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When planning a fundraising letter campaign, you should be perfectly aware that a fundraising letter is more than a common and simple request for donations. In fact, fundraising letters are to be regarded as sales letters once they come with great sales pitch, a pitch that can hook the readers and make them more willing to open their wallets and provide money to your fundraising organization. Keep in mind that a truly effective fundraising letter must catch your reader’s attention, manage to convince him to donate money and even convince him to tell other people about your fundraising cause. Identifying your reader, keeping your letter brief, making it both professional and personal, keeping the news happy, letting your supporter know more about your fundraising plans, suggesting the right donation amount and thank your donor for his support are the key elements when it comes to writing a really effective fundraising letter. However, you will also have to pay attention to the overline of your fundraising letter, namely the headline that is going to appear right over the salutation in your fundraising letter. Keep in mind that such overline is meant to have a simple and important role: to persuade each of your donors to keep reading your fundraising letter. Here are some tips for you to use in order to come up with the perfect overline for your fundraising letters: First, you should have this overline written by hand in order to look like spontaneous and genuine burst of enthusiasm. Keep in mind that you really need to work up as much enthusiasm in your supporters as possible and you could not generate this without having a really enthusiastic overline. Secondly, you have to make sure that you are not giving too much information away – keep in mind that the overline you use should arouse curiosity and arrest your reader’s attention for good. For instance, once you ask for a gift right from the beginning of your fundraising letter, the chances are that you will depress his enthusiasm. So, instead of doing this mistake, you will have to go for an overline that makes your reader want to keep on reading. Just intrigue him and tease him in order to read your opening sentence and keep on doing this with the following lines. Go for overlines that pose questions, set up various predicaments or suggest various paradoxes in order to arrest your reader’s attention for good.
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