Donor Communication: Formal and Informal - It's the difference in talking to your prospective in

There is a need for formal pieces. They introduce you to an audience you don’t really know yet. I learned a lot about formal pieces as the first ever Director of Communications at Chatham Hall. Chatham Hall does things well. It was the perfect place to perfect the formal piece.

Here are the Five Steps to a perfect Formal Communication I learned at Chatham Hall:

1. Pass the text through multiple editors and proofers. Everything must be grammatically correct and perfectly punctuated. (There’s a danger here that it will become too vanilla. So try to maintain a voice.)

2. Choose pictures carefully. They should tell the story. They must be crisp and clear.

3. Tell your story through headlines, photo captions and quotes that are pulled out and highlighted.

4. Use bold type or color to highlight the main ideas. Lead the reader through your main points with bold type.

5. Use white space to direct readers’ eyes to the text. Keep your piece clean, crisp, and concise.

Formal pieces serve an important purpose. They introduce your organization to a broad audience. They are beautiful. They are perfect. They win awards. Think about those potential in-laws again. You want them saying, “Good choice.”

But we all know it’s the informal pieces that win hearts.

Here are Six Steps to an effective Informal Communication:

1. As a Director of Communications be involved in your organization. Observe each function. Watch for stories.

2. Keep your audiences in mind. At Chatham Hall, I would attend chapel or a track meet, an assembly or a play thinking about what would mom want to know, or grandma, prospective families, alumni, donors, or the community want to know. I watch for ways to present the stories to each group.

3. I segmented email lists, so I could target each group with stories that would interest them.

4. I wrote from the heart. I did my best to be grammatically correct, but no proofers for these communications. This needed to sound real rather than perfect.

5. I kept my vignettes short. One message. One voice

6. These communications were clearly authentic. They weren’t perfect, but they were heartfelt.

The response was overwhelming. Readers were engaged. We corresponded. We connected. My job was to win hearts for Chatham Hall and I did.

You will, too.

Make the formal pieces perfect and polished, and eye-catching.

But the genuine connection, the real relationships will come from your authentic voice speaking from your heart about topics that matter to that particular audience. You are making friends for your organization – hopefully forever friends.