Tiny Essentials of Writing for Fundraising

George Smith. The White Lion Press Limited.
Published 2003. £9.95+postage and packing
(for discounts on bulk orders please see order form).
Softback, 65 pages. ISBN 0-9518971-6-0


Small, but packed with the power of fine words.

In this second title in the Tiny series, the author says, ‘We live in a world where words are increasingly without meaning. Where clichés rule. Where the power of words to explain, to communicate and to convince is currently in abeyance.’

But you and I know that words really do matter. If the business of raising money for charity is all about inspiring potential donors to believe in a cause then it follows that, more than most professionals, fundraisers should appreciate the power and potential of fine words.

Yet despite their industry’s obvious scope for fine writing, fundraisers are rather poor at it, as can be seen from even a casual look at the missives from charities that stack our mailboxes.

Well, now there’s a ‘how to’ book designed to help fundraisers to communicate much more effectively. At one point George Smith offers the following observation

‘I suggest your heart would soar if – once in a while – you received a letter written in decent English which said unexpected things in elegant ways, which moved you and stirred your emotions, which angered you or made you proud, a letter which you wanted to read from beginning to end, a letter apparently written by one individual to another individual. For you never see these letters any more...’

One’s heart indeed soars at the very prospect. But as Smith and the rest of us are well aware, while fundraising appeals abound such inviting letters from fundraisers are all too rare. The purpose of this tiny book, then, is to change all that.

But fine words alone don’t make for good fundraising copy, as Smith knows. It’s how you use them that counts. Remember the old Roman aphorism, ‘When Cauis spoke in the Senate the people said, “That was a remarkably fine speech”, but when Marcellus spoke they shouted, “Let us now march on Byzantium!”.’

For Marcellus’ powerfully-put words had moved his listeners not to sympathy but to action.

Tiny Essentials of Writing for Fundraising tells you what you need to know to write more clearly, more convincingly and more accessibly. And, like Tiny Essentials of Fundraising, it does so with clarity and precision.