Each of Jerry Huntsinger’s ‘tutorials’ published on SOFII proffer valuable advice.

But today’s Tutorial 35 — Mistakes that Brenda doesn’t need to make — is truly a treasure chest … a collector’s item … a ‘must-read’ … what more can I say?!

Jerry responded to a young woman interested in entering the direct mail fundraising field, who asked him about mistakes he had made, that she could avoid. He came up with 35 mistakes.

Here are some of my favorites, and I’m just extracting some bits and pieces …

#4: assuming that a fundraising letter will change a person’s opinion.  You rarely change people’s thinking … you are most likely to get a response if you get them excited, or curious, or angry, or apprehensive.  But change their minds?

#10: failure to read TV Guide and Reader’s Digest.  Sigh.  I wish it were not so.  But this is what works.  You may enjoy The New Yorker but, if that is your style model, you are in trouble.

#12: being ashamed to ‘sell’ in the letter copy. A fundraising letter is not an essay, or news story, or a case statement.  Instead, it is a persuasive marketing device, and how you handle the persuasion and the emotion will be the hallmark of your success.

#14: failing to understand the real reason for consumers’ anger about ‘junk mail’. Unsolicited mail is junk mail only if it fails to interest the reader. Junk mail is a by-product of list selection and has nothing to do with your package.

#19: failing to make your copy ‘you and I’ friendly.  Write to an individual, one to one, eyeball to eyeball.

#24: expecting your boss or associates to really like your letters.  Brenda, most of the time you are going to be a martyr.  If a campaign raises money, it’s because of their programme. If the campaign fizzles, it’s because of your letter.

#26: believing that your donors think of you as often as you think of them.  The only time they think of you is when a letter arrives.

#30: rebelling against the current formats that are working.  Go with the flow.  Yes, you can test new formats and, obviously, that’s how old formats are retired.  But as long as a technique works, don’t hesitate to use it.

#33: failing to quickly discover that 80 per cent of your money comes from 20 per cent, or less, of your donors.  Give this 20 per cent loving strokes … Without them you won’t have a job.

#35: pulling your large donors out of the communication flow, so that ‘we won’t be putting so much pressure on them’.

These are just my ten favorites. Believe me, the rest are just as good.

Tom