Best Emails to Use for Fundraising 2025
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As a non-profit marketer, you always want to get the most out of your budget.
That means you need methods that work. Since 25% of donors are inspired to give money when email is the communication medium, email is a popular choice across the fundraising industry.
Make your marketing as effective as possible with this guide. You’ll find nine customizable emails to use for fundraising, that all follow best practices to inspire more donors, with tips and subject lines to boost the success of every campaign you launch.
You might be bubbling with ideas to include in your fundraising email, but that passion can quickly lead to emails that are too long and are left unread.
Stick to the key information to keep your message on track.
Include the following for a more engaging email:
Raising money or rounding up support for a good cause can be tough.
When you’re planning emails to use for fundraising, give your campaign the best chance of success by following these best practices.
Personalized emails are more likely to catch the interest of your recipients and provide a better experience, which can encourage them to act.
Adding a name goes a long way, but if possible, segment your email list into demographics or previous behaviors and interactions with your organization.
This lets you tailor your messaging to appeal to your audience and their unique situations.
Keep fundraising emails short and sweet, as most people don’t have time to read long messages.
Break up your copy into short, scannable chunks to avoid overwhelming readers.
Use bullet points and large subheadings to guide the eye and make your content easy to digest. An HTML email (which is simply an email with design elements) tends to be much more engaging than plain text versions.
If designing emails from scratch sounds daunting, a fundraising email template could be exactly what you need.
You’ll find hundreds of beautiful, customizable templates in an email builder. An email builder is a tool anyone can use to design highly engaging emails quickly, with a drag-and-drop editor that makes the whole process simple.
These fully customizable templates already follow best practices, so you can be confident your emails have engaging layouts. Many of them have been specifically created for the fundraising space, so you’ll have plenty of options, helping you maximize your chances of success!
But that’s not all. Email builders offer one-click integrations with Gmail and Outlook, so you can easily export your designs to those ESPs (and up to 60 others).
With an email builder under your belt, you can spend less time trying to design an email, and more time crafting a message that resonates with donors. Plus, you won’t need to hire a coder or designer, which means your budget can go further!
Add a high-quality photo or video to draw people into your email and illustrate your cause.
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, so use imagery to connect with potential donors on an emotional level.
Keep visuals relevant. For example, include photos of the people or animals you’re setting out to help.
Pro tip: Email builders connect with sources like Slack, Pocket and Feedly. So, as you naturally collect content around the web, you can save them to your email builder library. They’re then ready to drag and drop into your designs whenever you need them!
Email builders also have powerful multimedia libraries, meaning you can add various types of content - from images to videos and even files like PDFs. Thanks to direct integrations with royalty-free image and GIF sites, you have access to over 2 million ready-to-use assets.
Don’t risk alienating the people reading your emails on the go - there are lots of them!
Make sure your designs are responsive to every device and platform. Not designing emails for mobile can disrupt the format and make your message hard to read.
In other words, you could miss out on donations.
Create emails that have an impact.
We’ve collected some of the best emails to use for fundraising, with fundraising emails for non-profits, individuals, and businesses.
Do you have an upcoming bake sale, trivia night, or other fundraising idea?
Invite recipients to be a part of it with a simple fundraising email.
Be sure to hit the key points, like the event you’re hosting, the cause, location, time and date. If you’ve held these events before, share the amount you raised and the difference that money made.
This fundraising email example is great for ongoing initiatives. For example, animal welfare, education, or environmental matters.
Although we usually recommend choosing one single CTA, this type of email might differ slightly.
You could provide multiple ways for recipients to get involved, such as by donating money or simply spreading the word on social media. So, more than one CTA might be needed.
If there are multiple ways for people to support the cause, be sure to make this clear in the layout of your email. Bold subheadings and/or images can help provide the distinction.
Non-profits are always on the lookout for donations, and your non-profit newsletter could be your best tool.
Use short, concise paragraphs to convey why recipients should donate, and how they can do so.
Suitable for charities through to businesses that just want to do their bit, this fundraising email template is designed to encourage more people to attend your event.
Outline the cause for which you’re raising money and how you’re raising that money, and provide a clear link for readers to buy a ticket.
Did you know: Email builders come with built-in, detailed analytics so you can analyze the success of every email you send? They let you track metrics like open rates and click rates, so you can test and optimize things like CTAs, making sure they hit the mark every time. What’s more, is that these metrics are trackable, whatever ESP you use to send your emails from, including Outlook and Gmail!
Send a thank you email to anyone who supported your cause.
It’s a good idea to send these emails after each donation, but you could also send an end-of-year summary as a huge collective “thanks”.
In those emails, round up the year's accomplishments to remind donors they made a great choice.
If you’re fundraising as an individual, you’ll mostly be contacting friends and family to collect donations.
However, that doesn’t mean you don’t need a beautifully designed email.
Aim to keep these emails more personal - add your unique spin and let your personality shine through.
Use this fundraising template to help with the design, so you have more time to craft a message they can’t ignore.
Hey [Name],
You might already know that I’m raising some money for [cause].
This is so important to me, because [explain your reasons for fundraising].
To raise as much money as possible, I’ve set myself the challenge of [fundraising activity/challenge]. It’s going to be tough, but I know I can do it!
Would you be able to donate to this cause? Any amount helps!
Here’s the link to donate: [insert link].
If you’d like to know anything else about the challenge or the charity, you know where I am!
Thanks,
[Name]
Reaching out to businesses is a great way to spread the word and bump up donations for your fundraiser.
Consider offering more than one way a business might help. For example, if they can’t provide a monetary donation, can they offer a product, service or experience for you to give away in a raffle?
Keep the copy simple and straightforward. Use polite language and appeal to the reader’s emotions however you can.
Top tip: Make sure your emails display perfectly across all email devices, by using an email builder. Designs are fully tested on over 50 email service providers, including Gmail and Outlook, so your email always looks polished and professional when you contact businesses.
Hi [Name],
I’m fundraising for [cause] and reaching out to local businesses like yours for some much-needed support.
I’m raising money for this charity because they do some great work for [describe what the charity does and who it helps]. I know this is close to many of our hearts in the community.
So far, we’ve raised [insert amount], but we’d love to push this more for maximum impact.
That’s why I’m getting in touch with you.
Would you be interested in supporting me on my journey? A gift of any amount would be appreciated. You can use the link below to donate:
[insert link]
If you’re able to and would prefer to support the fundraiser in other ways, I’m also collecting gifts for a raffle to help the cause. Please let me know if there’s anything you’d like to give!
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Thanks,
[Name]
[contact info]
In some cases, sharing extra information about your cause can boost donations.
This is an educational or informative email that provides more details. For example, you could share videos of the impact the non-profit has already made, or pull articles from the web that emphasize why donations are needed right now.
Email builders can really speed up this process. They have a dynamic web scraping tool that populates your email with relevant information, like adding a video directly to the email just by copying and pasting the URL.
eCommerce brands with a cause close to their hearts often use their platforms to raise money.
If you’re giving a percentage of your profits to a certain charity, or planting a tree with every sale, this fundraising email example will help spread the word and get you closer to your fundraising goal.
Now that you have a selection of great emails to use for fundraising, the next task is to make sure those emails are opened.
That’s where your subject line comes in. This should focus on the cause (so, make sure the content of the email is clear), be relatively brief (30-50 characters), and incentivize opens in some way. For example, use the recipient’s name, get creative, or raise curiosity.
Here are some good subject lines to get you started:
Whether you’re at the start of your fundraising journey, or have been running a non-profit for years, you now have the tools and templates to inspire more potential donors to take action.
Simply grab one of the emails to use for fundraising from this list, customize it with your message, and export it to your preferred platform to send. An email builder can reduce costs and take the design process down to minutes, leaving you with more time to work toward those all-important targets.
To see it in action get a free two-week trial and see how easy it is to build beautiful, effective emails.
