If you’ve had any high-level writing training, you’ve learned some pieces of wisdom that can make you a better writer.

If you want to do well in fundraising, you need to forget many of those same pieces of wisdom. Because they will make your fundraising weaker.

Here are some things “good” writers avoid … but fundraising writers are okay with:

1. Telling. The common writing advice is Show, don’t tell. For fundraising, it should be Show and tell. If you skip “telling” in fundraising, a lot of your readers won’t grasp what you want them to know or do!
   
2. Repetition. In “good” writing, you usually avoid saying something more than once. In fundraising, we know that if you say something only once, a lot of readers won’t know you’ve said it. In fundraising, the ask should appear many times.
   
3. Clichés. Don’t lean on tired old ways of describing things. Invent new ways. Except in fundraising, where we aren’t getting graded on originality. Clichés are clear and often have emotional punch precisely because they’re familiar. Don’t avoid them.
   
4. Exclamation marks. “Good” writers create excitement with words, so they rarely need exclamation marks. We fundraisers create excitement every which way we can. We are not afraid of a few exclamation marks. But don’t over-use them; if every sentence has an exclamation mark, that’s the same as having none at all.
   
5. Passive voice. The nearly universal condemnation of passive voice is silly, really. Good writing almost always has some passive sentences. In fundraising, we care a lot about sounding informal and colloquial, so we use a bit more passive than others. (But be careful not to over-do passive voice; that can make the writing boring.)

(This post first appeared on May 23, 2019.)