awful truth about your donors. And a few things you can do about it.
Charities talk about supporters as though they were under contract. But we all know that they sleep around, giving money to other organizations and, even when they die, shamelessly leave money to lots of competitive outfits. Believing that we own them is what used to be called a Pathetic Fallacy.
And then, there’s the fact that we’re usually stuck with seriously unpopular modes of communication. No one opens a fundraising envelope with anything approaching glee. And, while the medium can be astonishingly profitable, few telemarketing calls can start with the donor salivating with enthusiasm. We start off unwelcome.
Here are four things I’ve learned in the last few years to ease the pain:
1. Treat the donor intelligently. Don’t descend into direct mail tradecraft at the expense of personal communication. Make your case powerfully and make it easy for the reader to respond (When was the last time you took a consumerist look at your reply device?).
And try candour. Charter ’88 let me ask supporters to buy themselves out of regular appeals by committing 25 pounds that year. Result: 11% response, a great deal of goodwill and a mass conversion to standing orders. Plus a few trees saved. Think about it. We are here to raise money, not to send mailings.
2. Ask the donor for more. “Frontline” now provides more than 10% of the entire income of Greenpeace UK. Would you have imagined that there were thousands of people out there willing to give 20 pounds a month on direct debit? Neither did Greenpeace. We can now begin to say out loud that between 3% and 5% of any donor file will subscribe to such a scheme if it is presented properly. So, do your own arithmetic. And don’t do the “all our supporters are little old ladies” bit. Even if true, little old ladies like to join things.
3. Reward the donor intelligently. Famously, the two most useful words in fundraising are “Thank You.” So, how can we find different ways of saying them?
Even things we may think of as naïf tend to be prized by donors – things like certificates and stick-pins. Then, there are products which didn’t sell in the catalogue, posters that clutter the warehouse. Sure, it would cost money to use them as thank you’s. But I would predict a self-fulfilling promotion in terms of spontaneous donations. And you’d certainly create a better sense of loyalty.
But what about just phoning a random sample of donors to say thank you? Its what we do as individuals when someone sends us a gift. You need not hard sell; just be human. Apart from anything else, you will learn things.
4. Move faster. Alright, so you are not a disaster organization, you are not in the news and you are not Greenpeace. Does this mean that you are sitting around in July wondering what to say in your October appeal?
The new rules of direct mail fundraising say that you should speak when you have something to say. This means that we should all consider breaking up those calendar mailing schedules into more meaningful components. And that means moving faster.
You can get an ad in tomorrow’s paper if you want to. You can certainly get a mailing out by the weekend. And you should aim to get used to the value of speedy communication.
Did anything happen one of your projects last weekend? Did the kids break into the Family Center again? Was your government grant just nixed? Did the stock of bibles for Uganda just leave the warehouse?
I use these examples to suggest to you that you can make your own news. And that whatever happened last week can be called urgent. And that urgency is a prime fund raising asset. Moving faster is good for us.
Based on a presentation made to the first National Fundraising Congress, sponsored by the National Society of Fundraising Executives, Greater Toronto Region, November 16-18, 1995.
