This brief tip sheet offers several helpful suggestions for improving your fundraising letters.

Tips for Highly Effective Fundraising
CompuMentor's International Fundraising Developer Shares her Secrets

By Jody Mahoney, Senior Director of CompuMentor

Fundraising is the toughest job in the nonprofit sector, but it's also the most fun and rewarding. The key is to know whom to leverage in order to tell your story. Development should engage everyone in the organization -- it shouldn't be reserved just for the executive director or the development director. While not as schooled in asking for funding, program directors can also be great fundraisers, and even better storytellers -- and, they actually have significant influence with grantmakers, allowing them to present ideas in a more meaningful way.

If you have a large car wash fundraiser in the community to raise money for your youth nonprofit group then it will take a lot of coordination and help from local business people. For instance you will need a location and you probably need to print flyers and maybe you will borrow a pressure washer. All these things can be donated by the small businesseses in your town.