Guide · 2 min read
How does a donor read your fundraising letter?
There is no single answer to how long a donor spends on your letter. Some skim in seconds, others read every line. How far she gets depends on how the letter is designed, which images it has and which words it uses.
Two phases, not one reading
The knowledge we build on describes reading in two phases. In phase 1, the fast track, the recipient is stressed, short of time and unsure of her interest. Within seconds she decides two things. Does this interest me? And what is it about?
Only when the fast track has answered does she decide to spend time and move on to phase 2, the deep read. There the success criteria are completely different, namely engagement, closeness, hope and action.
A good letter is therefore a choreographed experience. It first gets her to invest time, then builds closeness and engagement, gives hope at the turning point and finally says exactly what she can do.
Most readers skim
A presentation from the DM Lab cites Joyaux and Ahern (2024) for the claim that about 80 percent of the attention a mailing gets comes from the recipient skimming. The figure is not a rule for every single letter. The point is that the message has to work for someone who only skims. People scan their mail, they do not read it.
What the skimmer must take in
Even if she reads no further, she should have picked up these things.
- The first sentence.
- The problem, meaning why it matters, what happens if she gives and what happens if she does not.
- The solution.
- An illustration, preferably a photo, of one person's story.
- The most important thing, framed by white space.
How to steer the gaze
The first sentence is the most important in the letter, because it leads the reader to sentence two. The one thing you can do to get it read is to make it short.
White space around the most important thing draws the eye there, the way a mount frames a picture. Also create stopping effects for the reader, for example a photo, short sentences, captions and repetition.
Stick to one thing that matters most, and let everything else support it. The knowledge calls it SMIT, the Single Most Important Thing.
Why the answer is “it depends”
Nobody can promise in advance how long a donor will spend. It depends on the design of the letter, on the images and on the words. A letter that is easy to skim and that answers the fast track can be read much further than one that looks the same all over the page.
DonorEye shows where the gaze is likely to stop and what is likely to be left behind. It is an expectation built on known gaze patterns, not measured eye tracking.