A one-pager designed with donors in mind
Recently, I was working with one of our clients in a board meeting and we discussed how to share results of our client’s work over the past year. I respectfully listened and eventually piped up, “How about a one-pager for donors?”
You all know Andrea have touted the importance of creating a one-pager... there are many ways one-pagers can work for you. They can help promote your findings, highlight opportunities for growth, showcase participants’ experiences with your program, and so much more.
In a separate meeting, I discussed that a one-pager for donors would not just be any one pager, it would be a one pager that would promote our client’s work and showcase the opportunities for growth. It had to be short, it had to be catchy, it had to show what our clients accomplished and also where they needed additional support without coming off as needy.
The way we tell the story to donors matters, and this was something I had not done before. I asked in my evaluation community if anyone had worked on a one-pager for donors before. I was surprised that most of my colleagues had not worked on something like this before. I decided to search some online resources. I found a few examples that some of my former colleagues created as well as from some organizations we work with, and the materials were too long, or not specific enough. I was hitting a dead end… there had to be some resources out there, right?
Finally, I found a great resource from spitfire strategies that made perfect sense.
The way to design an effective one-pager can focus on either on persuading the audience to donate or informing the audience about the great work the organization has engaged in over the past year. From there, the outline is pretty similar:
I shared this outline with our client and they were super exited. Their one-pager will actually be a combination of the two approaches with the idea to create a longer report for a few key donors and share the shorter version with all donors that highlights their program’s major successes over the past year as well as target opportunities for growth. Hopefully it will be a win win for all!