Most fundraising messages follow the same pattern: brand on one side, programs on the other, and hope in between. We call this bookend fundraising, heavily focused on who we are as an organization and what we do, while leaving the rest of the bookshelf, where the donor’s personal story should be, empty.

The rub?  The only giving that lasts is autobiographical.  We’ve got a simple recipe or heuristic for messaging.  It’s,

• Four parts donor (unique to the donor)
• 1 part your brand (unique to you)
• 1 part Issue X (not unique, lots of competition)

While simple to write and deliver, even in the limited “real-estate” of a Facebook ad, the rigor lies in knowing the unique to donor messaging parts.

Learn the details of this messaging recipe by attending the DonorVoice webinar. 

It’s free to attend and you can register here.

The four donor message parts are based in the psychology of giving.  If your messaging doesn’t explicitly hit on all four parts then it’s failing to fully connect and asking your supporter to do extra, cognitive work to see themselves in the message.

1. • Identity.  This goes well beyond generic labels of “donor”, “supporter” or internal definitions (active, lapsed, sustainer/regular giver, advocate).   An innate identity is what’s required, one that has nothing to directly do with your brand or their interaction with it.
   • Personality.  There are 5 uber Personality traits.  We all have all five but to very different degrees.  The dominant one or two help determine which messages you give attention to and agree with.
   • Moral Frame.  If your charity is involved with helping, conserving, preserving, fighting, advocating, etc. then you are in the morality business and people are making moral judgments about supporting you.  However, this isn’t a binary moral/not moral decision.  There is also a Big Five in morality framing.
   • Emotion.  Make it emotional… Is that useful guidance?  We didn’t think so either.  Emotion is paradoxically talked about the most and the least understood.

Getting beyond theory to applied is our bread and butter, our Raison d’être.  What You’ll Learn in the Webinar:

✅ The donor messaging taxonomy

✅ Why “make it emotional” isn’t enough—which emotions work best with different donor types.

✅ How message tailoring actually simplifies fundraising—less “blank canvas,” more “paint by numbers” for creative that performs.

✅ How to move beyond bookend fundraising—from broad, generic messaging to deeply personal, data-driven donor engagement.

✅ A risk-free, rapid testing methodology—how to test thousands of message variations in days to know exactly what works before rolling it out.

✅ How to apply this framework across direct mail, digital, and paid media—so your fundraising is more relevant, more effective, and more efficient.

This webinar is for fundraisers who want to move beyond the one-size-fits-all approach

and into a data-driven, donor-centric strategy that actually works. Register Here.