“During my headship James Underhill has guided us through three most successful appeals and is always our first port of call for advice on fund raising. He has excellent instinct.”
People’s attention spans have shrunk. Content that is too wordy simply makes people flip the page or click away. In this way important messages fail to register. So good copywriting is essential to effective communications and fundraising. The reality is that choosing the right words can make the difference between success and failure.
Over 30 years we have honed an approach to copywriting that works. We are ruthless. We write, we revise and we revise again. We often ‘kill our babies’ – those turns of phrase that initially seem so clever. We never stop reminding ourselves of the audience for any piece of writing; and for most audiences nothing beats clarity and brevity.
The power of video
We also use video to add power to our propositions. In each case, we provide the vision, treatment, narrative and direction. Check out three recent examples, below.
What we offer:
Branding
Videos - see recent example, above
Web pages and whole websites - example
Appeal literature
Prospectuses
Campaign messages
How to trail development - a recent annual review.
Less is more - a stripped down appeal document. The simple message and humour forged a connection with donors.
Elegantly simple - an all-weather pitch appeal. Check out the image on p.2 - this resonated with donors.
Two projects: one appeal - added power to a buildings appeal by embracing a campaign to ramp up school sport.
Small, but perfectly formed - a tightly-focused appeal that worked perfectly.
"Sorry I’ve written you a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a short one." - Mark Twain