Slide 3: Fruit tree

 Let’s get a concept down. This is a photo of a fruit tree.

 I use this photo to illustrate a concept in direct mail called
“cultivation.”
 To use the agricultural analogy – for a plant to yield its fruit, you
have to tend to it. You give it your time, energy, and attention to
get that fruit, make the fruit taste better, and yield larger
quantities.
 Similarly with a donor, if you give your donor your time, energy,
and attention, that donor often yields more fruit by giving more to
your organization, whether as a sustaining donor, or by upgrading
to a major donor. If you don’t give attention to your donors and
treat them well, the donors will cease to give their fruit – in other
words, they stop giving you money.

Slide 4: The Care and Feeding of Donors

 This discussion will zero in on specific techniques to cultivate
donors – a lesson in the care and feeding of donors
 Most of the techniques I mention will be geared toward mass
mailings, but you can always scale these down for more personal
touches.
 For our organization, it’s Morton Blackwell’s rule, our president’s
rule, that the Leadership Institute contact donors with cultivation
touchpoints as much as or more than we solicit them for a
donation.

1
 o That cultivation mailing is either a “thank you” for their
donation, or what we call “informational mailings” that
report what success is achieved from their donations.
 Let’s jump into specific informational mailings.
Slide 5: Thank you, thank you, thank you
 We’ll start with thank yous to donors.
 Telling your donor “thank you” is the most important cultivation
technique you have.
 Question: Why?
o If you had a friend who never thanked you for taking them
out to dinner, buying them a ticket to a concert, etc. But the
difference is that the offended friend will probably confront
the other and ask what’s up. The offended donor is less
likely to bother. They’ll just stop giving.
o Would you keep on donating to an organization that never
thanks you and never gives you recognition for the
contributions you make?
 Make sure you thank them quickly. Within 48 hours of receiving
the donation, ideally, but ASAP. A late thank you is better than
none, but keep in mind the thank you will lose its effect the longer
you wait. You want to strike while the iron is hot. The faster you
send the TKU, the more likely donors will give a second gift.
You don’t want the donor to forget they made the donation to you
or forget what your organization is altogether. (LI not as well
known, so we need to do this).

2
 Now, when you’re thanking a donor, thanking in-person is better
than a phone call, and thanking in a phone call is generally better
than a handwritten letter of thanks, and a handwritten letter is
better than a typed thank you.
o But, you probably don’t have the time (or money) to visit
every donor, except for your major donors who you should
be visiting to thank them.
o VOLUNTEERS/OUTSIDE COMPANY. Same goes for
phone calls. You can make more phone calls than personal
visits, but if you have a lot of donors, you may not have time
to do this. Now, you can hire an outside organization to
make phone calls for you, but you have to weigh out the
cost-benefit ratio, and if the donor then asks that paid caller
to answer specific questions about your organization, they
may not be able to. The option is out there, you just have to
see if it’s worth it.
o Handwritten letter vs. printed letter. People will take more
time to read a handwritten letter than a typed one. But, if
you can’t handwrite them all, a modified way to make a
letter more personal is to print the letter and then write a
quick note on the side of the typed letter: “John, thanks for
helping us fight the left!” There are even autopen machines
you can use to make this more efficient. I’ll show you an
example shortly.
 Depending on your donation volume and manpower, you might
want to use a vendor to print these rather than printing in-house.
200 vs. 2000. LI uses a vendor because we receive tens of
thousands of donations every year and we couldn’t handle it in-
3
 house. You have to see what’s more time-and-cost effective.
Again, with major donors, make sure you write them handwritten
ones or give them a phone call, even if they were mailed a printed
thank you.
 As for the letter attributes:
o You want your letter to be personal. That means putting the
donor’s name in there, not just in the address block, but
within the letter copy.
o You should reference the amount they gave. It’s putting a
tangible number in the thank you and it recalls what the
donor himself gave.
o Of course, the letter should be friendly.
 And not just for thank you letters but most of your
letters, use a tone that’s friendly and conversational.
One of our development officers had a meeting recently
with a donor. Morton forwarded me the report – it said
“The donor loves Morton’s letters because they read
like they’re coming from a friend.” As much as
possible, and as much as it makes sense, try to back
away from business-like, rigid language.
o The letter should be specific – don’t send the same form
letter out every time someone you send someone a thank
you. You’ll inoculate them against actually feeling thanked
if they’re reading the same thing over and over again. At LI,
we match the thank you to the content of the original
solicitation letter.

4
 o And include a receipt for their donation, unless they request
not to receive one.
o I’ll show you a couple examples in a moment.
o Also, a thank you letter should not be a hard-ask opportunity
for another donation.
 Some organizations will disagree with me. When they
send out a thank you, they may put another ask for
money there. The rationale is that the more recently a
donor has given, the more likely they are to donate
again. And that’s true. (Recency effect)
 But we at LI don’t make an ask in the same breath we
thank them for their recent donation. You then
undermine the effect of a thank you long term – that the
organization is truly thanking the donor for their gift for
the sake of thanking them, not as a bait-and-switch to
get more money. That’s toxic over the long haul to
your organization – where every time they see a piece
of mail from you, they know you’re going to hit them
up for money. (TALK ABOUT MCB STORY – lecture,
stood up)
 Having said that, you could subtly put a Business Reply
Envelope in the acknowledgement package (as well as
in other informational mailings). HONEY BRE. They
will sometimes use the BRE to send another donation.

Slide 6: photo of an LI thank you

5
 It’s personalized: the address block and salutation. What I don’t
have in this example is the donors name elsewhere in the letter –
the last paragraph is a great place.
 Their donation amount is mentioned twice.
 And this thank you letter refers to the original solicitation letter
they donated through.

Slide 7: #10 and Muslim stamp

 Here’s the #10 envelope we send a thank you in. Believe it or
not, that’s an autopenned address block. You can see variation in
the 2’s. You can actually digitize your handwriting.
 Does anyone know anything about the stamps on the bottom?
o Here’s a fun ha-ha story. Do not use this stamp. It’s 46c and
we’re using 55c now for 1oz FC, but organizations are still
using this on mailings.
o Conservative donors think this is a Muslim stamp. Now, this
isn’t a discussion about Islam, but many donors who give to
conservative orgs don’t want to see this. Explain ... rumor
was pervasive, issued 2nd stamp
o We had a $5,000 donor say they were writing a $10,000
check, and stopped. They weren’t kidding.
o Make sure you know what kind of stamp you’re sending out.
Every element of what you send to donors matters. The
medium often conveys a message.
Slide 8: Receipt

6
 Here’s a receipt. Usual legalese, along with the donation amount,
donor name, and date. People want to see this legalese in the
receipt for tax purposes, but do not put it in the letter. So
impersonal. Dear Mr. Smith, thank you for your tax-deductible,
no goods or services received donation gift by the 501c3 IRS
revenue code.
 The signature is in blue and looks realistic. Adds a personal
touch.
 Our vendor used to print the receipt at the bottom of the thank you
letter, so it was a legal size page. We stopped doing that because
it makes it look much less personal like it’s mass printed.
 Any questions on thank you packages?
Slide 9: A Tale of Two Salesmen
 Pretend I sell computers. I’m going to give you two pitches.
Here’s the first
 This desktop computer has an:
o Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Processor with 6 cores, 15MB
cache, overclocked to 4.3GHz with Turboboost
o A dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780Ti graphics card with
6GB GDDR5 NVIDIA SLI enabled
o 32 GB quad channel DDR3 RAM at 1600MHz
o 6TB RAID array
o Wireless 1540 802.11a dual band high speed wifi
o Ultrasharp 32 HD monitor
o Windows 10 Pro in 64bit
 Or:
7
 o With this desktop, you have the latest technology.
o This Intel processor and amount of memory means it’s not
going to slow down for a few years.
o You’ll be able to process extremely large spreadsheets, talk
on Skype with no delays, or play the latest games without a
hiccup, and it has additional expansion slots, which means
we can upgrade the computer and extend its life.
o With a 6TB hard drive array, this means you’re not going
run out of room for your files, and if one hard drive fails, the
others still have your data kept safely.
 What’s the difference in these two pitches?
Slide 10: Benefits over features
 Features can be useful, but benefits are indispensable.
 Let me give you actual examples from the Leadership Institute.
o LI trained 12,927 students last year. That may sound
impressive, but if that’s all I’m telling you, it doesn’t have a
context or a result. The Leadership Institute could train a
million people, but if nothing happened, so what? the donor
will be disappointed.
o But if I say – one of the students trained by the Leadership
Institute was part of a group formed by LI at Michigan State
University ... his professor went on a rant, etc. End result?
The exposure got his professor suspended from teaching.
 The result, the professor suspended, is the benefit of training
thousands of students.

8
 Let’s talk about newsletters. Especially in newsletters, but also in
your other communications, make sure to emphasize benefits over
features.
o Otherwise, your donor’s eyes will glaze over and they won’t
care. Because it’s feature overload and you haven’t given
them the benefit – the outcome – of their donation.
Slide 11: Newsletters
 Newsletters are a great opportunity to toot your own horn and tell
the donor what your organization has accomplished
o But, you toot your own horn by emphasizing that you could
only succeed because of the donor.
o To marry those concepts together – the donor is making
possible all this success. It’s not “Look what the Leadership
Institute has done,” it’s “Look what LI has done because of
you, Mr. and Mrs. Donor,” or “Look what you have done
through LI.” Here’s what your donation has accomplished.
 DON’T GO THROUGH ALL THIS (just say give
donors value, not the internal office talk that’s only
relevant to your coworkers – like making a server that
can handle CRO traffic). Now, as a side note, I know
there may be people inside your organization you want
to recognize for their hard work. But if it doesn’t add
value to the article, don’t talk about it in a newsletter to
donors. (use concision on below stories)
 For example, Gabby Hoffman, took one of our
Youth Leadership Schools and became president
of her campus group at the University of
9
 California. She hosted a successful speaker event,
where David Horowitz fielded a question from a
member of the Muslim Student Association.
Horowitz told the student that that association said
they hope Jews will gather in Israel so they don’t
have to hunt them down. He asked her are you for
it or against it? That student said she was for it –
and exposed that group’s dangerous views. Today,
Gabby, who hosted the Horowitz event, is one of
our campus field coordinators helping others
engage in campus activism like she did.
 But, if I talk about the Leadership Institute’s
CampusReform.org website which exposes leftist
indoctrination on college campuses, it doesn’t
make sense for me to then talk about Joe Bob in IT
who built this fantastic website to handle all the
traffic. The donor doesn’t care about that behind
the scenes irrelevancy, and we can recognize Joe
Bob internally.
 Before I continue, there’s a good book called Making Money with
Donor Newsletters – by Tom Ahern. It’s an excellent resource.
It’s an engaging read. Some of the notes I’m using came from
there – and he’s able to get into more specifics I can’t cover here.

Slide 12: Three types of readers

 For a newsletter, there’s generally three types of readers.

10
 The majority of donors will not read most of your newsletter. It
kind of hurts. All that time and effort, and they don’t read much
of it. But you want to make sure what they do see impresses
them.
 The quick glancers – photos and a headline or two
 The skimmers – photos, headlines, subheads, captions (we’ll talk
about those specific terms in a moment)
 The thorough readers – they’re reading everything
 You’re writing for all three types.
Slide 13: Elements of an article
 This list is generally what an article includes.
 Titles/headlines
o Titles (and subtitles - what goes under a title) should grab the
reader and tell them a specific achievement. The title can be
clever to grab the reader, and the subtitle will explain
relevancy. If you can’t think of anything clever, that’s ok
too – just show the impact in case it’s the only thing the
donor reads.
o Again, remember benefits over features.
o Don’t use acronyms and jargon in a title that aren’t widely
understood. IRS is universal. YLS (Youth Leadership
School) is not.
 Subheads
o These are titles which break up the copy of your article into
sections. I’ll show you an example in a moment.

11
 o For the skimmers, this, along with the photos and headlines,
tell a full enough story to the donor even if they don’t read
the whole article. They may not get all the details, but
they’ll get relevant details and impact.
 Photos (with captions)
o This is huge, yuge! Big League. Like China! A picture says
a thousand words, so why not let that do the talking for you
instead of typing a thousand words no one will read?
o However, you have to put the photo in context, so have a
sentence or two explaining why it’s important.
 Cutlines
o This is when you pull out a line from the article and make it
large. You want to pull a powerful quote, whether you quote
someone or if it’s powerful copy from the article, For
example, we have a donor profile coming up, and we might
use “Mr. Smith did something bold. He replaced his alma
mater in his will with the Leadership Institute.”
 Bulleted lists
o People’s eyes are drawn to things that aren’t grey blocks of
text, so this is a good way to get a donor to read a list
 Graphs, charts
o LI doesn’t use these as much, but if used correctly, you can
give a visual representation of numbers if they’re truly
important to convey your group’s success.
 The rest
o All the other normal-printed copy
Slide 14: Here’s one of our newsletter covers
12
 For the quick glancers, they see “Rolling Back the Leftist
Monopoly” and a kid on the O’Reilly Factor
o They probably assume the kid has something to do with us,
and we’re fighting leftists
 For the skimmers, they’re still getting a full story:
o Read Title, subtitle, captions, subheads
Slide 15-16-17: A comparison
 Here’s a good article.
 Two photos, one of the State Rep in action, another with a
picture-perfect family.
 Subheads that give a story.
 Now see it without most of these elements.
 Side-by-side: see the difference?
o This is something I had to grow into. I like detail and I want
to tell the donor as much as possible. But it’s too much.
And if it’s a matter of showing a photo and subheads in lieu
of a few paragraphs, do that. Because they may see that, but
they probably won’t read the version with 1,000 words and
no style.
Slide 18: Newsletter tips
 Font size and graphic design: If you’re writing to donors where
the average age is 70, you want a large enough font-size they can
read. And generally in serif font.
o I’ve had to cut an interesting graphic design on a two-page
spread once. My designer made it look like a large green

13
 chalkboard. The problem with that is the type on top of it is
white – this is called reverse text. It was much harder to
read, so I nixed it.
o Keep in mind what looks good to you doesn’t necessary look
good to the donor. Often something classic looking is better.
 Back to photos
o If you’re showing people, make sure in general the faces are
larger than a dime. If the donor can’t see the face, he or she
can’t resonate with it.
o If you’re showing a large crowd to emphasize size, that can
be an exception.
o Use photogenic people – ones that don’t look like me.
o And make sure you match the right emotion. If it’s a photo
of a class at LI, I want to get smiling or engaged faces in the
photo, not post-lunch sleepies.
o Or, if your org is fighting a bad bill, you don’t want to show
your guy smiling – you want either stern or serious look.
 Article content
o This depends on your organization, but I try to focus on
specific people rather than general content. It’s much easier
for a donor to resonate with someone like Texas Rep. Matt
Krause I showed you a few slides ago, than speaking about a
class and not talking or showing specific students.
o Now, within an article like this, I can talk about our Future
Candidate School and campaign and grassroots trainings.
This elected official puts a face on the trainings.

14
 Up front – don’t bury the point of your article far down, get it out
in the first few sentences.
o And make sure you spell out the implications of whatever
program you’re doing. Don’t leave the donor to guess,
because they may not take the time to bother – they just want
the info presented to them plainly.
 Reading level – Someone may have talked to you about reading
level and the Flesch-Kincaid scale. Write to your audience at
around a 6-8th grade level. It’s not that you’re dumbing down,
instead you’re speeding up your donor. They could probably read
a college thesis, but they don’t want to – it takes effort. Don’t put
that roadblock in front of them.
 Red meat - Depending on your organization, you might want to
use “red meat” – this is a term meaning you’re appealing to some
baser instincts – like using the word leftists instead of liberal, or
certain puns, phrases, etc. Get the donor riled up and on your
side. Tug at their emotions. Pelosi’s shredding the Constitution
and so forth. But, you have to know your audience. If you’re a
think tank, maybe that’s not your flavor. You should still work to
make your writing interesting, but maybe the Mark Levin (do the
voice – spineless compromising cowards) isn’t right for you.
 In Tom Ahern’s book, he says to write the newsletter in the first-
person addressing the donor. His magic work is “you” – put
“you” in headlines, subtitles, everywhere.
 Donor profiles – since the donors are the heroes who make your
work possible, write about them! Find a donor willing to be
interviewed. This accomplishes two things. Your donors see

15
 someone who’s like them, or at least relatable. And for LI, we try
to feature donors who have left LI in their will, so their story will
inspire others to do the same. Secondly, the donor himself is
cultivated because it’s a big way to say thank you to that donor
being profiled – and you’ll probably upgrade their giving.
 Be creative – A couple of years ago, we made campus issue
newsletter – that was fun, and it’s a visual representation of a
student’s life. I do lament it was wordy, so I’d do it differently
now, but we have one donor who runs a foundation, and his
members loved it and kept asking for more copies of that issue.
 BRE – the Leadership Institute, and many other organizations, put
a business reply envelope in the middle of the newsletter. This is
called a soft-ask. The newsletter is not centered around asking for
money, but while you’re showing your donor great things you’re
achieving because of them, it’s a good opportunity to have them
donate again. Every issue of our newsletter pays for itself with
the donations that come back through BREs.
Slide 19: The horror story
 Here’s an example of what not to do. The names have been
changed to protect the guilty. And this was not the Leadership
Institute, though we were affected by what this other organization
did.
Slide 20: Other cultivation touches (Membership clubs)
 You can call your donors or certain segments of your donors
“members.”

16
 LI has “giving clubs” – when they reach a certain level of giving
in a year, we’ll say they’ve become part of the Scholarship Club
or the Training Club.
 When people feel like members of an organization, they may have
a more vested interest.
 This is a Scholarship Club form, and the donor can request
publications from LI, give a training voucher to their grandchild
or someone else who could use it, and so forth.
 And with the BRE we enclose so they can send this back, they
occasionally include another donation, even though we don’t ask
for one.

Slide 21: Other cultivation touches (TKU from beneficiary)

 You can send out a thank you from someone who benefited from
a donor’s donation.
 Explain Larry Provost
 Look how personal it appears, but it’s still a mass mailing.
 Larry received a hundred or so responses.
 And we also suppressed a certain segment of the donors so we
can track them later on. This is part of the testing process – you
want to make sure what you are doing works. Science! And
math.
Slide 22: A taste of honey [OPTIONAL]
 Morton explained honey to you.
 Recap – 200 jars – now 30,000+
17
 And we put a letter inside with a BRE, and it gets money back.
 We tested this, and it works. We lose money on the front end, but
it upgrades donors over the years.
 Now, don’t go out there and mail honey like us. You need to find
your niche if you want to mail special gifts to donors.
o If you work for Donald Trump, Make America Great Again
hats
o Rand Paul – copies of the US constitution
o Barack Obama – shredded copies of the constitution
o Whatever makes sense for your organization or your
organization’s representative.
Slide 23: Other cultivation touches
 Annual receipts
 Books
 Invitations to events, trainings – we’ve sent out several
thousand this semester for YLS by state
 Photos from events
 Newspapers clippings that mention your org
 Publications
 Christmas cards/holidays
 Supplement to mail
o Email
 A lot of what I explained can be translated to email.
 Newsletters – send out either a newsletter format or
just pick good stories of what your organization is
doing, and email them.
18
  The Heritage Foundation has found that donors who
receive mail and email donate more and more often
than mail-only donors. Not necessarily donating
online, but the gifts they send in.
 It’s keeping your organization’s narrative in front of
them.
 Videos – clips from one of our students who achieved
victory; Jayson Veley came in and recorded a thank
you.
o Tele-conferences
Slide 24:
 You can so easily lose what you’ve worked hard to gain with a
donor. Keep cultivating them as partners, treat them well.
 Don’t criticize other organizations who are on your side in the
movement.
o I’m not saying don’t criticize the other side. But there may
be orgs you don’t work well with. You need to be careful
because your donor could also be a donor to them, and your
criticism won’t sit well.
 Absence makes the heart grow fonder ... but not in direct mail.
o Out of sight, out of mind.
o Cultivation mailings keep the narrative of your organization
in front of your donor so they won’t forget you, and you
become part of their lives.
 What happened and why should the donor care?

19
 o Benefits over features. What does your success or your
programs mean to the donor?
 Test, test, test. See what works.
 Make it as personal as possible
o Don’t say “all of you”, but rather “you.”
o Make sure your donor records are clean and you fix them
when a donor points out an error. Mrs. to Mr. and
misspelled names can make a donor angry
MAKE FUNDRAISING PITCH!

20