Open Immediately: Straight Talk on Direct Mail Fundraising : What Works, What Doesn'T, and Why

If you want straight talk about direct mail fundraising, do what the title says: open this book immediately.

In it you’ll find 81 brief chapters examining virtually every topic of importance to those who raise money by mail.

Unlike other books that over-complicate the subject, Open Immediately!, by Stephen Hitchcock, does just the opposite. It offers an elegantly simple and inviting approach to direct mail by focusing on one element at a time. (This approach has the added benefit of making it easy to find the exact help you need.)

The book is divided into six major parts:

• Essentials of Direct Mail Fundraising • Acquiring and Renewing Donors • Targeting Your Mailings • Writing Effective Letters • Key Components of Your Appeal, and • How to Ask

Within each part, Hitchcock offers specific suggestions with just enough detail to allow you to implement his advice. Take the section, ‘How to Ask.’ Among the topics discussed are: ways of asking for the gift, why it’s important to ask for the gift at least twice, when not to ask for a specific gift, how to increase the first gift (the key one as it dictates the size of future gifts), how to raise $1,000 gifts by mail, and how to ask for monthly gifts and charitable bequests. And that’s just a sampling.

Or take the section, ‘Key Components of Your Appeal.’ The 16 topics Hitchcock explores in these pages include a discussion of obsolete (and offensive) techniques, the cardinal rules of envelope copy, the misunderstood role of inserts, the use of multiple signatures, how to contain your costs, even a look at URGENT telegrams and whether they work.

With its clear-eyed realistic focus, there’s no other book on direct mail fundraising quite like Open Immediately!.

Hitchcock knows that your time is limited. He realizes too that you’re not going to overturn your current program. But what you can do, he understands, is tweak your efforts to be more profitable. And, Open Immediately! offers dozens and dozens of ways to do just this.

Stephen Hitchcock, President of the award-winning direct response firm, Mal Warwick and Associates, is co-author of Ten Steps to Fundraising Success and 999 Tips, Trends, and Guidelines for Successful Direct Mail and Telephone Fundraising.