A Formula for Success

As campaign season creeps closer and closer, I want to share our simple formula for communicating your United Way’s message to potential donors: I-A-R. 

I stands for issue. The first thing your donors need to hear is what issue (or issues) your United Way is working on. We recommend only talking about one issue at a time if you have multiple issues you are working on. So, for example, let’s say your United Way runs Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Your issue would be early childhood literacy.

A stands for actions. Once your donor knows the issue you are working on, in this example early childhood literacy, then you need to tell them what you are doing to impact that issue. In this example, the action you are taking to improve early childhood literacy is through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which provides books to children every month from birth to five years old.

R stands for results. After you tell your donors what actions you are taking to impact the issue, you need to tell them what the results of that action are. This can be done through either stories of those impacted or statistics. Ideally, you would have one of both. So, for our example, we would say that the results are that 500 children received books and one of those children was Emily, who is now able to read with her mom every week.

When you put it all together you end up with a clear, and short, explanation of what your United Way’s impact is, in a way that donors will remember. If your United Way has multiple issues that you are impacting, you can do this for each issue and then cater the issue you talk about to the person you’re talking to.

While this formula can work for any United Way, it is most effective if your United Way is issue focused. An issue focused United Way selects one issue to focus on, then they figure out how they are going to impact that issue, and then they raise the money to do it. When a United Way only has one issue, the messaging is that much clearer.

I would encourage everyone to use I-A-R as you prepare for campaign season. Your United Way is doing amazing work for the community and using I-A-R will ensure your donors know it!