3. They treat donors as purses, not people

The only way I know of to get money without human contact is to use an automated banking machine. Bank tellers are personal. Automated banking machines are impersonal. Just walk into your local bank any morning and count the number of senior citizens waiting in line for a teller. They choose the human being over the machine because senior citizens are often lonely. They crave human contact. When you approach donors with generic, impersonal, copy-and-paste fundraising letter templates, you treat them as automated banking machines who should simply do as they are told and cough up the cash without delay. And who likes being treated that way? Not [pick one] me/you/us.

4. They mislead sincere fundraisers

The biggest problem that I have with fundraising letter templates is that they fool some fundraising staff into thinking that raising funds by mail is easy. All you need to do is “copy and paste the following text into your word processing program,” “fill in the details that are specific to your organization,” “print out the letters on your organization’s letterhead,” and conclude your letter thus: “Today, you can make an immediate difference in the life of [homeless/orphans/etc.] Each [$ amount] you send provides [specific goods/services] to [number of people].” Then you recline your office chair and wait for the mailbags of donations to arrive from your fervent donors.

Conclusion

Direct mail fundraising, like all fundraising, is about relationships, not revenue. And you can’t develop relationships built on trust and mutual respect if your fundraising methods are standard, impersonal and disrespectful. There are no short-cuts to long-term donor loyalty, despite what some publishers of fundraising letter templates imply.