I attended an excellent workshop by Jeff Brooks earlier this week. Jeff was in the UK to promote his new book and work with Aristos.

The session went through a series of fundraising 'truths' - things we know (or should know) around storytelling, design, calls to action and a series of 'stupid non-profit ads'.

These have been proven time and time again to work best in direct mail, yet it is amazing how many times we forget them and find excuses to ignore some of the things that we know work - the p.s., underlining, matched gift offers etc.

One of the big reminders for me was around fundraising imagery.

Jeff gave some tips on finding your fundraising icon. If you could show one image to portray the work of your organisation, what would it be? It's something I haven't worked out in my current role and I will be spending some time pondering (and testing) this in the coming months.

'The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications' is a quick, two hour read and is packed full of useful tips and reminders of how to do direct mail fundraising. You can get it on Amazon in the UK or US.