Ep. 220: Your Fundraising Emails Are Too Polite to Make Money
EPISODE 220
Your Fundraising Emails Are Too Polite to Make Money
About the Episode:
Here’s a sentence I could pull from almost any year-end appeal this fall: “Your support ensures we can continue serving more families.” Nothing wrong with it, but nobody will remember it, either.
Over coffee, you tell me the real stakes: the grant that got pulled in July, the funder who said this is the last year. None of it makes it into your emails. In this episode, I explain why polite fundraising emails cost you twice and where that “keep it professional” instinct really comes from. I also share what my first baby taught me about following everyone else’s “best practices.” Plus: the client email that dropped me straight into a memory of my own kids, from a cause I have no personal connection to. If your appeal is written to get approved instead of written to get felt, this one is for you.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why polite fundraising emails cost you twice, and why “nothing wrong with it” is the problem
Where the “keep it professional” instinct comes from (hint: not a bad place)
What parenting advice taught me about following fundraising “best practices”
The client email that worked on a reader with no connection to the cause
How to talk about lost funding without donors thinking you’re going under
The difference between guilt and honesty in your year-end appeal
What to do when leadership keeps redlining your emails
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Polite costs you twice. It's a turn-off, and it doesn't turn on anyone to give.”
“At year-end you can't afford to blend in.”
“Polite emails are written to get approved. Fundraising emails are written to get felt and to take action to donate.”
“You cannot raise money on hope, because hope is not enough.”
“Scared money doesn't make money.” Jaz' Vick
“Finding belonging is what a great email does; it lets people in.”
“You can build the emotional pathway with your words; your emails can do that.”
“When your emails aren't resonant, fewer donors give. And the ones who give, give less because they aren't moved.”
“Guilt is making the donor responsible for your problem. Honesty is telling the donor what's true and letting them choose.”
“We don't have a generosity crisis. We have a communication crisis.”
“37% of online revenue comes in December.” M+R Benchmarks 2026 Report
Episode Resources:
Scared Money Doesn't Make Money: The Donor Relationship Truth Nobody Says Out Loud
Watch: Sound of Metal
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Easy Emails For Impact™ - Turn Your Inbox into an Income Stream
Get Your Year-End Appeal Rebuilt To Raise More - sign up until Nov 30, 2026
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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Christina Edwards 0:03
Llast week, we talked about the wrong year-end strategies. In the past two episodes, really getting attracted and pulled in by well-meaning advice that is pulling you further away from achieving your year-end fundraising goal. But this week, we're going to talk about what happens when you have the right strategy-a strategy that's working, but you write it so politely that nobody reads it, and the few people that do are not attracted or moved to make a donation. So here's a sentence I could pull from just about any year-end appeal letter, email that I've already seen this fall. Right? We're raising $50,000 for year-end. We're raising $50,000 this Giving Tuesday. Your support ensures we can continue serving more families. Fine, nothing wrong with it, and yet nobody's going to remember it. It could come from so many different organizations, not only in your city but across the country and perhaps across the world. Now, here's what I hear when I'm having coffee with y'all, when we're grabbing dinner, and your guard comes down. You tell me the real, real. You tell me the grant we were approved for got pulled in July. I have heard this version again and again this year. I've heard $30,000, $50,000, $120,000, half a million dollars of grant funding that you thought was a sure thing you could count on. You have counted on. Was in the budget gone. I've lost count of how many times I've heard it. Or one version I'm hearing now is we're getting it this year a little less, and we're they're telling us this is the last time they're going to give it to us. This is the last year, and those are real. Like those are real stakes, right? That is real pressure you're feeling, and none of it is making it into your emails. None of it's making it into your messaging. The stakes are really high this year end. From the MNR benchmarks report, 37% of online revenue comes in December. So the emails you're writing now matter more than emails you're writing at other times of year. The emails you're writing in October, November see December. By the way, I'll tell you later about an email that made me think about my own kids, and it was from an organization that I don't have a personal Connection to that is the response you want your stories, your emails, your appeals to elicit.
So let's talk about what polite looks like in the wild, it's generic, formulaic. It's very make a difference language, institutional beige, safe, sterile. I hear from leaders and fundraisers, marketers saying, "But we have to be professional. We can't talk about the funding we lost. People will think we're shutting down. It's just too controversial. We can't have a stance or declare our stance on this issue because that major donor will get upset. Okay. But then, when I'm coaching you, when you're in my program, or when we're having coffee and we're catching up, here you are telling me the real stakes, the real challenges. Then I read your email and I think, where's that been? Where's that story? Where's the soul? Polite costs you twice. It's a turn off, and it doesn't turn on anyone to give. They don't want to read it. Maybe your donor opens it, skims it, and thinks, okay, all right, cool. And I'm I'm not better for having read this, right? A lot of times in email, I talk about value. Your emails should not be a state, your fundraising emails, a state of you just saying, "Give us money, donate, donate, donate. Okay, that is not, by the way, what we do in sprint campaigns and in fundraising campaigns, your emails should still be valuable, even if they don't donate. They should still be better for having read your emails because nobody gets excited for beige. Like, think about it. Nobody wakes up and is like texting their best friend or telling their neighbor, "We're getting our walls painted beige today. I just got a beige car. Check out my beige outfit. Like beige is fine. Not trying to hate on beige, but like it's not that exciting, right? And at year end, especially, you can't afford to be blah. You can't afford to blend in. And I want to be fair here.
Christina Edwards 7:05
Where does this come from? Where does this professionalism, this this this tone, this sound come from? It doesn't come from a bad place. It comes from wanting to be responsible. You want your donors to feel confident in you. You want to make sure that you don't overshare. Maybe somebody overshared with you, and you were like, "That was a lot. Maybe you've overshared before, and you regretted it. You had that like vulnerability hangover. That is real. I want you to picture a spectrum. Over here is polite, polite emails, polite appeals, and on the other side of the spectrum is overshare. Sometimes this looks like 911 fundraising. It's like very okay. I didn't need to know that level of detail. It's very frantic. There is a spectrum, and y'all are living on one side of it. So it's not about oversharing. It's not about you know taking down that confidence. It's about having soul. And very often there is an ED, a CEO, a board member, somebody signing off on the content that goes out-the letters, the emails-and maybe there's a webinar, a blog post, or a LinkedIn post that said, "Keep it professional. This is what funders want, so it makes sense. But where what breaks down is the belief underneath it that professionalism, that politeness turns into more dollars raised, that polished equals trustworthy and generous. Right? No, the opposite is true. Now think about it from your social feeds, from the conversations that are most resonant. If you think about the the last conversation you had with a donor or with a friend or with a coworker, was it the one where they said to you like, "How are you? and they said, "Good, everything's great, terrific, super. No, polished, boring, generic. Do they need to to pour their heart and soul out to you. No, there's something in the middle. Now I want to say this before we dig in further to today's episode. If you're hearing this and you're like, "That's us, Christina, I know our appeal is too polite, and I don't know how to get out of this, or I don't know if I'm going to have time to change it. I just want someone to fix it. I've got you. I'm opening up a small number of year-end appeal tear downs. So your appeal rebuilt to raise more. You can either send me three emails or you can send me your direct mail appeal. I'll record a video showing you exactly what to change, make those changes for you, and get it back to you ready to send. I'm only taking. A few of these. So, if that's something you want, go to splendidcourses.com/teardown. More at the end. All right, let's keep going.
Let's talk about polite, which often is best practices, right? It's just best practices. This is the right thing to do. Well, that's somebody else's filter. So when I had my first child, I had zero experience, like zero. I babysat exactly one time as a kid. I put up flyers in the neighborhood. I got a call. I babysat for an infant. I got thrown up on. Immediately, I said, "Nope, this is not for me. I took down the flyers, and my babysitting business closed for good. I pursued other careers. So, while I was raising fast forward, my first child. I was learning while doing it, right? Hands-on experience at its core. And when you're learning while you're doing it, everybody has advice. You with me? Well-meaning, totally reasonable advice. Oh, he doesn't need a nap anymore, or you should co-sleep, or never co-sleep, or let him cry it out. Don't let him cry. And then what happens? You default to it, right? You do what looks like good parenting, especially when everyone's watching. It's so funny now because we'll look at little videos of him when he was like teeny tiny, and I can see now because I have a lot more experience under my belt, all of the sleeping cues we missed, like all of the times he was trying to tell us, "I'm tired. We had no idea. We had no idea.
Christina Edwards 11:50
There's one of him, and he's laying on the on his back, and there's a little mobile, and he's like kicking, and he is just so obviously tired, like he's rubbing his eyes, tired, and we just had no idea, right? And that's what it looks like. Hang on. About my second child, I had figured out what worked for me. I had figured out what worked for our family by doing it, By going through trial and error, by going through and going, this person had well-meaning advice, but that's not for me, right? Polite emails are the fundraising version of that. They're what good fundraising looks like when everyone's watching. Keep it professional. Don't email too much. Don't mention the funding you lost. Don't say that. Keep it short. Lead with gratitude. Definitely put all the thank yous in the front, right? Your ED says it. Your board says it. Blog post says it. And the whole time, your donors are there giving you cues. The emails are getting opened. The stories they reply to. The ask that worked that last year. You're missing all of them because you're writing instead for the people who you fear are watching, instead of reading and donating. Polite emails are written to get approved. Fundraising emails are written to get felt and to take action to donate. Let's talk about bravery. What does your bravest, most honest self say? She probably says the $72,000 grant we approved for got pulled in July. That meant we had to pause the program temporarily. Pause the staff. Maybe that means you didn't take a paycheck. Maybe that means you scrambled and did an emergency fundraiser. Those are real consequences. Y'all are telling me this more and more, but you're only saying it behind the scenes. You're only saying it in trusted groups. The thing we always counted on is gone. We thought we were getting more this year, and we didn't. We're just still here. We are fingers crossed, hoping it comes. You cannot raise money on hope. You can't. Hope is not enough, and you can't raise money when you're holding that more money. When you're holding that internally, you're just internalizing the whole thing. My friend and colleague Jazvik, he was on episode 204, and he said one of my favorite quotes. He said, "Scared money doesn't make money, right? And when you're scared, you're not attracting your right fit donors. They're not like pulled in going, 'Oh, I can help. I want to help. How can I help? Because you're scared to tell the truth, and that's too scared to ask for." The money, the funding you need, and why you need it. Too scared to say the number. Too too scared to upgrade the donor. Too scared they'll say no. That's what fear also looks like on the page. It looks polite. So polite as every you know, every gift makes a difference. Versus if 40 donors give today. The wait list moves. The wait list is cleared. Polite is we hope you'll consider a gift. Do you even hear how my voice went up? We hope you'll consider a gift. It's almost like a question. Oh, no one is moved. No one's going. There's doubt in your voice. There's doubt for the donor, and this doubt translates in all of your emails, in all of your direct appeals. Polite is, you know, we've faced some challenges this year. Okay, like what? What does that mean? It's so vague, and your donors are busy. And if I'm reading something that says that, I'm like, shrug, move on, say get get in, like peel the layers back. We were doing content reviews inside the club, and and I was going through one of my client emails for an upcoming campaign, so a series of emails. They're raising just under $30,000 for this campaign, and they have tightened up their email strategy-it's just night and day since we started working together. And I was reading them, and I had this rush of memories reading one of the emails, like like memories coming through raising my kids, and it was really interesting. Like I was dropped into a memory I was having between me and my kids, and outside of the park, right?
Christina Edwards 16:43
It was like I was reading her email, and I was immediately in the park, thinking about this memory years and years ago. And here's the thing: Their cause area isn't one that's deeply familiar to me. It's something I'm learning about, but I don't have firsthand experience about it. And I was asking her about her list, and I was like, "Is most of your audience have firsthand, or even secondhand, right? Friends, family experience with this, and how you answer informs the strategy, right? Changes the strategy. She said, actually, most of the people on our list don't, and I was like, oh, interesting. So she wrote about these micro moments that nobody thinks about after experience. In this case, a diagnosis, and everybody thinks about the big stuff. She wrote about loneliness. She wrote about the calls that stop coming. She wrote about how your world can feel a lot smaller. You lose belonging to the people you used to have, and she wasn't telling her deepest, darkest secret. She wasn't exposing secrets. She was creating connection points with her words, and those connection points, like it was like they they zoomed me over to the park, and I was remembering something, like remembering a font, a pleasant memory. Your emails can do that. That depth, that heart, that soul-that's what it takes for donors to give, to give again, to give more. So it made me think about one of my top five favorite movies. It's called The Sound of Metal. It's so good. Highly recommend you watch it. It's about a metal drummer who loses his hearing, and you watch him go through the process of experiencing profound hearing loss, and the panic of being a drummer in a band and not being able to hear the guitarist, hear the singer, not know what's going on, losing his community, losing his relationship to himself-it's so good. Riz Ahmed is is the star of it, and he plays the drummer. It's highly recommended. So there is a scene as he's figuring out and navigating hearing loss, where he's living with a deaf community, and they're all signing at dinner, and it's such an interesting moment to watch him at this dinner. Laughing, this big kind of gregarious moment. You witness him belonging in that moment of finding belonging. That's what a great email does. It lets people in. What is it like to have a community, then feel isolated, become something changed, then find people who get you, and also not lose or abandon your other community to bring those people along with you. This goes belong health, by the way. An animal rescue, right, could do this too. I was at the park yesterday. You could tell it's like fall because I'm like, I was at the park. I was at the park, and my friend was with her dog, and the dog was just like also running around like a gregarious toddler, like the dog was just like could not chill, and what was that like for her as the dog owner? While all the other dog owners had you know dogs that were behaving, those are emails, right? Those are emails. So you can build the emotional pathway with your words. Your emails can do that. That's what my client did. And if you're thinking, but I've written emails like that, I've already told that story. I can't tell it again. No, this is the work. You write it again. You write it differently. You write it from different angles because it's going to land with different people at different times. The email you think you already sent is the one your list never felt, never read, never opened, never donated. Like you are not done. I want to hit the costs of polite emails because the costs are huge. When your emails aren't resonant, fewer donors give. Yes, and the ones who give give less because they aren't moved. You with me? They give a little. They don't give their best gift.
Christina Edwards 21:47
They don't give a repeat gift. They don't give again, and that costs you time because what are you doing? You need this big number, and you are further from that number. Your goal of funds you need to raise. What are you doing in December? You're scrambling. You're thinking, I've got to make up this shortfall somehow. Polite is expensive. If you're like, yes, but our donors expect us to be professional. My ED expects me to be professional. They expect you to be trustworthy, so telling them, telling your audience that a grant got pulled and exactly what you need to cover, it is trustworthy. You don't have to go into the details. You don't have to go into the nitty gritty. Okay, you could even just say funding was cut if you wanted. But here's the here's the lesson: pretending everything is fine and then putting a big goal in front of your audience, expecting them to rise to that occasion in December, is what erodes trust with me? If you're thinking we are talking about losing funding, people will think we're going under, right? People think we're going to shudder. Donors don't run from a problem with a plan; they run from vague. If we lost $72,000, and here's what it would take to keep the program open. Here's the deadline. That's a plan. That's an invitation to be part of a fix. And you can do this even if you didn't lose a grant. You could do this because you expanded a program this year. You can do this because expenses are higher. You can do this because of whatever. But people want to know. We want to know that plan. We want to know how to be a part of it. If leadership is pushing back and they just keep redlining your content, that is the conversation you need to have now. You need to be first of all. You can send them this this episode, but you need to be pushing back. It starts with you, and I would look at: Am I asking for approval because I want them to say, "Yep, looks good, go forth, or am I asking them for approval because I actually have a standard where I have to get approval before I send this out? Option A is I just want them to like take a look at it and give me a thumbs up so I can feel better about it before it goes out. Option B is this is what's required in my role in the org chart. Do you see the difference? And even if it's option B where they literally have to sign off on it, this is about educating them. This is about telling them that if we have a goal to raise X, and last year we wait. We raised less than that. We cannot keep repeating the same thing we did last year. If we are noticing that we're seeing diminishing returns, if we are noticing that every once in a while, when I add a little something spicy, a little something brave or soulful or bold, I get more responses from donors, can show them that. Right there's a lot of opportunity, but it has to start with you saying things have to change, and here's why they have to change. And this isn't again about making it a first-person rant or a first-person overshare. This is just about breaking that fourth wall. If you're worried about like, is this like guilt tripping? Is this too much negative? Is this too much bad news sharing? Guilt is making the donor responsible for your problem. Honesty is telling the donor what's true and letting them choose. So even if there are some negative circumstances that you want to hit and address in some of your content, you can. the The key here is you're not guilting them into it. It's not again that 911 fundraising. It's just telling them an honest micro moment. And by the way, we want this for the positive stuff too. We want those aspirational vision forward micro moments, the wins as well. I don't want to hear the big win, which is like you know our programs successfully enrolled 1212 people this year. I fell asleep saying that you fell asleep hearing that. I want to hear about Marianna.
Christina Edwards 26:17
What happened in Marianna when she went through your program this year? What happened to RJ as your program director? What did he tell you over coffee that you were like, "Ooh, I got to put that in an email. Those are those are positive moments. Those should be in your emails too, but those aren't getting in your emails because you're telling yourself it's not it's not formal enough. It's not professional enough. And if this is about time, and you're like, I don't have time to write more emails, girl, you're already spending time. You're spending time sanding things down, waiting on approvals, tinkering. Who's tinkering? Tinkering on social posts, tinkering on things that aren't bringing in more money when your emails could. If you're thinking, my favorite thing to hear from people is like our our audience doesn't like email. I'm like, no, they just don't like your boring, polite emails. They like emails. They just don't like the way you're writing emails. You with me? Like think about it. Or if you're like, well, I don't like reading emails. Okay, well, we're not building your entire fundraising strategy around that. A lot of people don't like pears, right? Some people don't like pears, and tons of people like pears. So should pears not be available at the grocery store in the fall when it's like pear season, apple season, because like some people just don't like it. No, we cannot build your strategy around your preferences, around your executive director's preferences, around one donor's preferences. Okay, and I want to be clear about what I'm saying. I'm not telling you to be unprofessional, air quotes. I'm telling you to be yourself, and none of y'all are so corporate buttoned up, like, like you're not. I know this. So this isn't about being rude or pushy or guilt trippy, dumping every crisis on your donors for shock value. No, no, no, no, no. It would be easy to hear and say, "Okay, Christina wants me to say the hard thing. Times are tough. We need money. That's not quite it either. It is what does your bravest, boldest, most honest self say to a donor who already has a heart for this work, who already believes enough people care to raise the number? What does she write? Because that's a very different email with me. That's very different series of emails than than most of you are sending, than most of the ones I'm receiving. I have a little folder, my email box called Great Emails. There are not enough nonprofit emails in that folder. Okay, there's not enough. I want more of them. Now I said this on stage at GiveCon last year. I've said it on the podcast. I'm gonna say it again. We don't have a generosity crisis. We have a communication crisis. The generosity it is here. It is alive and well. But polite is how fear gets passed along the approval process, and your donors can feel it even when they can't name it. That's the communication crisis, and that politeness. Protects you at the mission's expense and the people you serve. So before you send your next appeal, you're going to ask yourself, "Who is this written for? Was it written for the person signing off on it, the person who already cares. Would I say this to a donor if I was sitting across from them at dinner? And get it in front of somebody who isn't in the pool with you. When you're in the pool, everybody around you says, "Yeah, it's a tough time-the economy, inflation, blah blah blah, right? And everybody's like, "Yeah, pull back. Right? You need somebody outside of the pool who can show you where you are unclear, where you need to get louder, where you didn't land. You can't feel that politeness, that beige from inside the pool. That's why having a strategist on your side is essential.
Christina Edwards 30:56
So, if you are working on one of your year-end appeals or your November or December emails, maybe you're avoiding it. You know you got to do it. What worked five years ago doesn't work anymore. What worked last year needs a change. I'm opening a few spots for a year-end appeal teardown, your appeal rebuilt to raise more. Here's how it works: you take the first stab. You can send me up to three emails from your year-end campaign, or your direct mail letter-the letter, the outer envelope, the response device. I will record a video showing you exactly what to change and why. Your copy completely refreshed, marked up, ready to go. So, what to change so you can raise more? You'll have it back in five business days, and it's only 297$. The last day to sign up for this is november 30, so you can even use this for your late December emails. If you're interested, go to splendidcourses.com/teardown, and if this is the kind of eyes and strategy and support you want on every email, every appeal, every campaign all year long, that's the work we do in the club. It's like having a strategist and coach on retainer. All right, y'all. That's our episode for today. Go take off your polite cloak and find your bravest, boldest storyteller. I'll see you next time.