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We're Julie Cooper and Brett Cooper, fundraising copywriters for great causes. Does your fundraising bring in as much money as it could? You can send donor communications that stir hearts to action. We'd love to help. 💛 Start by subscribing to our FREE and fun weekly newsletter.

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screenshot: Funding progress for water project 5 of 21: $6,230.85 raised of $10,000, with $3,769.15 remaining. Link to give the remaining amount.
Featured Post

Don't miss your (fundraising) moonshot!

This is the 202nd Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, August 5, 2026 Hi Reader, If anyone's ever asked you for a big favor, you know that being asked can feel really good! Especially if the need is real and you respect the person who's asking. A big favor is a kind of big ask. A moonshot, maybe. Don't miss your (fundraising) moonshot! When JFK told us we'd get to the moon...

9 days ago • 1 min read
A photo of seven charity gift catalogs on a table, one is opened to reveal three gift items. One is therapy, one is medical care, one is foster care. All the catalogs have titles such as "Gift Catalog of MIracles" and "Gifts of Joy" and Best Friends' Cata

This is the 201st Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, July 22, 2026 Hi Reader, Do you remember the Wish Book? The Sears holiday catalog would land in my family’s mailbox. And I'd grab it. Within hours, I’d dog-ear pages and circle dolls and other toys with a glitter marker. You know... starting to build my case for Santa.🎅 (Maybe for you it was the Toys "R" Us Big Book or...

23 days ago • 3 min read
GIF featuring a scene from "3 is a magic number" by Schoolhouse Rock

This is the 200th Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Monday, July 6, 2026 Hi Reader, My fellow Americans, I hope you had a wonderful holiday! Every lovely one else, I hope you had a wonderful weekend! Ours was richly scheduled. It rained quite a lot ... yet we were highly pleased to be able to squeeze in 3 of our favorite 7/4 activities: boating, swimming, and fireworks. They say good...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read
screenshot of a completed Mad Lib: "In 1981, the U.S. launched the first real Space garbage. It was named Columbia and was piloted by two brave beets. They had practiced vacationing for two years and were expert apple trees. Columbia took off from Detroit

This is the 199th Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, June 24, 2026 Hi Reader, Brett here: The other day, Julie and I met with a new client who mentioned that their appeal letters had gotten "too Mad Libs," by which they meant too "cookie cutter" or too "plug and play". My mind went back to 10-year-old me doing Mad Libs with my next door neighbor best friend, Billy Bolek....

about 2 months ago • 4 min read
image of a dachsund

This is the 198th Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, June 10, 2026 Dear Reader, Everybody loves a long dog. Like this: Right? And yet, many people flinch at long subject lines. What? The injustice! Okay, I get it. Short subject lines are cute and effective and don't get cut off, even in mobile. But long subject lines can be cute and effective too, even if they get cut off...

2 months ago • 3 min read
a pile of handwritten letters from the late 80s/early 90s

This is the 197th Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, May 27, 2026 Dear Reader, I’ve always loved typography... ...but lately I’ve taken it to a new level. I've gone down a rabbit hole of books, online course materials, and YouTube videos. For me, typography (the art of arranging letters on a page) is like Lay’s potato chips. Once you get a taste, you just can’t stop! So I'm...

3 months ago • 3 min read
GIF of little Ellie removing her aviator helmet and goggles to show her face to little Carl at the beginning of Pixar's Up.

This is the 196th Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, May 13, 2026 Hi Reader, You know how sometimes you have to learn the rules, then learn when it's better to break them? Like when you're told in school never to write a sentence fragment. Come to find out, that's only for formal writing. It's often better to sound natural and authentic, and doing that means writing how...

3 months ago • 2 min read
GIF of Bill Murray holding a whisky, from Lost in Translation

This is the 195th Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, April 29, 2026 Hi Reader, Remember 2023? Right now it feels like a long time ago. You too? Just me? In December of 2023, Brett and I gathered some of our newsletters, organized and formatted them, wrote a few new chapters, added a title page and a table of contents, and, voila, we had a book. It's free. It's called...

4 months ago • 4 min read
GIF of a woman glowing

This is the 194th Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, April 15, 2026 Hi Reader, Once in a while, I feel like Pam from The Office. I want to stand up and shout, "NO MORE MEETINGS!" But once in a rarer while, I walk out of a meeting GLOWING. Like this. Which is what happened to me the other day. And it got me thinking: Fundraising thoughts: gifts, dreams, and concerns "We keep...

4 months ago • 3 min read
Hayley Mills as Pollyanna with a big goofy grin

This is the 193rd Fundraising Writing Newsletter. If you find value here, please tell a fundraising friend. (Your fundraising friend can subscribe here for free.) Wednesday, April 1, 2026 Hi Reader, Did anyone ever accuse you of being "Pollyanna-ish"? It happened to me maybe a dozen times, and I have mixed feelings. Here's what Wikipedia says about the Disney film that put a face and a name to the archetype of a person who's always ready with an-over-the-top smile: Pollyanna is a 1960...

4 months ago • 4 min read