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 Heartable Fundraising Writing.

After that, we kept right on writing . . .

Eventually we said to ourselves (in unison), "Hey, it's our book, we can put anything we want in there!"

And that's just what we did.

Today, Heartable Fundraising Writing is 28% longer.

As Bill Murray might say, it has 28% more intensity.

Or, as I like to think, it's:

28% more ❤️-able

You can read the second edition of Heartable Fundraising Writing here. Feel free to download it as a PDF, if you want. Just click FILE and then DOWNLOAD.

Bonus from Garrett

In our last newsletter, I shared some of the things I learned from Garrett Harper of Urban Ministry in Birmingham, Alabama.

In response, we got more emails than ever before.

A few examples:

Reeeally appreciate the Garrett story!

I’m having an incredible storyteller do training with my board about their role as storytellers.

And my two orphanage liaisons are homing in on the importance of storytelling at an upcoming orphanage directors retreat 👍🏼.

Cheers to Garrett.

And:

This doesn’t seem to get done regularly. But it’s so smart. I started having small parties years ago. People who gave got to meet each other. Their relationships strengthened their connection to our organization. Easy to do, and long-term smart!

And:

So inspiring. I love the description of Garrett and his commitment to those stories. I also felt so validated by him talking about spending 1 hour on every minute of his talks.

And:

HOORAY for this email, Julie!!! 3-4 thank yous per day and I was cheering for all the Garretts of the world!!! 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌

And:

I am very curious! Who is Garrett? And what else did he say? Is there a way we can access the material he presented?

People wanted to know more.

So let me tell you more.

First, to recap . . .

Garrett is an executive director who does a whole lot of good for his org because he cares so much and focuses on the power of storytelling.

He connects with donors and beneficiaries by carefully tracking their gifts (abilities), dreams, and concerns. Then he connects them with each other!

Every day, he writes one story highlighting the essence of what it means to be human amidst so much inhumanity.

He spends an hour for every minute of a speech he's preparing, with stories at the center.

He turns some of these stories into fundraising direct mail appeal letters that raise a lot of money, that inspire some to stop him on the street just to thank him, and that the occasional Sunday school teacher reads aloud to their students.

He writes 3-4 thank-yous per day.

Brett here:

The other day, to refresh my memory on some of the things Garrett had told Julie and me and to get more details, I met with him for another hour.

There's STILL too much to share.

But here are a few more tidbits you might find helpful:

Culture of Storytelling

"When you try to tell everything, no one remembers," Garrett says.

Instead, he trains his staff to think about, memorize, and lead with stories when interacting with donors and community members.

For example, if Garrett is showing a donor around, he might stop a colleague in the hallway and say, "Hey CJ, you work here at Urban Ministry?"

(Which of course they both know is the case.)

CJ would respond, "Do you want to know what I love about Urban Ministry?" — and then launch into a brief story from his experience.

At every staff meeting, Garrett puts a staff member on the spot in the same way. Again, the person is to respond with "Do you know what I love about Urban Ministry?" followed by a personal story.

No one is to tell the same story twice. You have to come up with a new one each time.

In this way, the whole group is constantly immersed in a storytelling mindset. They need to look out for stories and keep at least one in their back pocket at all times, just in case their moment to share is right around the next corner.

If someone is nervous or stumbles over their words, Garrett kindly says, "Would you like to phone a friend?" and calls on a volunteer instead.

I was not surprised to hear Garrett say, "Donors love it. The stories are so good."

Yet I was surprised when he told me the staff meetings are "everyone's favorite day of the month."

Fun fact:
Garrett came up with this idea after watching this scene from Zootopia.
Connecting

At staff meetings, Garrett wants everyone to avoid the problem of "too much listening — it's exhausting."

So he has everyone pair off and share a story on a topic that's meant to be relevant to everyone.

They might, for example, respond to the prompt: "What's a place where you felt you belonged? Why did you feel that way?"

When all the pairs finish sharing, they reconvene and discuss as a group: "How do we structure Urban Ministry to be a place of belonging?"

This approach connects colleagues to each other and to the mission ... and crowd sources continuous improvement.
Resources Garrett recommends:

Please reply to this email if you want to add to the conversation! :)

Randomly yours

GIF of a young woman in a beauty pageant saying, "I'd have to say April 25th, because it's not too hot, not too cold. All you need is a light jacket."

For your brain, heart, and funny bone...

Fundraisingly Informative — Love: by Eddie Schleyner (a 210-word blog post on the importance of zooming in to capture the essence of something, which is helpful for fundraising writing)
Strangely Wise — The Speech That Changed How I See the World by Sahil Bloom (a blog post about how fish don't know what water is because it's all around them and about how we are like fish when we default to our default thinking... but we don't have to)
Hilariously Accurate — I turned all of my husband's texts into a song (a 1-minute Instagram video in which a mom holding a baby lip synchs to a song whose lyrics are her husband's texts about what's for dinner)

Until next time: May you always collect and treasure the stories that you find heartable!

Grateful,

julie and brett cooper - brett is wearing a bow tie; they are outside in the summer

Julie Cooper & Brett Cooper
Fundraising Copywriters
FundraisingWriting.com
Fundraising Copywriting & Design
100% human, thank you very much.

PS: Are you looking for copywriting or design (or both!) for an upcoming donor comms project (e.g., an appeal, newsletter, impact report, case for support, or email series)? Or maybe you want to get a jump on your year-end fundraising? We have a slot available to help one new client starting in the next couple of weeks. Book a free 30-minute call. We'd love to chat with you.

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28% more ❤️-able

28% more ❤️-able

Bonus from Garrett

Randomly yours

Fundraising thoughts: gifts, dreams, and concerns

1 harmful trend and 1 helpful example for you

Please don't serve your donors slop (AI or otherwise).