Email Marketing For Nonprofits: 9 Great Ways to Nurture Donors

Here’s an amazing fact: 

After 30 years of this always-on, interconnected Internet world . . .

. . . email is still the dominant communication tool, bar none. Silicon Valley big-wigs have been trying to supersede it, for years, to no effect.

There’s a reason for that. Email allows you to send a message to hundreds, thousands of people, almost instantly . . . easily and cheaply. It’s just very hard to beat.

But just because it’s so hard to beat, doesn’t mean connecting with hearts and minds via email is easy. THAT part . . . is as hard as it’s ever been. Indeed, the ease of sending an email actually makes real, human connections harder.

Harder, but not impossible.

In this article, we tell you how to do email marketing for your nonprofit.

1. Talk Individually to Each Subscriber on Your Email List

A common (and false) belief is: 

Email is ineffective because:

• It’s so easy
• 99% of the email I see is spammy
• Of the remaining 1%, they’re still not really talking to me

And it’s that last bit that’s key. They’re not really talking to me.

Ineffective email campaigns treat their audience as if they’re all alike, when of course, they aren’t.

Everyone is different: Prospects are not donors. First-time donors are not recurring donors. Major donors are not mid-level donors. Active donors are not lapsed donors.

Your goal isn’t a click, it’s a conversation … with an individual

The tone of every email should evoke the sense that you’re a real human being, you’re having a one-on-one, with one other human being. 

You’re not a keynote speaker with a microphone talking to an audience of hundreds.

You’re after a conversation. 

Drop personal details about YOURSELF

Nobody really supports a nonprofit. They support the people and the mission at the nonprofit.

So if you drop the occasional tidbit about yourself … it evokes that conversation feeling again.

Obviously this should only be done to the extent that you are comfortable with. 

Invite recipients to reply 

Ask questions that invite replies, telling them you will respond. 

(Don’t worry about getting inundated: If you get too many replies that you have to pull in your fundraising team or Board to help respond, you have a GREAT “problem” on your hands. 🙂 

In other words, “Treat your donor as a real person you like and want to get to know.” – Nathan Hill (NextAfter, Avid AI).

Segment your audience

So then there is a section of the article on the different segments of your audience. What that means, how to segment (how to plan to segment if you’re just getting started, how to do it if you already have a list), and how that naturally opens the door to speaking more relevantly to everyone in your audience.

This just means categorize your audience into as many possible segments (categories) as is practical.

Segments can include:

• How did they arrive on your list? Via a webinar? Referral? Ad and lead magnet? Local event? Web search (and therefore, SEO)? 
• Are they a prospect? Donor? Recurring or one-time? Lapsed? Beneficiary? (Past, present, or prospective?)

Bear in mind that, ideally, you’d have as many segments as you do audience members. (Everyone really resides in a category of one.) You just can’t do that without spending all day, every day, writing emails to individual people and responding. (And you’d still never be finished.)

Audience segmentation is a significant task if you’ve never done it before, and you already have a sizable email list. It means you have to segment them retrospectively. 

However … once it’s done, it’s done. And segmenting new arrivals on the list can be automated quite painlessly.

And then, write emails (and email campaigns) to audience segments. It’s as close as you can get to writing an individual email to each person on your list.

Much of the time, an email sent to one segment can be edited and repurposed quite quickly to another one. You do not have to address each segment from scratch. Indeed, depending on the email’s topic, some segments won’t need to be addressed at all.

2. Craft a Unique Journey for Every Subscriber

Craft emails with a forward lens

Maxwell Maltz, in his book Psycho-Cybernetics, suggested that human beings are goal-seeking devices.

We think as far as the next objective, but rarely beyond it to the next one. (Let alone to the one beyond that.)

In fact, in reading this post, you’re probably thinking about the immediate financial problem your nonprofit is facing. And you’re hoping your email subscribers will help you solve it. But you are not using the same mental energy on the problem you will have after the current one is solved.

Your email subscribers are no different.

But YOU, as a nonprofit leader, most likely see over a longer time frame, at least as regards your nonprofit. You know what the trends are in your sphere of activity. You can see the opportunities looming, the threats, the new actors, the demands on nonprofit resources. 

You have some idea now, even if it’s vague, of the email you’re going to have to send your subscriber in 3, 6, or 12 months’ time, and perhaps beyond.

So as you type that email . . . have a map in your head (maybe even on paper) of that journey you’d like to walk down with your subscriber. 

Always be thinking, “What’s the next challenge once this email is sent?”

Use marketing automation to craft your donor’s journey

Most modern automation tools allow the sender to craft specific sequences of emails, tailored to specific recipient segments. 

If you receive emails from Beeline, you’re seeing at least one such sequence. That allows Beeline to send you emails that you have opted in for (presumably because you actually want to see them).

So if you have multiple topics that you need to cover with multiple subsets of subscribers, these automation tools . . .

. . . (commonly called Customer Relationship Managers (CRM) or Email Service Provider (ESP)) . . .

. . . allow you to customize your emails to your subscribers’ interests and stakeholder level . . . 

. . . thereby “crafting” journeys tailored for prospects, first-time donors, recurring donors, volunteers, major funders, lapsed donors, etc.

But don’t rely on automation. 

Automation is powerful and convenient for the sender. But done carelessly, it’s de-personalizing for the recipient.

Subscribers today understand that you’re using an ESP. And they accept that it’s useful at your end. They don’t begrudge you for that.

But they do begrudge you if you use it in such a way as to make them feel small. (Regardless of what you intended.)

Take advantage of email marketing automation

An email automation tool doesn’t do the writing for you.

It can, what with recent advances in artificial intelligence . . . although in light of everything stated above, we don’t recommend it.

What the tool is most useful for is automatically:

• Sending emails to an audience segment you specify
• Putting a subscriber into a sequence of emails, on a schedule of intervals you specify
• Sending an email or taking other actions in response to something your subscriber does, i.e. they opt in to a sequence, click on a link, visit a certain page of your website, respond to a survey, etc.

This turns email into multi-dimensional art. You’re crafting that journey for your subscriber.

You can time the emails to build anticipation, to maintain awareness, to fundraise, to promote, to recruit, to offer, to build community . . .

You can use one sequence to promote another sequence, such that your subscriber is hearing from you on more than one general topic at a time.

Common sequences that nonprofits run (and which you can put into use right now) include:

• A Welcome sequence, which is exactly what it sounds like – this is the first sequence anyone new to your list will see. It makes them feel welcome, and tells essential information they will need going forward. (You can have several of these. It often makes sense to have a different one for each segment or entry point for your subscribers.)
• A “top-of-mind” or “evergreen” sequence, in which your subscribers hear from you regularly around “evergreen” topics that don’t quickly expire in relevance: Stories, resources, challenges, your nonprofit’s origin,ideas to help donors, etc.
• A fundraising sequence – this one you would probably trigger yourself, on an as-needed basis, and you probably would edit and make changes to it, each time you launch the campaign.
• A segmentation sequence, in which you diplomatically ask the subscriber to categorize themselves, so that you don’t bombard them with emails they really don’t care about.
• A list cleanup sequence, which also is what it sounds like – you are reminding the subscriber that if they’re not benefitting from your emails, and don’t click on any links over the next few days, they will be automatically unsubscribed, no hard feelings. (This will, of course, succeed with some people, and they will unsubscribe. This is a very good thing. It purges your list of people who’ve been there for the wrong reasons. It also increases the quality of your emails in every ISP’s eyes – they penalize “low-quality” emails sent to gmail addresses by putting them straight in the Spam folder, reducing your open rate, click through rate (CTR), and reply rates.)

For example, one of Beeline’s Welcome sequences is specifically for people who have opted in to hear from us about building corporate partnerships. The sequence looks like this:

Beeline has 4 other Welcome sequences, each with similar sounding email subject lines. Some of the emails are identical in content, some not. 

Most of our sequences contain 7-9 emails. The smallest has only 4. The biggest, our general sequence, has 46 (and counting).

3. Ask Your Subscribers Powerful Questions

A lot of human conversations start when someone asks a question.

If it’s a simple one to answer, the answer’s given, and the conversation’s over.

But if it isn’t?

A much more interesting conversation ensues! Especially if you can think of another, even better, question.

Do you do that with your donors, prospective and otherwise?

Here are a few techniques for asking questions that will get your prospects and donors talking to you:

Ask your subscribers something that reveals what you know about them

Know what my favorite conversation subject is?

Me.

I’m fascinated with myself, and can’t help it. You’re no different, and neither are your donors. It’s not a matter of modesty or immodesty. It’s just human nature.

Dale Carnegie wrote a book almost a century ago, still in circulation, titled How to Win Friends and Influence People. There’s a chapter in it on how to get someone to fall in love with you.

It’s an entire chapter long, but it doesn’t need to be, because the advice is simple: Talk to them about themselves. Works like a charm, every time.

So ask them a question that shows you know something about them? You’ll get their attention very quickly.

Ask a question your subscribers are unlikely to have been asked before

This takes some imagination.

We human beings aren’t very good (typically) at thinking outside the box. We think linearly . . . a 1% improvement here, a 2% improvement there . . .

But a 100% improvement? A 1000% improvement?

That falls in the realm that we unconsciously label Impossible. We’ve long ago quit thinking about Impossible.

So when someone asks an Impossible question? We go . . . Huh!

Really great questions typically have at least one of the following characteristics:

• It can’t be answered easily in 10 seconds
• It’s not likely to happen, but good chance they know someone to whom it has
• They asked it of themselves a long time ago, and not since
• It suggests a situation that’s not been viable . . . until recently (and suddenly now it is)
• It suggests something they don’t need to consider now, but know full well they will some day
• It suggests the opposite of what goes on around them, or of what they see everyone else doing
• It connects two or more ideas that have probably never been connected before
• It invokes a response of, Hmmm, what more do I need to know/who do I need to talk to before I answer this?

Here are 25 examples of such questions. They are not necessarily relevant to your or your prospects’ situations, but they will get YOU thinking the right way about questioning your prospects and donors:

1. Would your idealistic 18-year-old self be impressed or disappointed with who you are now?
2. Did today matter?
3. What’s worth doing if you knew it was impossible to fail?
4. What’s worth doing, even IF it fails?
5. What will you do with your time if you have just 1 year left? 
6. Now ask #5 again, this time changing the time frame to 6 months, 1 month, 1 week, day, hour, etc
7. What can you do that might still exist 1000 years from now?
8. What do you want?
9. Why does the world need to change? (And if we’re all agreed that the world needs to change, why is there still a problem?)
10. What are you pretending you don’t know?
11. What are you pretending you don’t need to know?
12. What do you not know, that you need to know?
13. What do you know, that you should NOT know?
14. What are you unwilling to feel?
15. What would have to change for you to maintain or increase your current income while working only one hour per day?
16. What’s the worst that could happen to you today? How likely is that to happen? (Repeat for different time frames)
17. Are you winning? How do you know? 
18. Are you planning your losing? (Because you will eventually lose EVERYTHING.) 
19. Are you doing the right thing? Are you sure? How do you know?
20. What false assumptions are you insisting on entertaining? What imaginary world are you desperately trying to live in, instead of the real one?
21. How does the world REALLY work? (As opposed to, How I’d really like it to work.)
22. What are you scared of doing, right NOW? Is there any rational reason why you should not go and do THAT, right NOW?
23. What are you going to know a year from now, that you will wish you’d thought more about right NOW?
24. What one thing can I do that changes things for me radically, NOW?
25. Why do I feel bad about myself? What’s happening to make me feel this way?

4. The Critical Importance of Your Email Subject Line

Every time you check your email, there is one big question running through your mind:

• Do I care enough to open this next email?

Thirty years ago, when email was new, you opened everything. Not now. Information overload is now the rule. You have to filter out the garbage because there’s a lot of it, and fast.

Lying behind that big question are two qualifiers:

1. Who is it from?
2. Is it relevant to my life?

And your decision of whether or not to open the email depends on the answers to those two questions.

Is it from your spouse or significant other? You open it regardless. But everyone else, you run through a mental filter on the Subject Line.

So if the headline’s vague, woolly or tepid? The email doesn’t get read at all. It might even be deleted unread.

That means every email you send your donors has to have a headline that’s going to play off their primal, base human instincts. 

Here are 5 ways to do that:

#1 Be hyper-specific

Numbers, $ symbols, geographical place names, the subscriber’s name, the latest news events, specific threats that you know they feel passionate about . . .

All of those in a subject line will increase the subscriber’s curiosity.

#2 You don’t HAVE to appeal to their heads, but you MUST appeal to their hearts

That’s because human beings can choose whether or not to engage with their rational mind, but they cannot choose whether or not to engage with their irrational (or emotional) mind.

That emotional mind is always on. Example:

“4 Reasons Why Your Parents Don’t Believe in You (and Only One of Them’s About Money)”

A useful tool for assessing the emotional impact of a headline is the free Monster Insights Headline Analyser. It will allow you to test multiple versions of your subject line, and give each one a grade.

#3 Make a bold claim

“The Copywriter’s 5 Dark Secrets of Mind Control.”

In a world where clickbait is around every corner, that clickbaity headline promises inside information on how to spot clickbait before it arrives and steer clear of it.

#4 Connect two or more ideas that aren’t logically obvious

“Michael Jordan just gave a press conference, and NBA executives are furious.”

You don’t have to have the slightest interest in basketball to want to know what on earth Michael Jordan said.

“System Requirements Document (SRD) for Being a Great Mother-in-Law.”

Excuse me?

That one makes no sense whatsoever, and even promises a laugh.

#5 As short as possible

This one unfortunately works against #1, which demands the subject line be longer. 

But if you can be short and specific, do so. Shorter is always more powerful. If you can get it below 10 words, that’s terrific (but admittedly, not easy.)

“Mommy, there’s a phone in my ear.”

Once again . . . excuse me?

That subject line is short, invokes curiosity (because it doesn’t make sense), AND promises a story. 

(The phone turned out to be a tiny plastic toy phone which the toddler had unwittingly pushed into her ear canal, requiring an ER doctor to extract it 😀. But the perplexed mother took a while to figure that out.)

5. Tell Stories: The Heartbeat of Nurturing Donors through Email

As the last example shows . . . people are invariably curious about other people.

We’re constantly trying to make sense of this thing called Life. We’re always hungry for real connections with other human beings.

Stories do that.

Storytelling is an art-form that’s older even than the written word. Indeed, the most ancient literature in existence consists largely of stories that were already being passed down from generation to generation then.

The human mind is wired for Story. So do that for your subscribers? They’ll open and read those emails.

Here are 4 ways to do that for your nonprofit:

1. Tell stories that speak to your subscribers’ values and situations

Your subscribers are subscribers for a reason. They connected with you because of some shared vision or purpose.

So tell stories that speak to that purpose. Drop the very words that motivated them to subscribe in the first place.

You’re focused on Raleigh, NC? Tell stories that feature in Raleigh. You’re all about supporting victims of domestic violence? Tell stories about former victims who’ve found safety and new hope (but remember to be ethical in your approach if you deal with a sensitive topic). 

And ideally . . .

2. Tell stories in which your donors are heroes

Donald Miller is a marketing and branding expert. He’s published a book called Building a Storybrand. 

These days, it’s pretty common to hear a book referred to as classic or legendary. But the monikers are justified in this case. Miller just speaks to the human hunger to want to be awesome, to be a hero.

He isn’t the first to identify the hunger. Joseph Campbell is usually credited with the idea of the Hero’s Journey. 

A character . . . has a problem . . . and meets a guide . . . who gives them a plan . . . and calls them to action . . . helping them avoid failure . . . and achieve success.

Like Skywalker and Yoda. Frodo and Gandalf. Katniss Everdeen and Haymitch.

Characters in print and on screen that we would all love to be in real life, ourselves.

So if you can tell stories of how your current donors got to be the Hero . . .?

You subscribers and prospects will all want to be the next version of that character.

3. Speak to your past successes, AND your failures

When the artist asked English Civil War winner Oliver Cromwell how he would like to be painted, Cromwell is said to have replied, “Warts and all”. (And he had a prominent facial wart.)

Tell stories in and around your nonprofit that do the same. Here’s who we are. Here’s who we’ve helped. Here’s what we’ve achieved. Here’s where we screwed up, and won’t ever screw up again (that way, at least).

That will tell your subscriber that you’re real, live human beings, who have problems themselves, even as they seek to solve problems for others.

Your subscribers don’t believe in a perfect world, and won’t follow a perfect leader. They just want to see and follow people who are two steps ahead of them.

4. Fundraising = Storytelling + a question at the end

Storytelling matters to donors, because it matters to human beings. 

Nobody wants to receive a big newsletter full of links and noise. They won’t necessarily mind it, but they’re really hungry to hear personally from one individual at your nonprofit, why they love their job, what they are working on, what their dreams are, how they can help me. 

They want to peek into your world, and envision themselves in it. And when you tell stories, they can’t NOT put themselves in it, becoming part of your story.

Storytelling is showing, not telling. And the more you can communicate by showing? The more people can feel a shared identity with your mission. The more they can see themselves becoming part of a community.

So when the time comes for you to ask them for support? Show them through a story how they can belong to a community of supporters . . . THEN, through a personal request, ask them to do that with a donation.

6. Cultivate a Donor Community through Email Marketing

Email still is the dominant communication tool for nonprofits.

But that doesn’t mean email can’t be enhanced. It can.

This is all part of an omnichannel nonprofit marketing strategy, which is particularly effective with people who are already subscribers or donors.

For example, you can integrate emails with SMS messaging and social media tools, to build an unofficial (or maybe official) donor community. You get them thinking, I wonder if there are other donors/stakeholders like me?

Have I just become part of a movement that is changing the world?

An interesting study showed that when SMS messages were immediately followed up with emails, donations were boosted by 80%.

Now that was an SMS-based marketing initiative, not email-based. But the point is the same. When you communicate with your donors and prospects using more than one platform, they get the sense that you are not far away. You’re in the same mental neighborhood. And that will grow donations, engagement and impact. If you further add social media and web content, the neighborhood sense is boosted yet again.

There’s one caveat:

Be consistent across platforms.

If your messages are mixed, you confuse the reader/hearer. And a confused mind always says NO.

7. Your Email Marketing Should Feel Personal, Not Professional

There are a few rules of thumb that will serve you well as you write anything, be it emails, web content, blog posts, donor pages, prospectuses, whatever.

Here they are, in no particular order:

Audience, Offer, Content . . . in that order (60% / 30% / 10%)

And those percentages are approximate but significant.

Far and away the most important part of any email is a very clear idea in the writer’s mind of just who you’re writing to. And it never hurts to spell that out in the email.

“Fellow food security activists of Texas . . .”

After that, comes knowing precisely what your offer/promise is. Make that objective crystal-clear in the subject line of the email.

The remaining content of the email flows from that, and is much less important than the Audience and Objective. In fact, it can be poorly crafted, riddled with typos and bad grammar . . . but if the Audience and Offer are laser-dialled in, it will barely matter.

Write like you talk

Your subscribers might or might not like to read, but they are all ravenously hungry for human conversation.

So if you write like you talk? Using the same idioms, slang, expressions, etc . . . that you do face-to-face?

They will subconsciously slip into the mindset of someone having a face-to-face and heart-to-heart.

That will keep their attention focused.

You don’t HAVE to educate, you DO have to entertain

Copywriter Blair Warren put it well when he said, “All people have a desperate need for mental engagement – to have their attention captured, focused and intensified”.

They’re hungry for THAT.

They’re not averse to useful information or learning. But BORE them . . .?

They will be looking for the exit.

Be clear, not clever 

It’s about them . . . not you.

They don’t care about how witty and intelligent you are (at least, not initially). They just want to know:

• What is it? 
• Is it for me? 
• What are you promising?

That’s it. Anything unrelated to those three objectives is fluff, which might add to the conversation? . . . but can also detract from your objective.

Don’t ask for something with every email!

That’s a sure way to invoke donor fatigue.

Oh no, here she is again, asking for money . . .

Your subscribers are open to making donation, but not if they think that’s all you’re ever going to do.

Visual texture: Make the email look appealing before they’ve read a word

Ever driven across the mid-west prairies? Easy to fall asleep at the wheel. Every mile looks like the last, especially if you know you have another 500 miles of it to go. Yawn. Pretty soon, you switch off. You have to fight to stay awake.

Did you read every word in that last paragraph?

No?

But I bet you’re reading me NOW . . .

Because I’m using pattern interrupts.

• I’m playing with the typography (size, italics, underline, bold, bullets, capitalization, all-caps, indents, etc.)

The human brain is a pattern-recognition machine.

We’re constantly surveying the incoming information for threats of pain or promises of engagement. Any email formatting that regularly disrupts the signal to your eyeballs . . . jerks the brain into staying engaged, and not drifting off.

Besides typography, one simple technique is 1-n-1 paragraph formatting (where n is any number from 1 upwards). A 1-sentence paragraph is followed by a 3- (or 1- or 4- . . .) sentence paragraph, followed by 1 sentence again.

It gives the email visual texture, and is akin to driving over very varied terrain (as opposed to a boring flat plain).

Look through this blog post, and you’ll see that technique regularly applied.

Consistency is key, frequency less so (but not irrelevant)

While your readers don’t want to be bored, they also don’t want complete unpredictability. They want to know what they can count on.

A good frequency is one email per week, but that may be a tall order for you, if you’re staff- or skill-constrained. Better to email once a month and stick to it, rather than nothing for 9 months and then suddenly 5 emails in a week because you’re in a mad panic.

Vary email length (hyper-short can be powerful if specific and direct)

Digital entrepreneur Dean Jackson is famous for his 9-word emails.

Hey Doug, you still looking at houses in Tampa?

It goes in the subject line, with no body to the email at all. But if sent to Doug who is indeed house-hunting in Tampa . . . Doug will open it. And the conversation will have been successfully kicked off.

That’s an extreme example, but it shows that your emails do not have to be wordy. In fact, wordy can work against you. We live in a world of information overload.

The simple rule here is: Write your email as if you’re talking to a friend about ONE specific topic or plan.

How would you write to your friend about a party you’re inviting them to? Write that way if you’re publicising your next fundraising event.

How would you write to a parent, or a cherished former teacher, to share an accomplishment they helped you make? Write a program milestone email that way.

How would you reach out to a friend to ask for help? Write a fundraising appeal email that way.

Ideally, use wording your prospects have given you

This always works well.

Because you are speaking back to your reader in their language. You’re conversing without making them work hard.

Leverage the latest general and industry-specific news

This doesn’t mean you comment on the news.

Rather, mention it. Drop the latest happenings. That’s what people do when they talk casually.

It makes them feel like they are up-to-date, and not left out.

8. Measure Your Donor Response (Listen!)

This doesn’t have to be so complicated that you worry, But I’m not a data scientist!

It’s simply a matter of identifying a few significant metrics (also known as key performance indicators – KPIs), asking yourself questions on the results, and deciding how to respond.

You track those KPIs, and only those. And you seek to iteratively improve them.

If you know how to listen to someone, you can learn how to listen to your donors (and subscribers). This is the key to effective nonprofit marketing.

For most small-to-medium-sized nonprofits, this probably doesn’t need to be more than the email Open, Click-Through, and Reply rates, and the donations received, per email campaign. 

(And of these, the Reply Rate is the most telling. A reply means your email resonated strongly enough for the reader to expend the effort to email back.)

What email lengths and topics garnered the highest opens, clicks, replies? And the highest funds raised?

The 80/20 Principle will likely apply to some degree. 80% of your donation revenue will come from 20% of your emails.

• Which were those emails?
• Why did we raise so much money with that one?
• Can we replicate that? (Quite probably you can, but maybe not too frequently.) 
• What emails did people open more than others?
• What did we do in them?
• Should we replicate that? If so, how?

9. How Email Marketing for Nonprofits is Changing (and What Never Will)

The email marketing space is as dynamic as any other.

AI tools are the current obsession, and with good reason. It’s possible to create content for email marketing using ChatGPT or CauseWriter very easily.

By all means, use them, but don’t rely on them. A good mantra to adopt is:

ChatGPT or CauseWriter will get you 80% to a good draft in 10 minutes. But the last mile of the race is ALL YOU. By hand.

The tech is constantly changing, and jobs are disappearing. (Or at least, there are lots of rumours of jobs disappearing – we’ll see.) So watch this space. Everything’s going to shift.

But there are a few things in the nonprofit space that have never changed, and aren’t going to. Among them:

Human beings will never stop wanting to connect with, and help, other human beings

They will never stop being hungry for stories

Everybody wants to feel like they belong to something and someone wonderful and important

You aren’t perfect. You make mistakes. And sometimes, it’s those mistakes that people are attracted to, because it means you’re not AI, you’re human. And it’s human they want.

As long as you apologize fast and humbly when you screw up (ideally, beat them to the punch before they even know there’s been an offense) . . . most folks will fall over each other trying to forgive you.

If you can capture that in your email marketing . . . it will not be ineffective.

Conclusion

Real, honest-to-goodness emails, written by a single human being to another human being . . . are not going to stop working for nonprofits anytime fast.

Be real. Be honest. Tell stories. Connect your stakeholders. Ask for money, but not in every email (not even in most of your emails). Tell them what you think, and why. Use AI and automation to save yourself time, and remember you’re writing to a real person on the other end.

Do those things, and your emails will boost donations and engagement.

Want help doing it?

Send me an email. We can have a nice conversation. 😀