Tear my fundraising copy apart for me, please!

We used to call it Fund Raising, then "Development" came in and professionals came to not for profit organizations. You have chosen one of the most difficult nuts to crack.

Getting strangers to give money away is one of the hardest things to sell.

Which is why your OUTLINE or strategy, plus a clearly identified TARGET is going to be essential. I'd bet the farm, this wouldn't work as a shotgun mailer, it would be a waste of time and money to send out a "please help" note through the mail.

But for the sake of your copy writing journey, here is more or less an outline for you to think about.

I teach, preach and yelp about RESULTS first, that is, what is the result you want?

So, in fund raising, they always have goals. Say this little boots on the ground agency is seeking 25,000 bux for their Holiday Gift Giving season. It will come them through small donations, with a couple of bigger donors, probably toward the end to "top it off" to hit the goal.

20,000 will come from individual donors, 10, 25,50 dollar donors. Some may give more.

If you average 50 dollars a donor, you will need 400 donors. This is big picture thought process. Now, where will you find them? Who could you partner with? Local supermarkets? Local convenience stores? Right now, at every gas station, supermarket, convenience I can "buy an ornament" for a buck and put my name on the wall, and on the way out, drop my change into a bell ringer's bucket.

This thinking then gives you a rough sketch of a donor, in your example, the woman you were going to mail your thing to.

Sally is a refugee (I think a poor choice of words in this example), survivor might work better. Her mother had to flee (power word)
and she found a safe harbor from her storm,
Your local center is the SAFE house, and these are the Emotional points you need to cover in your attempt.

The writing: Living in a safe house, with TWO sisters and mum, is hardly NORMAL in any way shape or form.

The sisters are casualties too, are they not? There is more story to tell. We don't know why mom can't qualify for social services help, more here than meets the eye.

Look, you deserve a pat, some congrats for giving it a try. You're at least putting yourself on the firing line here for some critique.

So, your writing is good, better than most of the recent content posters here, free of glaring errors, so this is a GOOD THING.

Another good thing is you RECOGNIZE and ACKNOWLEDGE the difference between writing to persuade (to provoke action) and the content writing to inform, so many content writers simply can't accept the difference.

You also "get" there is an EMOTIONAL element involved, and you give some of that in your Sally example.

Those are all good things which you can build off of. I'm going to suggest, and this is only one opinion, you close out the fund raising efforts, it is very advanced copy writing stuff...and refocus on writing to sell something a bit easier to sell.

But, if fund raising is where you want to eventually land in your copy writing journey, then you must gather and study everything you can put your hands on and see how the pros do it. Development is a Trillion dollar world wide industry which can be lucrative for both the writer and the organization and their people who benefit.

Use your good writing skills, get off to faster start, and start to sell something As Soon As Possible. PLR is abundant, affiliate products which allow you to write your own copy on is good....or create your own product.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

GordonJ