DM Diagnosis: Details, Details, Details

They make all the difference in this Boys Town appeal.

December 15, 2009 By Kimberly Seville

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Yeah! Boys Town didn’t get mired up in angst and hand-wringing about how to fulfill donor requests for more seals that could have killed that nice offer. My guess is few donors will ask for more. It’s the gesture that counts. And for those donors who do want more, what a great way to identify people on your file who really love you (and who might, say, one day make bequests).

“I’m also enclosing a Christmas card for you to send back to our kids.” I love that this letter freely calls the people Boys Town helps “kids” — not “children” (ugh) or “youth” (double ugh), but what a donor would likely call them: kids.

And without being at all preachy, the letter has a nice way of gently weaving in a bit of religious copy appropriate for an explicitly Christmas (not holiday) appeal. “This is the first time Paul will say grace before a Christmas meal,” for example. Or the beautiful postscript: “P.S. During this season of giving, Boys Town remembers that God gave us his Son, the greatest of gifts, on the very first Christmas. Thank you for helping Boys Town to be the arms He uses to embrace those lost and forgotten children with His warm, healing love.”

More small touches and little details
The seals are printed on matte stock with metallic silver ink that gives them shimmer and shine without the added expense of foil, a very nice small touch.

On the back of the seals and on both the front and back of the reply, Boys Town stresses its strong financial stewardship, including the use of the BBB Accredited Charity and Charity Navigator Four Star Charity logos — something more and more nonprofits are doing. However, the back of the Boys Town reply goes even further with a text box about its stewardship that promises, “All mail contributions (every dollar you send) will be spent on the care and treatment of our youth. This is possible because all solicitation and fund-raising costs are paid out of the Father Flanagan’s Fund for Needy Children ….” Any organization that can make this claim should, but you can tell the vetting of this copy was fierce. No more “kids;” it’s now “youth.”

I’d take that first sentence about “every dollar you send,” replace “youth” with “kids” and get it onto the front of the reply with standout placement — in this case, where Boys Town has a callout about making a gift by credit card that’s in the middle of wide-open white space. Even if the lawyers and auditors insist on an asterisk directing readers to the full legalese statement about stewardship on the back, this promise deserves high prominence because donors love to hear it.

Finally, my last favorite little detail in this package is on the back of the Christmas card I’m to sign and return. It’s a quote from a Boys Town kid: “The best Christmas I ever had was here at Boys Town last year. In staying here, I learned the true meaning of Christmas. I learned that presents are nice, but love is better. I really don’t care about material things. Family to me is much more important. What a gift.”

It reinforces the letter’s premise — that family is a gift a lot of kids don’t have, but a gift I can give them this Christmas so Boys Town can “show Paul what a family is all about.”

Tied together, all these little details are what my good friend and mentor, Jerry Huntsinger, calls “package gestalt,” when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Gotta love it when it all comes together as well as it does in this Boys Town effort.

Kimberly Seville is a creative strategist and freelance copywriter. Reach her at kimberlyseville@yahoo.com.