How to Write a Fundraising Email: 12 Best Practices

A fundraising email has three jobs. It has to get opened, get read and get a click to give. Most emails that fail lose at one of those three points, so the 12 practices below are grouped the same way.

Before you start, remember who the email is about. When I brought email fundraising in-house at Food for the Hungry, our first appeals talked about our programs and how effective we were, and they underperformed. They got better when we made the donor the main character. Every practice below serves that idea.

Get the email opened

1. Use a sender name people recognize

The "from" line is the first thing a donor checks. A real person at your organization ("Jeremy Reis, Serving Orphans Worldwide") often feels more personal than the organization's name alone. Whatever you choose, keep it consistent so donors learn to recognize it, and test a change on part of your list before you switch.

2. Write a subject line that earns the open

Short, specific and curious beats clever. Write several, pick the strongest two and test them. For help, see how to write fundraising email subject lines and 500 real subject lines from other nonprofits.

3. Don't neglect the preview text

The preview text is the line that shows under the subject in most inboxes. If you leave it blank, the email app fills it with whatever comes first, often "View in browser." Use it to finish the thought your subject line started.

Get the email read

4. Write to one person

Write the way you'd write to one donor you know: "you," short paragraphs, plain words. Use the donor's first name when your data is clean, and leave it out when it isn't. A wrong name does more harm than no name.

5. Tell one story

A story about one person beats a statistic about thousands. In my own testing, story has consistently beaten statistics. Pick one person, one problem and show how the donor's gift helps. Here's how to move from the story to the ask.

6. Cut the jargon

Words like "capacity building," "beneficiaries" and "holistic interventions" make sense inside your organization. Donors skip them. Describe what happens in words a neighbor would use.

7. Keep the design simple

Heavy templates with banners, columns and many buttons often perform worse than an email that looks like a letter. Try a plain-text or lightly formatted version against your usual template. It also tends to read better on a phone; here's how to make emails easy to read on mobile.

Get the click to give

8. Ask for one specific thing

Say what the gift does, how much it costs and why it matters now. "Help us fight hunger" is a slogan. "$40 keeps a family's shelves full for a week in January" is an ask a donor can act on.

9. Give a real reason to act now

A deadline, a match or a specific need with a date gives donors a reason to give today instead of someday. Keep it honest. Here's how to use urgency without manipulating donors.

A match can change a campaign mid-stream. During one year-end campaign at World Concern, our first email fell flat. We secured a small match, tested it in the next email and the response was significantly better. Then we asked board members and key supporters to build a larger matching fund, and we used it for the rest of the campaign.

10. Make the button and the landing page match

Use a clear call to action that says what happens next ("Give $40 now"), repeat it more than once in a longer email, and make sure the donation page says the same thing the email said. A donor who clicks "Feed a family" and lands on a generic page may hesitate. More on writing the call to action.

Send it well

11. Send to your most engaged people first

Send to the people who open and click most often before you send to everyone else. Strong early engagement can help with inbox placement, and it lets you catch a broken link before the whole list sees it. Before a big campaign, check that your emails will reach the inbox.

12. Test, then let the results decide

Test one thing at a time: the subject line, the sender, the length, plain text versus designed, the ask amount. Treat fundraising conventions as hypotheses until your own donors confirm them. Then use your data to decide what to change.

A quick checklist before you hit send

• The sender name is one donors recognize.
• The subject line and preview text work together.
• The email is about one person, one need and one gift.
• The ask names an amount and what it does.
• There's an honest reason to give now.
• The button and the landing page say the same thing.
• You've read it on your phone.
• You've sent a test to yourself and clicked every link.

For the bigger picture, including list building, welcome emails and how often to send, see the guide to nonprofit email marketing.