People remember beginnings and endings. Stephen Covey wrote his famous line about beginning with the end in mind. We are nearing the end of another calendar year. How is your ministry ending up financially? Did you know that the fourth quarter is traditionally one of the strongest for churches and non profits? My friend Ben Stroup posted an article yesterday from Blackbaud, a group that produces fund raising software, that showed how fourth quarter online giving surges far ahead of every other quarter. While that is true for online giving it is also true for giving in general.

The question is what are you going to do to boost your fourth quarter giving so that you can end well. Hopefully you began the year planning to end well and are working your stewardship plan. If however you are like 90% of the churches out there without a plan now is the time to implement a plan of action to capitalize on this crucial quarter.

If you have been a regular reader of this blog you will know that I often write about end of year appeals and how important they are. I believe they are one of the best and easiest ways a ministry can finish the year well IF done right. However as I read letters that come my way I find that most rather than helping a ministry actually do more damage. Two letters in particular come to mind that I want to share as lessons in how NOT to appeal to your donors. They demonstrate violating what I believe are two cardinal rules of an appeal letter, keep in positive and keep it on point.

First consider the letter I received from my church asking me to make a pledge to their annual budget. For your information my wife and I have been away from church for two weeks due to travel on my part and health concerns about her mom. In fact we have had little time to discuss much of anything but the urgent. So yesterday I received a letter from our church that in part said the following…

“This is the second of five letters sent to members and friends from whom we have yet to hear. Each mailing comes at a considerable cost to the Church, so your prompt consideration of the part you will play in meeting our financial goals in the coming year is very much appreciated.”

I can frankly tell you that that sentence was a real turn off. It is so uncharacteristic of the church we attend. Everything is done with excellence. Everything but the annual campaign. My first thought on reading the letter was who wrote this? The negative tone of the letter does nothing to motivate me to make a pledge. We will pledge after the two of us can pray and talk over what we believe God wants us to do. However at this point letters like this do not inspire excitement.

The lesson? Always be positive in your appeal!

The second example of how NOT to write an appeal letter came from a client who thankfully asked me to preview his letter. His letter, which was on the whole positive and good had the following paragraph…

“I want to encourage every single member of our church to consider what he or she might give to enable ministry to continue and even increase. A “community reaching” and “world impacting” church requires a God-sized budget. Perhaps you would consider giving for the very first time, if you have never given (always remember our money back guarantee–if tithing doesn’t work, you can have your money back)! Or, maybe, if you are already a faithful giver, you might consider increasing that amount. We always encourage our membership to “bring into the storehouse” (Malachi 3:10) a true tithe, which literally means “a tenth” or 10% of your income.”

So, what is wrong with encouraging people to tithe? Nothing except the letters intention is to generate a strong fourth quarter and was meant to be an end of year appeal letter. As such it violated the rule of being on point. It also carries a bit of negativity bringing up what is frankly hot button topic. I am for people tithing but you should never get off point and his point was to increase end of year giving.

The lesson? Always stay on point!

A simple outline for an end of year appeal letter.

I believe it is easy to write an affective end of year letter. If you are unsure how to do it just go to your mail box and look at how others ministries that write you weekly craft their letters! In case you don’t get any of that kind of mail here is my outline for a good appeal letter.

Paragraph One - Tell exciting things about what God is doing at your ministry. Thank them for helping make it happen.

Paragraph Two - State your need and why you are writing as positively as possible.

Paragraph Three - Tell them how they can give and make giving easy and simple.

Paragraph Four - Thank them for their support and tell them how honored you are to serve them.

While the above might be an over simplification it none the less should serve as a guideline for you to start. As I always do every year I will for free write you an end of year appeal letter if you will contact me. So, get out your pen and paper and start writing!

Mark Brooks
Founder and President
The Charis Group

PS. The Charis Group will donate $100 to the best end of year letter sent to us. To qualify you simply have to print this post off and include it in the appeal letter so we can differentiate you from all the others we get. The letter must be at our address no later than Dec. 1st to qualify. This is the second year we have done this. Last year’s winner was Noonday Baptist Church.