Copywriting for Not-for-Profit

Starting with your audience

• The best copy is written for a real person
• Identifying copy personas for your project, platforms and objectives across the marketing and product spectrum
• Think benefits, not features
• Keywords, trigger words, psychological copy techniques that work for acquisition, retention and lapsed supporter, volunteers and targets
• Emotional connections for not for profit copywriting

Doing it: Create personas

Doing it: Build a benefit-led copy profile to add to throughout the session

Understanding audience behaviour to target your copy effectively

• What do we know about print and digital readers and what that means for your content
• Who are they?
• What do they want from you?
• What do they relate to?
• What do you want from them?
• What will they respond to?
• How do readers process content differently depending on the format and what that means for your content eg. Emails, web pages, print, social media
• What about our need eg. Retention, donor, volunteer etc.
• Thinking benefits over features
• Visual language, emotive triggers and power words
• How Google fits in
• Incorporating brand personality
• Thinking about lifecycle content opportunities

Doing it: Analysing examples and suggesting improvements

Structuring content and how to use these techniques for editing and writing

• How can you arrange your information to make maximum impact?
• Getting the most important information in early
• Finding the best way to get it across - different ways of starting
• Planning before you write
• Fitting the story into different structures
• Understanding how those structures work
• Considering the order for different formats
• Engaging your reader
• Driving action with clear messaging

Doing it: Planning content order and structure for maximum effectiveness

Platform- and need-specific copy insights

What you need to know to write the most effective copy for:

• Email
• Websites
• Social media (organic and/or paid)
• Letters
• DM mail packs
• Ads
• Lotteries
• Events
• Legacy
• Individual giving
• Volunteers

Doing it: Platform- and need-specific copy challenges

Finding the human story in your material

• Using the classic storytelling arc to engage and involve your different personas
• Finding the emotional elements to resonate with your audience and know when to include facts and figures and when to include human stories
• Choosing the aspects that are likely to persuade them to act for different mediums and different types of campaigns and communications
• Persuasive copy techniques for not for profit content at different points of the lifecycle

Doing it: Delegates will analyse how other organisations use stories in writing

Doing it: Delegates will find the most important aspects of the story in their material

Writing for maximum effect

• Getting the basics right first - common pitfalls a writer needs to spot and avoid
• Tone of voice
• Why sentence length and structure matter
• Why too many clauses obscure your meaning
• Making your writing clear, compelling and effective
• How to avoid using superfluous words
• Finding useful alternatives to overused words and terms
• The importance of active verbs
• Common errors to avoid
• Useful tools to simplify the editing process and spot errors you might miss

Doing it: Delegates will improve poorly written text

Analysis and discussion

To do lists