Charter 88: the ‘buy-out’ letter

by SOFII

Is candour just too dangerous a commodity for charities?. This simple mailing achieved Charter 88's best ever response in its early days.

Seeing Eyes for Blind People: sponsor a puppy who’ll grow into a seeing eye dog

by SOFII

This classic direct mail appeal uses a simple questionnaire as an involvement device. Also of note is the way that the proposition has been cleverly tailored to appeal to its Australian audience.

HEKS charity shop Switzerland: virtual but not traditional gifts

by SOFII

This first exhibit to come to SOFII from a Swiss fundraising organisation could hardly be better. This campaign was created to give donors an option to buy a virtual Christmas gift, the money raised from which benefits disadvantaged people overseas and in Switzerland.

Great Ormond Street Hospital: Christmas mailing, from 1941

by Aline Reed

What an achievement for Great Ormond Street Hospital’s fundraisers during the Second World War, someone kept their mailing for 70 years.

How to really understand fundraising’s reigning big idea, direct mail

by Mal Warwick

The foreword to this short and readable book summarises its value well, ‘For reluctant writers who need warm-up exercises and structured lessons…and for seasoned grant writers who get caught up in the jargon of our fields’…

Review by Jan Chisholm. 

Wood Green Animal Shelters: urgent £3 food appeal

by SOFII

Wood Green, The Animals Charity changed their fundraising strategy and are now achieving better ROIs on their cold recruitment campaigns than ever before.

St Dunstan’s: help blind heroes interactive acquisition campaign.

by SOFII

By combining a commanding and touching story with an interactive grit 'reaction test', they have managed to design a campaign that will both move and interest people.

Ontario Nature: ‘Ruby the hummingbird’ mailing

by SOFII

This unusual example of direct mail tells a complex, moving story in an imaginative and very engaging way.

Jewish Care: the Post-it note campaign

by SOFII

The ideas that look most obvious and the execution that looks so easy and straightforward of course rarely are. There’s no such thing as simple creativity. But here is a great idea executed with flair so as to be instantly clear and appealing.

Harvard University: how Harvard got its name. Major gift fundraising in the seventeenth century.

by SOFII

The examples in this exhibit are almost 400 years old, yet it would seem that we are still making the same mistakes today when it comes to major gift fundraising.

CHATS: the Norooz letter, in Farsi

by SOFII

It’s an ancient truism of fundraising that if you want to communicate with donors you must speak to them in their language, not yours. Here’s a small example that paid off in practice.

Help the Aged: ‘you have this gift’ direct mail pack

by SOFII

Both the text on the envelope and the incentive in this classic direct mail pack from the 1980s have been copied frequently.