Keep Your Donors Reading: Typography Best Practice for Fundraising
Fundraising & Typography: Design should make words more accessible and impactful, not harder to read. Don’t sacrifice your copywriter’s skill and effort to a misguided splash of color.
I usually avoid comments about design, because I don’t pretend to be a designer—my focus is copywriting and data.
But because of that, and especially because I’m interested in fundraising response results to direct mail, I have strong opinions on typography when it gets in the way of readability, comprehension and results. Let’s find out what matters.
Five Maples’ Guidance for Fundraising Typography
“Font size should never be less than 12 pt.”
“Reversed type can be fine in a headline, infographic, or short call to action with large text, but should be avoided in body or block text”
“Body or block text over color should have high contrast, preferably black text or strong primary colors over pastel or light grey”
“Text over images should be avoided unless the text is so brief and large that there is no competition between the text and the image”
These are good rules to apply to any design project, but they work especially well in fundraising.
Why Donors to Non-Profit Causes Need Easy-to-Read Type
Blackbaud reports that the average age of a donor in the US is 65 years old – so, to put it broadly, most direct mail donors are between 50 and 100(!!) years old. Many of them struggle with their vision or reading.
Appending age to a donor file shows that this is no exaggeration, as proven by the following two examples.
Donor Age Range vs. Annual Fund Donations for a Non-Profit in a New England Town
Percent of Donors By Age for a Non-Profit in a Large Metropolitan Area
Vertical bars are percent of donors by age; red line is percent by age of the general population of heads of households in the same zip codes as the donors.
Designers: You are designing for your grandma, not your peers – please keep this in mind!
Reading can become a struggle for your older and best donors – I experienced that myself as my astigmatism became harder and harder to correct. I’ve been fortunate enough to have intraocular lenses implanted which has worked miracles on my vision; yet I still am grateful for larger type and especially for a bright light when reading.
Rule 1: Keep the point size large.
The shocking result of this A/B test on point size we did for a client backs this up. We randomly split their mailing list into two test panels and sent the exact same letter to both, with only one change: we increased the body text point size from 12 pt to 14 pt, (which also caused the two-page letter to become three pages).
(The 14 pt, 3-page letter response outperformed the 12 pt, 2-page letter by 19% at the 95% confidence level with a p value of .002)
Some fundraisers tell their copywriter and designer: “Keep the letter to one page, nobody reads two pages.” This results in their copywriter cutting out stories and testimonials and the designer squeezing the type down to 10 or 11 pts and avoiding photos. How wrong!
To summarize: we recommend never using less than 12 pt type in fundraising solicitations and donor impact reports.
Rule 2: Avoid Reversed Type in Body Text
Reversed type is a light color over a darker color, for example, white text over dark blue. Some designers like blocks of color filled with white or light-colored type—they can help make a design pleasing to the eye—so long as you don’t care whether anybody reads the copy!
Googling “is reverse type harder to read?” comes up with a lot of info that says it does. This article by designer Susanne Trevellyan cites plenty of evidence, most importantly:
“There has been a significant amount of research on inverted color schemes. A 1980 study from London found “dark characters on a light background are superior to light characters on a dark background… participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with dark characters on a light background.”
A study at Austin State University found “in every color combination surveyed, the darker text on a lighter background was rated more readable than its inverse (e.g. blue text on white background ranked higher than white text on blue background).”
Even advertising guru David Ogilvy, who did research in the 1970s, found that ads with black on white text had a three times higher response rate than ads with white on black text.
According to a 1989 study by the J Am Optom Assocation, 45% of the population has an astigmatism. This huge group finds it harder to read white text on black than black on white. That’s a lot of people. Ignore their needs and they may never read your ad, webpage or sign.”
Further studies are reported in Colin Wheildon’s book on type and layout, a book recommended by both David Ogilvy and fundraising legend Mal Warwick and one you should consider owning.
Here’s an extract from the book.
Designers often claim that reversed out type, that is, type which appears white…in a black or colored field, grabs reader’s attention and forces them to read the text. We are not talking about a short headline here, but whole blocks or pages of body matter.
To test these two claims, articles were set reversed in 10 point serif and sans serif type printed on white paper.
When the type was reversed, comprehension levels plummeted (figures are percentages of 224 readers).
Participants commented that there appeared to be a ‘light vibration’ which made the lines of type seem to move and merge into one another. Eighty per cent reported this phenomenon.” (pg. 91).
Paraphrasing Mr. Wheildon: blocks of reversed out type might look dramatic, but it is the enemy of reader comprehension.
Rules 3, 4 and 5 derive from Wheildon’s extensive tests reported in the aforementioned book, as well as from common sense:
Rule 3: “Body or block text over color should have high contrast, preferably black text or strong primary colors over a pastel or light grey.
Rule 4: Avoid grey-scale body text in letters, something some designers use in print without thinking about readability, probably because greyscale body text is almost a default on web pages.”
Rule 5: “Text over images should be avoided unless the text is so brief and large that there is no competition between the text and the image”
A good test for any designer is to ask the copywriter to print it out, read it, and then let you know whether your typography made their hard work more or less likely to be read and understood.
Let’s make our designs readable for our donors!
Here are some examples that illustrate both adherence and violation of these rules.
These examples show that these rules don’t require rigid obedience by designers but rather thoughtful and creative designing. Still, violate with care!
Example 1: Reverse white type over a light transparent blue on a white section of an image.
This works well because:
The letters are very large.
The text is very short.
The contrast is high. The section of the background photo being used is entirely white with almost no texture.
The photo clearly reinforces the message of the call out. The call out doesn’t interfere with the photo or vice versa.
The one oddity is the bit of logo slid under the right side of the words. What was the point? You have to work hard to even tell what it is.
Example 2: Dark colored text over light colored fields.
This attractive and energetic postcard uses pastel backgrounds with coordinating dark shades for the numbers and black for the text. Contrast is high; everything is very readable as well as pleasing to the eye. On the reverse the type is easy to read; the Thanks To Friends Like You and the spot color at the bottom makes it attractive.
Example 3: Large colored body text over a light background without texture.
Here the very large type grabs attention, and the red text stands out against the pastel background. On the reverse, David’s color picture lends plenty of interest while the text is very readable.
Example 4: Using dark colored headlines and light blocks of coordinated color under blocks of black body text.
Easy to read text on a pastel background lends interest. There’s a lot here, but the eye is less discouraged because the background color breaks up the text without competing with the text.
Example 5: Photo under readable reversed text elements.
In this clever example, the photo continues under the text. The use of the transparent white field to soften the photo helps the very strong and minimal text shrug off the background. It also shows appropriate use of reversed white text.
Example 6: White text over very busy photo.
The headline works because the text is so large, there are few words, and it is over the less busy part of the photo. However, the small day and start time text over the busy part of the photo is easy to miss.
Example 7: Big letters, short text, reverse white type on top works. Less so on the bottom half.
The very simple but large reverse type in the info graphic is very readable. If the text block had been put in reverse instead of black over light blue-grey it would have made it virtually unreadable.
Yes, on the reverse side, the body type is slightly grey-scale, but it remains easily readable due to its ample size and generous leading.
Example 8: Use of spot color.
Spot color in the headline and call outs, black over light blue for blocks of body text works. The banner over the bottom photo might be too hard to read and be passed over.
But too much small reversed type on the reverse.
Example 9: Bam!
This really stands out. Contrast is high; words are all large and few. (Clever to use the trident in the word GIVES).
On the reverse, it’s a note to you from Robin and so it looks like a note. We got your attention with the front side. Let the body text on the back do its job…don’t feel compelled to tart it up.
Example 10: This Donor Impact Report is attractive, energetic, and most of the text is very readable when viewed full size in print.
Better if the red and blue captions had been darker shades.
Example 11: Competing design elements.
Here we see reversed text over a green background and several instances of colored text over a dark blue background. I don't know about you, but all of these colors make this piece hard to read! The information in the blocks are very compelling; why make the backgrounds and colors compete with the message?
I hope this article has shown you that great fundraising design should be synonymous with readability. When text is hard to read, the design no longer supports the goal of both the copy and the overall piece: to engage and motivate donors to give again.
