Jeff Brooks steps on a lot of toes with his book The Fundraiser’s Guide to Irresistible Communications. Or perhaps the better metaphor is that he goes after a lot of sacred cows. This is a book that will challenge a lot of your assumptions about writing a fundraising letter and bring you back to what really works. Or so the author says.

For instance, Brooks says that fundraising letters need to be longer, not shorter. That writing like you speak is critical and you shouldn’t be too worried about grammar. That any word with three syllables should be banned from your vocabulary. That you need to ask more often, not less. That corny works and bold underlined words are effective.

In short, he’d have us writing fundraising letters that look a lot like the kind of junk I tend to throw in the recycling. Yet he claims emphatically that such approaches really work.

One weakness in the book is a lack of attention on fundraising via email. Most of Brooks insights are for direct mail, which is being used less and less. He claims that the practices he espouses translate over to email, but I didn’t find his argument for that to be compelling.

Still, it’s a book that got me back to basics and had me thinking about my own letters. I’m not sure that my fundraising letters are going to achieve the 4th Grade level he says they should, but I ams going to tweak my approach. It’s a good and helpful book. Just don’t take it too seriously.