Non-Profit Writing: How to Write Well to Help Your Clients and Your Bottom Line

Smiling woman wearing a red bandana on her head is carrying a box marked "medicine."Writing well is an important part of the nonprofit sector, whether it’s for grants, fundraising, compliance reports, client, board, volunteer or staff policies, training, work procedures, strategic planning, standard operating procedures, website text, or other documentation. Writing that is technically strong is one of your greatest assets to help you communicate your idea and the value of your services. There are four universal considerations for technical writing: content, audience and purpose, accessibility, and grammar.

Content: Have something to say

What do you want to say? Are you trying to inspire a donor? Explain how you are meeting state or federal requirements to continue to receive funding or provide volunteers with specific instructions on how to interact with your clients. To produce well-written content, a writer must know specifically what they want to say in every paragraph. Fluff or irrelevant information will slow your reader down and may reduce their interest.

Audience: Underestimate the audience

This may sound counter-intuitive, but if you are writing a grant, report, policy, procedure, or almost any written documentation, it’s safer to assume your audience does not know the topic. Not only should you define all terminology, but you should assume that you need to explain almost everything. Readers want to understand you, and it’s your job to help them.

Accessibility: Make information easy to find

Your audience should be able to find your information with ease. This is more than just knowing your audience; this is about how you organize the information. Accessibility in writing includes anything that helps to organize a document, such as headers and footers, bullet points, summaries at the beginning and end, charts, a table of contents, etc. The writer must write content that is easy to navigate.

Grammar: Correct and consistent

Good grammar inspires confidence. It sends a message that your organization is professional, careful, and can be trusted to serve clients or receive funding. While writing correctly is important, think also about making sure you use the same terminology, abbreviations, grammar, style, and layout throughout the document. Ideally, a second person also reads and edits your work. Often, your own typos will be invisible to you; a second pair of eyes will improve your written products.

Writing well is not a luxury; it is a necessity. However, bringing in outside support can be prohibitively expensive unless you work with a company that understands your budget and your needs. MATC offers substantial discounts to nonprofit organizations. For further information or to get an estimate, call 302-543-6059, or visit www.matcgroup.com.

 

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