Supercharge your next annual (impact/gratitude) report
File under: Steal this approach....
Shared with permission ...
How to tell donors a great before/after story ... FAST!
Are we really trying to get people to read our stuff? Or are we really trying to get them to FEEL something ... to respond emotionally, over and over?
Hint: The latter. Why? Because repeated emotional responses inspire your truest of true believers to give more over time.
In today's gallery (below):fundraising, the important issue is managing for large gifts. Why?
In today's gallery (below):
The co-creators (l-r): Jewanna Apawu and Ashley Perry (also known in-house as J-wow and A-pow). Their joint storytelling solution for a recent Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital "impact report" is one of the best I've seen. Amongst its other virtues, it delivers a positive emotional uplift to its target audience (donors) super-duper fast.
Behold their "let's get to the point" cover!
Notice how few words there are. It's focused on a basic task: connecting donors emotionally with a child they've helped.
Notice the STRONG eye contact between the viewer and the child who was treated: "Olive in 2020." By the way, here Jewanna and Ashley put to work eye-motion studies done in Munich in the 1980s by Dr. Siegfried Vögele.
Notice that the BIG type acknowledges the donor's contribution: "Olive's heart works ... because of yours." The BIG type does most of the work in all communications.
Then notice the scar ... from pediatric heart surgery. This says "serious"; this is real: life or death, tragedy or triumph.
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NOW behold their REVEAL....
The cover sets up the story ... and it could go either way. That's the BEFORE.
The REVEAL (pages 2 + 3) shows what happened next. That's the AFTER: in this case, there's a happy ending, a smiling "Olive Today," pretty in pink ... & "what scar?"
What you see above is the report's first "spread." A spread consists of left-and-right pages together. By making the "By the Numbers" page mostly reverse type (white type on a dark background is hard to skim, as Aussie publisher Colin Wheildon proved in testing), J-wow and A-pow turned page 2 into a powerful visual frame for the page 3 portrait of Olive. The reader's skimming eye reliably bounces off the blue page ... and right back to the smiling girl.
Their cover told the BEFORE story.
Immediately, the next spread REVEALS the AFTER.
And it all happened within seconds ... when done visually, with just a few words, as J-wow (Jewanna) and A-pow (Ashley) did.
This is where they earned their Oscar, their Nobel Prize, their ... well, whatever small plastic trophy we give out in donor communications to celebrate extraordinary, moving, thoughtful work that will bond donors to a specific cause repeatedly.
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Why ARE donors heroes? Because they didn't succumb to inertia, the most destructive force in fundraising.
Instead, they acted. ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING.
So few do.
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In donor communications, FASTER is always your go-to. You're not trying to get people to READ. You're trying to get them to FEEL.
I call it "the 3-second test." And Jewanna and Ashley won it with their IMPACT report, created for Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital.
This striking impact report told donors (the target audience) everything they needed to know ... in two quick pages, mostly pix, very few words.
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Dear Reader: This is an excerpt from Tom Ahern’s e-newsletter. Did you miss crucial back issues of this how-to e-news? Immediately available! Just GO here. (And scroll down just a bit to sign up for Tom’s revenue-boosting tips and insights. In your inbox regularly. It’s free.)