Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi from Simply Cats in Boise, Idaho!

I'm currently working on our annual No Show Ball campaign. Typically, we send out an invite with an RSVP letter to not attend by donating. The past few years, we have not received as much donations as we've anticipated. I believe it's because we never share a story in the campaign, to show where donations go.This year, I'm doing a mailing fundraiser that is a letter including a story of a mama cat and 13 kittens she was found with.  

I'm struggling to find resources on the best platform to use to create this letter. Word? Canva? In Design? I'm also not sure how many pages it should be. The story is a little lengthy, but because they had a lot of medical issues. I want to show their before and afters, but I know they recommend to keep mailing fundraisers shorter. 

Does anyone have advice on what they've done in the past and seen success with? 

Thank you,

Maddie

#FundraisingandDevelopment

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Maddie Corey
Simply Cats
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Hi Maddie, 

It's very important to include a large photo or photos of one or more of your cats with a great story - that's what people respond to.  I would keep the story short, as people don't like to read lengthy newsletters or emails.  You can eliminate most of the details and condense the medical history into just a few sentences.  Canva is a great tool to make eye-catching designs.  I would also keep it to one page if possible, 1 1/2 at the most.  

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Karen Martiny
Animal Rescue of the Rockies
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Hi Kathy,

Thank you so much for the advice. I did find Canva was the easiest by far. I appreciate you pushing the importance of it being shorter, because as of now it's two pages with the story and images, but maybe I'm diving too deep into the medical history.  Being lengthy is my default when writing.  The litter was saved from a critter ridder who was hired to "get rid of them" and they came to us in horrendous shape. At the end of the day, that probably is what will resonate with people most and encourage them to donate, not the details of their surgeries and medications. 

Thank you!

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Maddie Corey
Simply Cats
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-23-2023 08:07 AM
From: Karen Martiny
Subject: Mailing Fundraisers- Best Platform and Advice?

Hi Maddie, 

It's very important to include a large photo or photos of one or more of your cats with a great story - that's what people respond to.  I would keep the story short, as people don't like to read lengthy newsletters or emails.  You can eliminate most of the details and condense the medical history into just a few sentences.  Canva is a great tool to make eye-catching designs.  I would also keep it to one page if possible, 1 1/2 at the most.  

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Karen Martiny
Animal Rescue of the Rockies
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Hi Maddie - What a great idea to include a story of impact.  And wow - 13 kittens?! That is a story right there! I hope you'll find the mailing successful. Canva works well for designing so many things (brochures, postcards, letters, etc) and you can also have Canva print the letter and mail them to you or you can download them to print internally or elsewhere. I belive Canva may offer mailing services as well, though I'm not sure how their prices compare or how big your mailing list is, but that might be an option. Interestingly enough, Powerpoint can also be used as a design tool. You just change the size of your "slide" to 8.5x11 or whatever size paper you're planning to use, and then save the Powerpoint as a PDF once you're ready to go to print. Word works too, as long as you're doing just some basic design - like adding in a few photos and your logo/letterhead. 

As part of our Maddie's Fostering 4 Rock Stars program at Cat Adoption Team, we share a couple of fundraising letter examples in our materials. They might help spur your creativity and show how to condense your story while retaining its heart. You can find them under the "Fundraising" section here: catadoptionteam.org/services/fostering-4-rockstars. Hope that helps!

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Heather Miller
Communications & Development Manager
Cat Adoption Team (CAT)
Sherwood OR
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Hi Maddie,

We use Canva for our design and we have a CRM system called Salsa that we distribute our emails. One of the things I have learned since I've been with my organization is that we get a greater response if the cats (we are a cat rescue shelter with adoption and fostering programs) are looking directly into the camera. All of our emails when we are talking about our cats we share their story. It doesn't have to be too long. We keep ours to about two paragraphs to give our readers/supporters enough info for them to react and potentially take action (donations, etc.). Hope that helps!

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John Kearns
Chief Development Officer
Stray Cat Alliance
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I really love Constant Contact. You can sign up for a free nonprofit trial and will get a consultant that will design a template for you. You can get creative with the design and tell your story and then send it to everyone whose email you have! You can see who opens it and where they click and interact with the email. You can set up a monthly newsletter to share what's going on that month and highlight stories!

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Amanda Gray
Fundraising and Grants Manager
Operation Liberation
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