July 23, 2009
Your Donors: Myths And International Intrigue
Can the appeal go out in English? That’s just one of the many questions that make Geoffrey W. Peters, president and CEO of CDR Fundraising Group in Bowie, Md., scratch his head in dismay when talking to clients considering cross-border appeals.
You have to talk the talk if you want to fundraise in another country. If English isn’t the country’s official language, you will have to send out appeals in the native language.
Even if English is the country’s second language, an appeal in English might alienate potential donors who only have a working knowledge of the language. You want to make sure potential donors read the appeal -- and that your mission is fully understood, according to Peters.
And don’t limit your organization’s growth simply by language. Peters said that some organizations planning to extend to other countries immediately think of Canada and Australia, huge land masses with relatively small populations, and England, which is the “most crowded and most competitive and not necessarily the best choice,” just because English is the dominant language.
“If you didn’t speak to the donor the way they wanted you to, in their language, you kind of lost them as a fundraising prospect,” said Keith Brittingham, strategy director at Merkle, in Columbia, Md. He said that the biggest complaint organizations would hear back would be that the appeal didn’t speak in the correct language.
“A literal translation of an American English letter into another language doesn’t work,” said Peters. He recalled one client tried using a translation Web site to convert an appeal written in English into another language. The emotions and substance were literally lost in translation and made the copy laughable.
“I don’t know that you could be successful in fundraising where you really have to grab at a person’s heart strings and make an appeal that resonates. I don’t know that you can do that well translating,” he said.
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This article is from NPT Instant Fundraising, a publication of The NonProfit Times.
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