Yesterday I received an email request to make a donation to a
national nonprofit. The subject line was
“You’re an inspiration.” Hmmm … I was intrigued. So I opened it.
It was from an animal rescue organization and it started out with
3 pictures of abused animals. A tripod
boxer with the caption “you fixed my
broken leg” (by removing it?), a sweet-looking grey kitty “you removed an arrow from my stomach”
and the third picture was of a terribly naked puppy, “you fixed my third-degree burns.”
Wow, if I did all that, I am
impressed!
Beneath the pictures was the text.
It started: “friend.”
Yes, just friend. Without the capitalization, without any kind of “dear
friend” or “howdy friend”, just “friend.”
and THEN it said, “because of your
generous support”, which by itself seems like a great start. BUT, I’ve never donated to this organization. So, right off the bat my take-away is 1) they
don’t know my name and 2) they don’t know I’ve never given them money. Pretty
sad for a national nonprofit.
The rest of the email said:
Because of your generous support,
[we] were able to help save neglected animals like Nicky, Arrow, and
Rocky – animals desperately in need of lifesaving medical care.
Thank you for stepping up
to help these abandoned animals receive the love and care they deserve – you
truly are an inspiration! I hope you are as proud as I am to know that Nicky, Arrow,
and Rocky, each made full recoveries, all because of support from friends like
you.
To help more abandoned, abused,
and neglected animals, please
click here.
It was signed, “Warmly” by the President & CEO. I wanted to shout: “Where’s the story??!” Pick one of these animals and TELL ME THEIR
STORY!” Tell me how you found them and
whether they still need a forever home. Your
only job was to make me care, and you totally botched it.
I likely would have overlooked all the other
obvious missteps if they’d just given me a story. And an effective story? One that follows the
rules of effective story telling for social change? Well, that might just have
made me pull out my credit card.
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