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The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to…
Raising More Money with Newsletters than You Ever Thought Possible
Tom Ahern
Medfield, MA: Emerson & Church, Pub., 2005
128pp., $24.95, paperback
ISBN: 1-889102-07-5

The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to…
Raising $1000 Gifts by Mail
Mal Warwick
Medfield, MA: Emerson & Church, Pub., 2005
111pp., $24.95, paperback
ISBN: 1-889102-09-1

Emerson & Church, Publishers specialize in books designed to strengthen organizations and their communities. They introduced a new line of fundraising books, “The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to…” series. Two books in this series, Raising More Money with Newsletters than You Ever Thought Possible and Raising $1000 Gifts by Mail, are loaded with information that any organization can and should use when fundraising. Written by professionals in the fundraising field, both books are easy to read and comprehend, in addition to being brief and containing examples that have been used in the real world.

Raising More Money with Newsletters than You Ever Thought Possible was written by Tom Ahern, an authority on nonprofit communications. This book is divided into numerous short, 2-4 page chapters on putting out a donor newsletter. Each chapter is written in a clear and concise manner that is reminiscent of the writing style that Ahern encourages nonprofits to adopt in their newsletters. Starting with “These seven flaws that are killing you,” Ahern introduces editors/fundraisers to greater understanding about why many newsletters fail the readability test. Ahern shows how each of these “flaws” can be corrected, and explains in great detail “why” some are flaws in the first place. For example, numerous studies have been done about “The browser level” (entry points that attract the eye), and “The bouncing eye” (where eyes go first), but I doubt many people know about studies on “gratuitous visual labor” (colored text, backgrounds, etc.) and how that can affect whether your readers stick around, or abandon your newsletter. However, Ahern does not expect nonprofits to know about any of these studies, but he does want you to use this information to your advantage to create a newsletter that can attract (and keep) donors.

So your organization doesn’t have a newsletter. For those organizations Ahern has “An easy alternative: The newsy-letter,” a friendly letter telling your donor what your organization has done over the last few months (different from a donor solicitation). And the “E-newsletter,” which is a very short version of a newsletter sent to your donors who “Opt In.” Either option can work if putting out a newsletter is too difficult for your organization. And lastly, Ahern stresses that it is possible to have a profitable donor newsletter: “Don’t overthink it. It’s far more important to get your newsletter out than to get it ‘perfect.’”

In Mal Warwick’s Raising $1000 Gifts by Mail he wants you to forget everything you know about the standard donor solicitation, and think about it in a classier package. Forget the No. 10 envelope with the standard one page solicitation letter – you need to think bigger. Warwick gives examples of high-dollar solicitations, and encourages nonprofit fundraisers to pick the one that works best for their organization.

– ANNETTE AGUAYO

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