Craft an effective donation request letter in five easy steps. Send your letter to the largest employers
in your area. Most companies have special funds set aside for philanthropic purposes. You may also consider
sending your letter to local community organizations (e.g., Lions Clubs, the Rotary Club, the Shriners),
as well as family and friends.
1. Good News First
Always start the letter on a positive note, especially if you have raised money and contacted these
people with a donation request in the past. That will help make the letter entertaining and informative.
2. Why Are You Writing?
In a personal and heartfelt voice, describe your project in detail and what results you expect.
3. How Much Money Do You Need?
Use a range of even numbers, with suggested amounts. For example, if your range is from $200 to $500,
you may want to include check boxes with the amounts in between: $200, $300, $400, $500. Include a blank
line for write-in amounts.
4. Thank Your Readers
Tell readers that your success will be made possible with their contributions. Thank them in advance.
5. Use P.S. for Fast Readers
A quick P.S. at the end may draw attention for fast readers and get them to read the entire letter and
create a sense of urgency.
Writing Basics
- Keep your letter to one or two pages, any longer and your reader may lose interest.
- Make the message easy to understand, don't get bogged down in too many numbers or terms they may not
know.
- Stay focused on the topic.
- Sign the fundraising letter! Your letter comes from someone in particular, not just the group.
- Catch the reader’s eye. If possible, include pictures. These can be black and white or color, and printed
on the fundraising letter itself. Again, this helps put a face to your campaign.
- To help your message stand out, you can underline or bold the main points, but do it sparingly. Don’t
overwhelm your reader.
- Use short paragraphs, with a space in between each.
- Use standard margins of 1 to 1 1⁄2 inches on each side of the page.
- Be sure to use a font that is easy to read with a minimum 10-pt, preferably 11- or 12-pt size.
- Include a return address, phone number, web address and email contact, if possible.
Donation Request Letter Template
Once you download the PDF document to your desktop and open it, you can use it as a guide to write your
own donation request letter. You may even copy the text from the PDF document, paste it right into a
word-processing program of your choice (e.g., Microsoft Word) and replace the words in brackets with
your own information.
You will need Adobe® Reader® software to open the templates.
Get the latest version here
for free.
