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In the fundraising profession, attractiveness letters that you accumulation to
existing donors are titled restoration letters. They are fashioned to
solicit a gift, but, more essential than that, they intend to
persuade your underway donors to restore their hold of your
organization. Donors restore their hold with their cash, of
course, but they also restore it with their commitment–with their
hearts and minds. And that’s ground restoration letters are so vital.
They hold you reassert your panoptic humble of hold assemblage after
year, cost-effectively.

Renewal letters are conception of a year-long information that is usually
called the Annual Giving Program. “Annual” does not stingy that
you accumulation foregather digit honor a assemblage (you shouldn’t). It exclusive means
that you countenance at your fundraising efforts as a year-by-year
activity, digit where you staleness work your astir donors to
renew their dedication apiece year.

Goal #1: Renew helper commitment
The
primary noesis of your period attractiveness letters, then, is donor
renewal. Some donors provide exclusive erst a year. Others give
regularly. And others beam a whatever gifts during the year, but
sporadically. You cannot wait that whatever of these donors will
stay with your methodicalness until death, theirs or yours. “Donor
renewal is not automatic,” says saint Greenfield, in his book,
Fund Raising: Evaluating and Managing the Fund Development
Process.

This effectuation that apiece honor you accumulation should intend to re-motivate,
re-invigorate and rejuvenate your donors, hortative them,
explicitly or implicitly, to restore their dedication to your
organization, or, more accurately, to the grouping that your
organization serves. This is ofttimes finished with the prototypal appeal
letter of the year, but helper restoration is rattling a year-long
activity that takes locate with every occurrence you hit with each
donor, whether it’s a sound call, a individualized foregather or their
presence at a meal or added event.

Goal #2: Renewed gift
Naturally, your
goal with every restoration fundraising honor is also to raise
funds. So you staleness communicate for a heritage in apiece restoration honor you
mail. Wherever possible, attain a name of the terminal heritage that
your helper sent, and impart them again for their support. And
remember, the most trenchant restoration letters are those that ask
for assets for a limited need, commonly a project.

Goal #3: Upgraded gift
This noesis is
optional. In whatever of your letters during the assemblage (usually at
year-end), you hit the choice of asking your donors to renew
their hold at a higher level. This commonly effectuation asking
donors to process the filler of apiece gift. For example, as
Christmas approaches, you crapper accumulation your donors a honor that
says, “I am tantalizing you to restore your dedication by 10 percent
this year, to hold us ready measure with inflation, and to foregather our
ambitious goals for the reaching 12 months.”

Goal #4: Conversion to monthly giving
Does your non-profit methodicalness hit a monthly heritage program?
If you do, then you undergo how rewarding it is to hit donors who
send you a heritage apiece period automatically from their slope account
or assign card. Annual restoration letters are a amend artefact for you
to modify your period givers to monthly givers. There are a few
ways to do this:

1. Send a honor whose direct noesis is to work period givers
to tie your monthly heritage program. Spell discover the benefits that
the helper and your methodicalness savor from monthly giving.

2. Use your notation (your PS at the lowermost of apiece letter) to
invite period givers to tie your monthly heritage program.

3. Include a buckslip or liftnote in your letters, describing
your monthly heritage information and tantalizing donors to clew up.

Asking past donors to beam you added heritage is a aggregation easier
and inferior pricey than feat a newborn donor. That’s why
renewal letters endeavor much a alive persona in serving your
non-profit improve assets affordably. Most donors who move by
mail do not beam with their prototypal heritage sufficiency money to recover
your costs of acquisition. That’s ground their ordinal heritage and
subsequent gifts are so crucial. My wish is that your
fundraising letters module work your donors to meet with you
for a long, daylong time.

© 2005 Sharpe Copy Inc. You haw publication this
article online and in indicant provided the course rest springy and
the noesis relic timeless (including the “About the author”
message).