The best advice I can give you for writing successful fundraising letters is to act as if your donors are obese. Really obese.

Imagine, for example, that they struggle with their weight every single day. Imagine that they hate the way they look. Imagine that they want nothing more than to lose weight and look fabulous.

Now imagine that you have the weight-loss program that your donors need to shed those unsightly pounds and return to the weight and energy level they crave.

But how are you going to persuade your donors that you have the weight-loss solution they need?

With amazing before-and-after pictures.

You know the kind I mean. You see them on the covers of the magazines at the supermarket checkout lane. Theres a photo of Tom before his diet and another photo of Tom after his diet. Before, 357 lbs. After, 168 lbs. Tom lost 189 lbs in 12 months! So can you!

I once read through an issue of Weight Watchers magazine that was filled with these sample before-and-after photographs. Even though each example bore a disclaimer saying that the results for each person depicted were not typical, these photos were compelling and persuasive. I was obese. I wanted to lose. So they persuaded me. They proved that the Weight Watchers program worked.

Your donors may not be obese. But they are nevertheless looking to invest their money in charitable causes that make a difference. Your role as a direct mail fundraiser is to prove that your organization is changing the world. The best way to do that is to show your donors before-and-after pictures, both literal and figurative.

• You could show the clearcut forest from the 1960s and then show it today, reforested, thanks to your organization.

• You could show a before photo of Ahmed malnourished in a Somali refugee camp, and an after photo of him graduating from Yale.

• Or you could simply describe your before and afters, showing through vivid word pictures what life was like before your organization intervened and what it is like today.

People who are overweight are drawn to before-and-after photographs of people who lost a lot of weight because these photos show the problem and the solution together. They work because they prove the link between the solution and the problem. They demonstrate cause and effect.

What you must do in your donation fundraising letters is show donors samples and examples of the before and afters. Obese people are looking for hope, and looking for proven weight-loss programs. Your donors are also looking for hope and proven solutions. They want to eradicate poverty. They want to stop drunk driving. They want to find a cure for breast cancer.

So go ahead, act as if your donors are upset with the way things are and want to make a difference. Then show, with vivid before-and-after pictures, how your non-profit organization is changing the world thanks to the gifts that it receives from donors just like them.

2006 Sharpe Copy Inc. You may reprint this article online and in print provided the links remain live and the content remains unaltered (including the "About the Author" message).