The Three Things You MUST Tell Your Donors

As many United Ways enter into the thick of campaign season, we thought it would be a great time to review the three things you MUST tell your donors to get them to give.

1. Issue

The most fundamental thing your donors must understand is the issue(s) that you are working on.

While ideally, your United Way would be working on one issue, like Issue Focused United Ways do, we know that many United Ways have multiple areas they are working on, for example education, income, and health. If that is the case for your United Way, we recommend picking one issue that your United Way is working on to message to donors. Typically, this will come from a program that your United Way is running. For example, if you have Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, you could tell your donors that you are working on early childhood education.

2. Actions

Once your donors know what issue(s) you are working on, it will be important to tell them the actions you are taking to address the issue.

Continuing with the example of early childhood education, your action would be that your United Way offers Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which delivers books to children from ages 0-5 years old. If there are other things you are doing in this area, such as funding partner agencies in that area, feel free to mention these as well. Just remember to limit the number of actions you communicate to your donors to one or two, so that they don’t get overwhelmed.

3. Results

Finally, you will want to tell your donors the results of the actions you are taking.

So, with the early childhood education example, you would want to tell your donors the number of children who received books thanks to their donation or any results you may have from a partner agency that would be beneficial.

When combined, these three aspects become our I-A-R formula (Issue-Actions-Results). We encourage United Ways to use I-A-R in every communication they put out, from campaign presentations to campaign brochures.

For more information about I-A-R, watch our free webinar The Simplest Way to Explain What Your United Way Does