Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy continue with letters nine, 10 and 11, from 1948 and 1949.

Letter 9, pages 1 and 2.

Letter 10, pages 1 and 2.

Letter 11, pages 1 and 2.

Letter 11, page 3.

As part of our mission to build a permanently accessible archive of great fundraising practice SOFII will soon bring you all 21 of Bruce Barton’s legendary fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy. You can find letters one and two here, letters three, four and five here, letters six, seven and eight here, letters nine, ten and eleven here and letters 12 to 14 here.

SOFII is indebted to writer Fergal Byrne (see the ‘How I wrote that’ series elsewhere on SOFII) for bringing these brilliant fundraising letters to our attention.

This case study appears in these showcases

• All our yesterdays: the fundraising archive showcase
• Direct mail showcase

More case studies from Bruce Barton

• The Bruce Barton letter: the classic long copy letter from 1925 that pulled a 100 per cent response
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy, from the 1940s.
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: From 1945, letters three, four and five.
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: from 1946/47, letters six, seven and eight.
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: from the turn of the 1950s, letters 12, 13 and 14
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: from 1951, letter 15
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: from 1955 and 1956, letters 16 and 17
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: from 1956 and 1957, letters 18 and 19
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: from 1957 and 1958, letters 20 and 21
• Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: from 1960, letter 22

SOFII's view

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Background:

Barton just gets better. In letter nine he is reporting back, in exquisite detail, on the fruits of recent fundraising for the school. He lets Frank Boyden*, legendary headmaster at Deerfield from 1902 to 1968, tell part of the story for him. Boyden is equally as articulate as Barton, though I suspect Barton schooled the headmaster effectively in the art of creative copywriting or even wrote the thing for him. ‘It is wonderful to be able to walk between the aisles in the dining room without falling over boys and tables’, he says, in true Barton style. We can see the picture as he writes, so donors will readily visualise the achievements their gifts have wrought. The trick of suggesting that some parents who had seen the transformation had been moved to pledge second gifts is pure Barton and well worth copying. His description of major gift prospects and the lead up to Deerfield’s 150th anniversary are also instructive.

Letter 10 has more magic. Just the opening paragraph alone is ‘worth bottling’, as they would say in Yorkshire. He gets a bit lyrical in this epistle, and the depth of his religious conviction surfaces clearly. It sounds, as even Barton admits, ‘…old-fashioned, in these days of the atom bomb’. But the story and the way he tells it are downright riveting. And he knows how to pay his readers a compliment. Great fundraising.

How personal Barton makes his letters! Letter 11 says, ‘please don’t throw me in the waste paper basket, read me through. There is good news later on, and a good story.’ What an offer. Hard now, to put this letter down. This is a man who through his writing over the years has made friends of his readers. He talks to them as such. So when he brings up that unseemly subject – money – he can introduce the topic while pulling his own leg, and even make his readers feel sympathy for him. It is finely crafted prose, much to be envied. He then goes on to describe his own giving in such a homely way, with Mrs Barton too, that it would be a hard heart indeed that wouldn’t do at least as much as they. Then, with the beguiling art of the master storyteller, he introduces his readers to how others are giving, and why. His use of reported speech is exemplary, a style well worth perfecting.

Brilliant. And now these valuable letters are here, free, for SOFII readers to learn from. The good news is, there’s another ten of these letters to come.

Ken Burnett 21st March 2011

Other relevant information:

Frank Boyden, Headmaster.

Boyden kept his desk in the hallway of Deerfield Academy’s main building so as to keep the pulse of the school. As headmaster, he became known for taking in students who had been expelled from other schools.

Final Notes:

Find Bruce Barton's letters one,and two here, letters three, four and five here. And letters six, seven and eight here.