Before & After End Of Year Appeal Makeovers

I’m a sucker for makeovers, especially any kind of home makeover. Do you know what is just as consumable (not to mention important)? End of year appeal makeovers.

Could your year-end fundraising appeal use a makeover? I have a handy-dandy free checklist you can run it through to see how it stacks up.

In the spirit of year-end fundraising, I’m sharing a couple end of year appeal makeovers.

Before we start with the critiques let’s acknowledge that fundraising copywriting is seriously hard work.  Especially if you do it yourself. It’s especially hard to see the forest from the trees when you are talking about your own work. Even harder? Doing it without any training as a fundraising copywriter! Add to that the million demands competing for you attention – well, let’s just say you have my sympathy.

When I offer feedback on an appeal letter or a website donation experience, I come at it from a place of appreciation, admiration and understanding. I know how stretched you are for staff, resources, time and budget.

I recently had the opportunity to share feedback with an independent k-12 school on their end of year letter. Here is their before and after.

Before:

After:

Below is an email appeal makeover for a film society:

Wishing you could take your email appeal from “meh” to a money raising machine? Here is some before and after inspiration to show you how a professional copywriter might makeover your end-of-year fundraising email appeal.

Fundraising Appeal Email: Before

Fundraising Appeal Email: After

Want some free help writing your year-end fundraising appeal? Check out these great tips from Claire Axelrad on writing your appeal. After your draft is complete give it the “you” test (aka Ahern Audit) to make sure you use twice as many “you” words as organizational centric “we” language. Finally, run it through Rachel’s end of year appeal checklist. If you are still stuck and want a fundraising copywriter to work their magic on it consider an appeal rewrite. Check out the Bloomerang blog for more year-end fundraising tips.