Handwritten Notes for Non-Profits

In today’s trying times, raising money for your non-profit can be more difficult than ever. While many companies are using email, Twitter, and Facebook campaigns to drive donations, many people forget about the effectiveness of using handwritten notes for non-profits.

There are many reasons why handwritten notes work. Namely, emails get lost in the clutter.

The average household gets just 2 pieces of mail a day, compared to over 130 emails.

People are overloaded with emails and other mass communication.  Handwritten notes really stand out in the sea of junk mail. Recipients open handwritten envelopes three times as often as traditional print pieces.

Here are just a few ways to leverage handwritten notes for your donor outreach.

Make Your Appeal Personal

Handwritten notes should be personal. While you should always include a personalized salutation, if possible, also include a personal snippet that only pertains to the recipient. This could be something like “thanks for coming to our fundraising gala” or “it was nice meeting you when you stopped by”.  With Handwrytten’s bulk import spreadsheet, it is easy to add a custom snippet for every note recipient. To get yourself started, we’ve even put together an extensive list of donation thank-you letters to help you out.

Be Timely

We know you’re busy. Sending notes gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. It can be hard to find the time to get handwritten notes out. But, it is so important to “strike when the iron is hot”. This could be when you really need funds (such as during this COVID-19 outbreak) or after someone makes a generous donation.

Using an automated platform like ours makes it easy to send hundreds or thousands of handwritten notes at once. To get the word out, you can upload a list of notes to go out and get off your plate.

For the timely thanking of donors, automation is even a better solution. Depending on your donor system, it can be very easy to automatically send a handwritten thank you note upon receiving a donation. Check to see if your donor system integrates with Zapier. If it does, we can walk you through connecting your account to Zapier for a truly hands-off, automated approach.

Stay Top of Mind

The need for donations has never been greater.  As such, you’re unfortunately competing with many other organizations for the same money.  Follow up often, across channels, for the best results.

Include a Call to Action

In business, it’s so important to “ask for the sale”.   We train our salespeople to say “why don’t we sign you up?” or “are you ready to place your order?”. Asking for donations is no different. Include your web address where donations are accepted or include a return mailer for their check. If you’re working with Handwrytten, we can include those return mailers for you.

Handwritten notes for non-profits are a powerful tool for your next donor outreach campaign. With new tools like Handwrytten, we hope to make those campaigns as painless as emails, while being much more effective.