At the end of my post — The Hidden Cost of Complexity — I promised a series of posts on donor usability.

Why? Because the sector spends millions of dollars and hours creating complexity. Complexity that drives donors away. Out they go through the leaky self-created holes in the retention bucket.

Let’s start with the written word.

Words in direct mail. Words on websites. Words, words everywhere. If you don’t get the basics of how words fit together and how they look on paper or on the screen you’ll fail.

No successful fundraising copywriters I know fancy themselves literary stylists. The great ones write simple, clear, emotional stories.

They use short sentences. CEOs and Ivy League program people hate this style. Donors love it. They stick around for more.

There have been lots of solid studies on the best way to string words together. Plus other studies on how big and in which fonts those words should appear. Neuroscience has even weighed in.

Let’s start with the importance of donors being able to read what you write. And how you can quickly and easily determine whether you’ve hit or missed the mark.

Included in your Word program is a robot called The Flesch- Kinkaid Grade Level Score. It measures the ease a donor will have reading your copy.

Here’s what master wordsmith Tom Ahern, who used it in a copy audit, had to say:

“Grade level and reading ease will also impact skimming. Speed-reading-friendly direct mail scores around the 6th-8th grade level. If a letter I’m writing scores above 8th grade, I automatically rewrite and lower my score.

“The Flesch-Kincaid grade level for your letter is 10, which is around Wall Street Journal country; while its Flesch reading ease score is 54. Neither is stellar for a piece of supposed correspondence, although the reading ease score is low-acceptable.

“Grade level — and the speed with which I can consume your text — are directly related. The lower the grade level of your letter, the faster I’ll read it.

“Grade level has nothing to do with vocabulary. A robot grades your prose in Flesch-Kincaid; it doesn’t understand what you’re saying. It’s only looking at the ratio of short to long: words, sentences, paragraphs. Shorter is faster. Low grade levels are faster.

What slows readers down and frustrates their flow? Conjunctions.  “And”…”With”…”So”…”But”.

Tom’s advice on the use of conjunctions: “Cease and desist. Or use them to start a sentence.”

Here’s how Tom illustrates his point:

The work is hard, and the number of people who need help is large, and the world we live in is often “too busy to help.”

Flesch reading ease 82.8, Flesch-Kincaid grade 8.1

The work is hard. The number of people who need help is large. And the world we live in is often “too busy to help.”

Flesch reading ease 100, Flesch-Kincaid grade 1.3

Type size also matters. So does the style of Font.

A lot. Either or both can determine whether the donor responds or simply moves on in frustration.

Neuromarketing guru Roger Dooley nails it in this post:

“The clear Neuromarketing takeaway is that if you need to convince a customer, client, or donor to perform some kind of task, you should describe that task in a simple, easy to read font. Since this phenomenon is related to the concept of cognitive fluency, you should also make the type size easy to read and use simple words and sentence structure. These steps will minimize the perceived effort needed to accomplish the task, and your success rate will increase.”

You’ll find lots and lots more on the fascinating subject of type fonts in Roger’s post. And while you’re at it, I recommend you subscribe to his free Neuromarketing newsletter.

Included in his post are some fantastic insights into the readability of various type fonts. And you’ll find out where they are best used (what works on paper may not work on the web). If you want to bring an over-the-top, out of control, award-seeking designer under control … by all means read the post.

Remember. If it’s happy donors who stick around and results you seek, make the type font clear and the words simple.

Roger

P.S. For this post The Flesch Reading Ease is 71.4 and Flesch Grade Level is 5.9