American Heart Association Case Summary & Dissertation Chapter:
          •  For a new article on the American Heart Association campaigns sent to a million households, click here:
               CASE SUMMARY, A million-household mailing by American Heart Association (7 MB)
          •  For the complete dissertation chapter on which this article was based, click here:
              The Impact of Paratextual Variables on Response and ROI  (7 MB)
          •  For a complete table of statistics from the American Heart Association renewal campaigns, click here:
              Detailed Statistical Analysis of American Heart Association Renewal Campaigns
          •  Visit our gallery of similar campaigns by clicking here: HighTouchGreetings.com

Name Your Own Price Summer Special on HandScript Mail™
      (Price-Match Offer That Guarantees No EXTRA Cost for Test Participants . . . Good Through September 30)

        In addition to evaluating the language of fund raising, my doctoral research also measured how features like handwriting and cancelled discount stamps work alongside writing to improve response. These features are called paralanguage.

        Through September 30, we're conducting several additional test mailings comparing Computer HandScript™-addressed mail to conventionally-addressed mail. To eliminate any hesitation to participate, computer-simulated addressing will be added to any test mailing at no extra cost. Plus, we will cancel nonprofit stamps to make them look first class.

        Here's how it works. For this test period . . .

          •  We will match any quote a participant has from their vendor for a conventional mailing
          •  We will produce that mailing (doing everything) for the same cost you'd be paying anyway
          •  But we'll address your campaign using Computer HandScript™ at no extra cost
          •  And we'll cancel your mail discount stamps to make the mail look first class
          •  This extra personalization is free of any extra charge
          • Results will probably increase (though we can't promise specific outcomes)

        For example, my dissertation evaluated data from mailings the American Heart Association sent to more than a million households. In three A/B tests for a 150,000 subset of these campaigns, data revealed that computer-simulated handwriting and cancelled discount stamps . . .

          •  Increased net income 252% over a box of free greeting cards
          •  Increased response 346% over a window envelope letter
          •  Increased response rate, average gift, and net income in a test against real handwriting
          • Decreased postage costs by using discount stamps
          • Made envelopes look like full-rate first class mail since discount stamps had been cancelled
          • Response rates did not decrease, suggesting this alone could save millions sector-wide
          • Response increased 27.27% for mail using cancelled versus naked (not cancelled) nonpfrofit stamps

          (See below to download the Case Summary article on these campaigns, excerpted from my dissertation)

        To participate in a test between now and September 30 . . .

          • Click here for more detail: Name Your Own Price Summer Special 
          • To discuss a project, call toll free:888-HighTouch (888-444-4868) or call direct, 909-864-2798.
          • Or email me at HighTouchDirect@MSN.com or at Frank@TheWrittenVoice.org.

                       Eight Additional Resources to Download:
          The following eight additional items further describe my research and illustrate some of the variables tested . . .

1.   The Way We Write is All Wrong  (35 page paper)
2.   Executive Summary of The Way We Write is All Wrong (3 page paper)
3.   The Impact of Paratextual Variables on Response and ROI (84 page paper)
4.   Executive Summary of The Impact of Paratexutal Variables on Response and ROI (2 page paper)
5.   Layout of A-6 Size Greeting Card or Note Card Fund-Appeal Package (1 page paper)
6.   Special Offer Price List for HandScript-Personalized Greeting Cards and Four-Piece HandScript-Personalized Fund-Appeal Cards (1 page)
7.   Complete University Campaign Sample with Extra Four-Page Story Piece (each item is a separate pdf you can download):
      a. Card Cover b. Card Inside c. 4-Page Story d. Reply Device Front e. Reply Device Back f. Outgoing Envelope (OGE) g. Courtesy Reply Envelope (CRE)
8.   Information about Computer HandScript Simulated Handwriting (which my dissertation documents has more than doubled response rates).


 A Call for Additional Organizations to Conduct Discourse Audits:
          I'm interested in analyzing the written fund-raising discourse of additional nonprofit organizations. The linguistics study reported in my dissertation profiled the writing of 880 U.S. nonprofits. Among these were all 735 that raise at least $20 million annually. My research was actually motivated by a desire to refute an earlier study by Indiana University's Ulla Connor and Thomas Upton. They had painted a bleak picture of fund-raising discourse, based on a profile of 316 direct mail letters written by 108 Indianapolis-area nonprofits. Connor and Upton characterized the linguistic substructure of the typical fund appeal as closer to academic prose than a conversation or personal letter. And the texts they studied were virtually devoid of narrative.

         Well, I didn't buy it. As an Ohio State grad, and having studied at Purdue one summer, I knew the Indiana area well. Rather arrogantly I surmised that their findings were skewed. I reasoned that the texts they studied had been written by less-skilled writers who worked for small nonprofits parked amid the cornfields of Central Indiana. "Surely," I thought, "the writing of my elite nonprofits, produced by seasoned professionals, would be superior to the work product of nonprofits in a 'fly-over state' like Indiana."

         However, in addition to being terribly arrogant in these assumptions, I was dead wrong. Like the Connor and Upton corpus (body) of texts, the writing of my supposedly "more sophisticated" nonprofits also contained few of the linguistic features that create interpersonal connections with readers. What's more, the texts written by nonprofits in my study population contained even less narrative than their Indiana counterparts. In fact, they had less story content than the genre of official documents!

          To paraphrase the famous words Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert: "Fund raisers, we have a problem!"

          From a representative sample of your organization's fund-raising texts, we can profile your discourse—determining whether it's warm and personal or cold and detached . . . whether it's filled with narrative or uses the abstract language of mission statement-speak. However, a linguistics profile on its own is no better than a mirror. Statistics only reflect reality. Numbers alone are powerless to change anything. But based on the profile that emerges, we can suggest ways to change the rhetorical superstructure and linguistic substructure of your writing so it connects with readers and puts a human face on your organization's work with narrative. Download the research prospectus below for more details . . .

          Click Here for our Prospectus -- How A Discourse Audit Can Improve Your Fund-Raising Texts.

               The Root Problem With The Discourse of Philanthropy:
           At its best, written fund-raising and marketing discourse should read like a conversation sounds—filled with personal views, concerns, stories and emotion. But my linguistics research reveals that these genres actually read more like doctoral dissertations than the lively banter of friends over a cup of coffee. Most discourse—especially the writing of fund raisers—creates little interpersonal involvement and contains less narrative than academic prose and official documents.
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           It was this problem that framed the mission of The Written Voice—to infuse the written text with the passion of speech. At institutions of higher education and among professional associations, the urgency of this mission is reflected in the virtual absence of research agendas, courses and seminars on the language of fund raising.

                      Philanthropy Fairies Don't Exist:
           Hard-won progress by researchers in many areas has strengthened philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Those who have labored so hard for so long are to be congratulated, appreciated, and encouraged to do even more. However, the vacuum of knowledge building on the language of fund raising would leave one to believe that some benevolent philanthropy fairy just tosses magic dust, waves her wand, and poof—perfect messages and money suddenly appears. But there is no magic dust, no wand, no fairy...only real people who raise money the old-fashioned way—they ask for it.

           Those working on the front lines of the nonprofit sector deserve fund-raising courses and seminars based on validated theory spawned by cross-disciplinary communication research. However, in the polite society of academia fund raising is seldom the research topic of choice. Curricula and studies seem to focus on everything but the raising of money. And when fund-raising courses are offered, they seem to focus on technique and ignore the underlying structure of the language upon which technique depends.

           And professional associations are no better. While they offer plenty of fund raising training, they almost never discuss the language that shapes the fund-raising message they train practitioners to deliver. This is shortsighted, given that effective fund raising is the nonprofit sector's conditio sine qua non. It is that without which not. Without effective writing, no money is raised, no programs are funded, and nothing else really matters.

   Peter Drucker's View—Problems Are Not Equally Problematic:

           This view is consistent with the undemocratic priority Peter Drucker placed on certain key result areas that he believed were "the same for all businesses, for all businesses depend on the same factors for their survival." His eight domains included 1.) marketing, 2.) innovation, 3.) human organization, 4.) financial resources, 5.) physical resources, 6.) productivity, 7.) social responsibility, and 8.) profit requirements. But "marketing and innovation," Drucker asserted, "are the foundation areas in objective setting. It is in these two areas that a business obtains its results. In all other objective areas the purpose of doing is to make possible the attainment of the objectives in the areas of marketing and innovation."

           Fund raising that builds mutually satisfying partnerships between donors and nonprofits is philanthropy's cognate of marketing. As such, it deserves the same level of academic scholarship that marketing has attracted in the commercial sector, producing new fields of inquiry like consumer behavior. I hope my study debunks the myth of fairy dust philanthropy and provokes additional studies across disciplines like linguistics, rhetoric, and neurolinguistics. Such scholarship can only strengthen the voice of philanthropy—the voice of the friend of man. As scholars better understand the substrates of communication theory at the foundation of fund raising, practitioners will be better equipped to carry out their important tasks.