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October 1, 2025 by Michael Mitchell

Long Fundraising Letters Raise More Money. Period. (Here's a Mountain of Evidence to Prove It)

If you’ve worked in nonprofit fundraising for more than five minutes, you’ve been in this meeting.

You draft your appeal letter. You pour yourself into it. You’ve got a compelling hook, a real story, a clear offer, a strong ask, a killer P.S. It lands at three or four pages. You feel good about it. 

And then someone on the board or the executive team picks it up, flips through it, and says the seven words that have cost the nonprofit sector more revenue than any recession:

“Can we get this down to one page?”

I’ve heard nearly every version of this in my 20 years of nonprofit fundraising. I’ve heard it from board chairs. I’ve heard it from marketing directors who came from consumer brands. I’ve heard it from well-meaning volunteers who “just wouldn’t read something that long.” I once heard it from the mother-in-law of an executive director. 

And every single time, the person saying it is wrong. Not wrong in a “reasonable people can disagree” kind of way. Wrong in a “the data has been screaming at us for 50 years and we keep plugging our ears” kind of way.

So I’m going to make the case. The whole case. I’m going to cite every study I can find. Give you every data point I can chase down. Consult every expert and give you every argument. 

By the end, if you still want to cut your appeal down to one page, at least you’ll be doing it with full knowledge that you’re almost certainly leaving money on the table.

Consider this my closing argument.

Exhibit A: The 90% Statistic

Let’s start with the number that should end this conversation before it begins.

Jeff Brooks, a Fundraisingologist at Moceanic with more than 30 years of experience writing and testing fundraising copy for organizations like CARE, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Feeding America, has been running head-to-head A/B tests of long versus short fundraising letters for his entire career.

Across two plus decades of A/B testing, long letters beat short letters 90% of the time.

Ninety percent.

That’s not a trend. That’s not a slight lean. That’s not Jeff’s preference. That is an overwhelming, lopsided, case-closed avlanche of evidence. You’d be hard-pressed to find any debate in any field where one side wins 90% of the time, and people still argue about it.

Brooks also reports that roughly two-thirds of longer emails outperform shorter ones, which is a slightly lower rate, and makes sense given the different medium, but still a clear majority.

And here’s the kicker. Brooks says four pages isn’t even “long.” It’s two sheets of paper, front and back. He routinely writes letters longer than that. In fundraising direct mail, about four pages is the industry benchmark for best-performing appeal letters.

So if your letter is three or four pages and someone tells you it’s “too long,” what they’re really telling you is that they haven’t looked at any data published in the last three decades on fundraising direct mail.

Source: Why Your Boss Is Wrong — Long Letters Do Work Better In Fundraising (Moceanic)

Exhibit B: NextAfter A/B Tests

If you want controlled experiments with measurable outcomes backed by actual science, not just expert opinion, NextAfter is the gold standard. They are an online fundraising research lab that partners with real nonprofits to run real A/B tests with real donors.

Here are two tests that should be required reading for every fundraiser on the planet.

Test 1: Hillsdale College (411% Conversion Lift)

Hillsdale College wanted to find the right email copy length for their monthly appeal. They tested a shorter email (a brief teaser leading to the landing page) against a substantially longer email with persuasive, value-driven copy.

The results:

  • The shorter email drove twice as much traffic to the landing page.
  • But the longer email produced a 411.5% increase in conversion rate.

Read that again. 

The short version got more clicks, but the long version raised dramatically more money. 

Why? 

Because the short email didn’t give donors enough information to feel motivated to give. 

They clicked out of curiosity, arrived at the landing page, and bounced. The longer email, on the other hand, pre-sold the donor on the value of giving before they ever clicked.

NextAfter’s key insight here is what they call the “micro-yes” effect. 

Put plainly, as donors read persuasive copy, they make a series of small internal agreements with what they’re reading. Each “micro-yes” moves them incrementally closer to the big yes of making a gift. More copy means more micro-yeses. More micro-yeses means more motivation. More motivation means more gifts and larger gifts.

A one-page letter simply doesn’t have enough runway to build that cascade of agreement.

Source: Determining the Right Email Copy Length for Hillsdale College (NextAfter)

Test 2: The Leadership Institute (106% Conversion Increase)

The Leadership Institute tested a standard-length email against a substantially longer version that included more stories, more examples, and more value proposition language. The longer treatment produced a 106% increase in donor conversion rate.

Same principle. More persuasion, more story, more proof resulted in more giving.

Source: How Extended Value Proposition Email Copy Affects Donor Conversion (NextAfter)

The Nuance NextAfter Would Want Me to Include

To be fair, NextAfter would be the first to tell you that longer copy doesn’t always win in every context. They ran a test with Care Net where shorter copy outperformed for a low-commitment pledge action, but the perceived cost of signing a pledge is lower than making a donation, so less persuasion is needed.

But that actually reinforces the core principle. The higher the commitment you’re asking for, the more copy you need to justify it. 

A fundraising appeal, where you’re asking someone to part with actual money, is a high-commitment action. That requires persuasion, persuasion requires space, and space requires more than one page.

Exhibit C: The Eye-Tracking Science of Siegfried Vögele

Now let me introduce you to someone your ED’s mother-in-law who said she’d “never read a letter that long” has almost certainly never heard of, but who fundamentally shaped everything we know about how people interact with direct mail.

Professor Siegfried Vögele was a German direct marketing researcher who, in the 1970s and 1980s, conducted groundbreaking eye-tracking experiments using eye-motion cameras to record exactly how people read and interact with direct mail. 

His work was published in his book Handbook of Direct Mail: The Dialogue Method, a book that is now, sadly, out of print and sells for exorbitant sums, but whose findings have shaped modern direct mail practice for four decades.

Here’s what Vögele discovered about how donors actually read a letter:

  1. They check who sent it (return address, logo).
  2. They look for their own name (salutation, address block).
  3. They flip to the end and read the signature to see who signed it.
  4. They read the P.S. This is the first piece of body copy that over 90% of people read.
  5. They scan for bolded text, underlines, subheads, photo captions, and indented paragraphs.
  6. Then… maybe… they read more deeply, depending on whether the scan caught their interest.

This sequence is critical because it demolishes the assumption behind the “keep it short” argument.

Why This Matters for Letter Length

The “short is better” crowd assumes that donors read letters the way you read a novel, starting at the first word and proceeding linearly to the last. 

If that were true, then yes, a shorter letter would “respect their time.”

But that’s not how anyone reads a fundraising letter. Vögele proved it. Donors scan. They skip. They jump. They look for visual anchors like bolded text, underlines, pull quotes, and the P.S.

This means:

  • A longer letter doesn’t require more reading time. Scanners will scan a four-page letter in roughly the same time they scan a one-page letter. But the four-page letter gives them more entry points, more anchors, more chances to get hooked, and more chances to be convinced as they scan.
  • A longer letter serves every type of reader. Scanners get what they need from the bold text and P.S. Readers get the full story. A short letter serves neither one well because there’s not enough for scanners to grab onto, and not enough story for readers to engage with.
  • A longer letter answers more of the donor’s “unspoken questions.” This was Vögele’s core framework. He believed that donors approach a mail piece the same way they’d approach a stranger knocking on their door by asking a rapid-fire sequence of internal questions. Who are you? Why are you writing to me? What do you want? Why should I care? What will my gift do? How much should I give? What happens if I don’t? The more of these questions your letter answers, the more likely the donor is to act. A one-page letter can answer maybe three of those questions. A four-page letter can answer all of them.

Vögele called each positive answer to an unspoken question an “amplifier” or a small internal “yes” that moves the donor toward the big “YES” of a response. Sound familiar? It’s the same micro-yes concept that NextAfter would independently identify decades later with controlled experiments.

Sources:

Exhibit D: The Neuroscience of Giving — Why Story Requires Space

If Vögele gave us the mechanics of how people read, Dr. Russell James at Texas Tech University has given us the neuroscience of why people give.

Dr. James, who holds both a J.D. and a Ph.D. in consumer economics, conducted fMRI brain imaging studies to watch what happens inside the brain during charitable giving decisions. What he found is that when donors consider making a gift (particularly a significant one), the brain activates regions associated with “visualized autobiography” or the same areas used when people reflect on their own life stories, memories, and personal identity.

In other words, donors give when they connect your cause to their own story. The gift becomes part of who they are.

That matters for letter length because you can’t trigger visualized autobiography with a one-page letter. Building an emotional, narrative connection between the donor’s life story and your cause requires story. Story requires setup, characters, conflict, and resolution. That takes space. You need room to paint the picture, draw the connection, and make the ask feel like a natural extension of who the donor already is.

A one-page letter gives you room for a transaction. “Here’s a problem, please send money.” 

A three-or-four-page letter gives you room for transformation. “Here’s a person whose life changed because of someone like you, and here’s how you can be part of the next story.”

The neuroscience says the second version raises more money. Not because it’s longer for the sake of being longer, but because length is the vehicle for the story, and story is the vehicle for the gift.

Sources:

Exhibit E: The Industry Veterans — A Wall of Consensus

This is not a fringe position. The long-copy advantage in fundraising is one of the most broadly agreed-upon findings in the field. Here is a partial list of the people and organizations who have independently reached the same conclusion:

Jeff Brooks (Moceanic / Future Fundraising Now): 30+ years of testing. 90% win rate for long copy. Has written for CARE, St. Jude, Dana-Farber, Feeding America. Source.

Mal Warwick (Mal Warwick | Donordigital): Author of 19 books on fundraising, including the seminal How to Write Successful Fundraising Appeals. Has directly raised more than half a billion dollars for nonprofit causes. Teaches that a fundraising letter must persuade someone to do something “downright unnatural” — give money away — and persuasion requires space. Source.

Lawrence Direct Marketing: “In head-to-head tests between a direct mail package that contains a short one or two-page letter and another package with a six or eight-page letter, the longer package wins time and time again.” Source.

Integrated Direct Marketing: “Over my 30+ year career, I’ve never seen a shorter letter outperform a longer one in a fundraising test.” Source.

Five Maples: “Ignore those who say you have to keep it down to one page.” Notes that acquisition letters, lapsed donor letters, and main fundraising appeals all benefit from longer copy. Source.

PIP Metro Indy / SirSpeedy: “The average length of the best-performing direct mail letters is about four pages. In fact, longer letters beat short ones about 90% of the time.” Source.

Industry Benchmark Data (Gitnux): “Long-form letters (4 pages or more) often outperform short letters in fundraising acquisition.” Source.

When you have this many independent voices from a mix of practitioners, researchers, agencies, and data analysts all saying the same thing across decades of work, you’re no longer looking at an opinion. 

You’re looking at a professional consensus.

Exhibit F: The Architecture of a Fundraising Appeal

The executive committee pleading for a shorter fundraising letter does not understand that a fundraising appeal letter is not a business letter. It is a highly specialized form of persuasive technical writing, built on a tested architecture that has evolved over decades.

At The Fundraising Academy, we teach this architecture as Hook → Story → Offer → Call to Action, but whatever you call it, every effective appeal needs all of these elements:

  1. The Hook — An opening that stops the scanner in their tracks. Engages emotion immediately.
  2. The Story — A specific, human narrative that puts a face on the problem and makes the donor feel something. Not an institutional overview. A single person’s story.
  3. The Problem/Need — Why this matters now. Why it’s urgent.
  4. The Offer — What the donor’s gift will specifically accomplish. Not vague platitudes. Concrete outcomes.
  5. The Ask — A clear, specific dollar amount or giving level.
  6. Social Proof — Evidence that others are giving and that the organization is effective.
  7. Repeated Calls to Action — Not one ask at the end but multiple invitations to respond, woven throughout.
  8. The P.S. — Vögele’s research tells us this is the most-read piece of body copy. It gets its own strategic purpose.

Now look at that list and tell me how you fit all of that into one page while maintaining:

  • Large type (13-14 point, which is non-negotiable for your typical donor demographic)
  • Short paragraphs (3-6 lines max)
  • White space
  • Bold text and visual anchors
  • An address block and salutation
  • A signature
  • Your logo at the top (because everyone wants their logo on there)
  • Maybe a picture or two interspersed throughout

You can’t. Not without cutting corners that cost you gifts. Something has to go. And whatever you cut… the story, the proof, the repeated asks, the emotional resonance… is the thing that was going to push a wavering donor over the edge into giving.

Shortening a fundraising appeal without understanding this architecture is like editing an engineering blueprint to “look cleaner.” 

It may look tidier. But the building falls down.

Exhibit G: Addressing Every Objection

I want to go through the objections one by one, because I know you’re going to get them at one point if you stay in this game long enough.

“Nobody reads long letters.”

People don’t read long letters about things they don’t care about. But your donors care. They chose to be on your list. They gave you money before. They are, by definition, people who have already demonstrated interest in your cause.

And as Vögele proved, they don’t read linearly anyway. They scan. And a longer letter gives scanners more visual anchors and gives readers more story. Both groups are better served by more content, not less.

More importantly, it doesn’t matter what donors say they prefer. 

What matters is what they respond to. Roger Craver’s research in Retention Fundraising, which is based on a three-year study of donor behavior in the U.S. and U.K., emphasizes that conscious preferences and actual behavior are often completely different. Donors may say they want shorter communications. They give more when they receive longer ones.

“Our donors are busy professionals.”

Two problems with this argument.

First, the demographic most likely to give, and to give generously, to a direct mail appeal tends to be older, often retired, with more discretionary time and income than younger demographics. They are thinking about legacy, impact, and meaning. They want the full story.

Second, “busy” doesn’t mean “unwilling to read.” Busy people read long things all the time. They read long articles, books, and emails when the content is relevant and compelling. The question isn’t whether your donors have time. The question is whether your letter earns their attention. A well-written four-page letter earns attention. A bland one-page letter doesn’t.

“We should respect their time.”

You respect a donor’s time by giving them a compelling reason to give, not by withholding the story that would move them. A short letter that fails to motivate a gift wastes everyone’s time, including the postage, printing, and staff hours it took to produce and send it.

The most disrespectful thing you can do to a donor is send them something so thin and underdeveloped that it doesn’t give them a reason to respond. That’s not respecting their time. That’s wasting it.

“Shorter is more professional.”

This conflates business correspondence with fundraising persuasion. They are completely different disciplines. A one-page memo to a colleague is professional. A one-page fundraising appeal to a donor who needs to be emotionally moved to part with their money is not “professional.” It’s underdeveloped.

You wouldn’t tell a trial lawyer to shorten their closing argument because “professionals are concise.” You’d tell them to make every argument that advances their case. 

That’s what a fundraising letter does.

“We got complaints about long letters.”

A handful of complaints from donors who read the letter (and therefore engaged with it) does not outweigh the revenue data from thousands of donors who responded to it. Every campaign generates complaints. The only metric that matters is net revenue, not complaint volume.

To paraphrase the GOAT of fundraising copywriting, Jeff Brooksl: some donors will complain. Some will unsubscribe. But you’ll get more response, make more money, and have more impact. The math isn’t close.

“Our marketing team says short copy performs better.”

Your marketing team may be experts in consumer marketing, and in that world, they’re often right. When you’re selling shoes or hamburgers, you’re interrupting strangers who didn’t ask to hear from you. Short copy works in that context because the bar for attention is high and the commitment you’re asking for is low.

Fundraising is the opposite. 

You’re writing to people who have already demonstrated they care about your cause. You’re asking them to do something generous and significant. The attention bar is lower (they already care), but the commitment bar is higher (you’re asking for money). 

That combination demands more copy, not less.

Consumer marketing principles do not transfer to fundraising appeals. Full stop.

“What about the cost of printing longer letters?”

This is the one quasi-legitimate concern. Longer letters do cost more to produce and mail. But the question isn’t whether it costs more. The question is whether it nets more. 

If a four-page letter costs 15% more to produce but generates 40% more revenue, that’s not an expense. It’s an investment with a measurable return.

The only way to know is to test it. Which brings me to my final point.

Exhibit H: The One Exception

In the interest of intellectual honesty, I should note the one well-documented scenario where shorter copy reliably wins, and that is emergency or disaster appeals.

When there’s been an earthquake, a hurricane, a famine (something that’s been all over the news) donors already know the need. They don’t need to be persuaded. They need a fast, easy way to respond. In that context, a short, urgent letter outperforms because the persuasion has already been done by the news cycle.

For every other type of fundraising appeal… your annual fund, acquisition, lapsed reactivation, mid-level, major gift solicitation… longer copy wins. 

The only question is how much longer.

The Verdict: Test It

If you’ve read this far, I hope the evidence is clear. But I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I’m not asking you to take Jeff Brooks’ word, or NextAfter’s data, or Siegfried Vögele’s eye-tracking research.

I’m asking you to test it.

Split your mailing list. Send the longer version to half and the shorter version to the other half. Measure three things: 

  1. Response rate
  2. Average gift size
  3. And total net revenue. 

Then, let the donors decide.

Anyone who’s confident that shorter is better should welcome this test. The data will vindicate them.

But in 30+ years of industry testing across hundreds of organizations, thousands of tests, and millions of pieces of mail, the longer letter wins roughly 9 out of 10 times. 

The data is the data. 

And the data does not care about anyone’s personal reading preferences, gut feelings, or opinions about what “looks professional.”

The Deeper Issue: Why This Keeps Happening

I want to close with something that goes beyond letter length, because this is really about something bigger.

The reason this argument happens over and over, in organization after organization, year after year, is that people who are not trained in fundraising feel qualified to overrule people who are. 

Board members, your ED, members of the executive team, and yes, all of their mothers-in-law… well-meaning people who would never dream of telling the accountant how to do the books or the lawyer how to structure a contract… feel perfectly comfortable telling the fundraiser that the letter is “too long.”

Fundraising copywriting is a precise form of technical writing. 

It has its own body of research, its own tested methodologies, its own evidence base. It is not “just writing a letter.” It is the application of behavioral science, donor psychology, narrative structure, and direct response principles to move a specific audience to a specific action.

When someone with a lot of influence or authority who does not also have fundraising domain knowledge overrules the fundraiser on letter length without engaging with any of this evidence, they’re not exercising good leadership. 

They’re exercising uninformed preference. And uninformed preference, when it overrides tested expertise, costs the organization money that would have gone to the mission.

The next time someone tells your fundraiser to shorten the letter, hand them this article and ask them one question: “Show me the data.”

Because we can show ours.

Resources & Further Reading

Michael Mitchell is Co-Founder and CEO of The Fundraising Academy, an online coaching and training membership community for nonprofit fundraisers. He has 20 years of experience in nonprofit fundraising, including roles in higher education, international relief & development, and child hunger organizations.