How well does your newsletter perform for you?  If it’s not so hot, then maybe you need to make a few changes.  Here are 3 secrets to a successful newsletter.

The first secret to a successful newsletter is to be clear about the result you want.  What is your newsletter’s purpose?  Is it educational?  Is it supposed to be a fundraising tool?  Both?  This will help guide you in selecting content.

The second secret to a successful newsletter is to make it donor-focused.  Write the kinds of things that a donor wants to read, not what you want to include.  Donors want to read stories about clients and how they’ve been helped.  Donors aren’t usually interested in articles about new staff members, new Board members or lengthy “letters from the President”.

The third secret to a successful newsletter is to use good design.  Use lots of white space and keep it skimmable.  Donors read your newsletter like they read the newspaper.  They skim.  They read the headlines and if it looks interesting, they’ll read the article.  They look at photos and read the pull quotes.

If you want your newsletter to raise money, then you need to include an Ask somewhere.  The most common and usually most effective thing to do is to include a reply envelope inside its pages.

Grab a copy of your last newsletter and see how it compares.  Use these 3 secrets on your next issue and see how you can improve your results.