What our first development committee members were willing to do, however, was write notes, sign letters, make informal phone calls, and talk to other members of their law firms outside the formality of a solicitation call. In other words, they were willing to communicate as they do in their ordinary business life regarding everything besides matters of great significance in a legal case. Once it became clear that this was the circumstance with which we would have to work, it made more sense to work with it than to complain or fight about it. Relating to Writing One obvious fact about the law is that it is written. In fact, law codes are among civilization's oldest written artifacts.
Attorneys use and pay attention to writing.
Even though we at NCYL didn't make a conscious decision to rely increasingly heavily on writing to get our message across to our prospects, at some point it must have dawned on us collectively that writing was the appropriate means by which to communicate with them. It also dawned on us that our writing for fundraising needed to be as personal as possible, particularly when we were dealing with prospects who knew our director, or one of our board, committee, or staff members. By personal, I do not mean chummy or colloquial. As closely as possible, we wanted our fundraising communication to be appropriate to each individual to whom it was addressed. In the beginning we were dealing with a prospect list of about 1,300 names.