Tom Ahern’s newsletter just landed in my inbox again.

I treat it like a gold-embossed invitation to the attic of good sense and bright ideas. Not dusty. Not precious. Just sharp, useful, and often—like this week—unexpectedly timely.

This issue, Tom tells the story of Remo, a Twin Cities artist who leans heavily on ChatGPT (whimsically renamed “Molly”) to write the e-newsletter for his arts district. Remo can’t write “for beans,” he says. But Molly can. With the right prompt, she crafts warm, clear, donor-ready copy.

It’s a sweet story. But here’s the part that matters: Even the smartest AI can’t save a newsletter that’s still talking about the wrong person.
And most nonprofit newsletters pick exactly the wrong person.

Let me say it straight: If your newsletter talks about your organization more than it talks about your donor, it’s not a donor newsletter. It’s a vanity project.

Tom Ahern has written what I consider one of the most essential—and overlooked—books in fundraising: Making More Money with Donor Newsletters. In it, he lays down the law with the kind of precision that makes good fundraisers weep with gratitude and bad ones clutch their pearls.

Your newsletter should not be about your programs. It should be about what the donor made possible.

That’s the pivot too few organizations make. Instead, they send out “updates” that read like reports to a disinterested city council: lots of acronyms, little joy, zero emotional payoff.

But when you get it right? When the newsletter makes the donor feel like the hero? Things change.

Look at Gillette Children’s Hospital. Their old newsletter raised about $5,000 per issue. After they rewrote it with the donor at the center of every story—cutting the copy, swapping “we” for “you,” showing real outcomes instead of abstract stats—the result was a tenfold increase in revenue. One issue pulled in $50,000.

Let me repeat that: tenfold.

So yes, by all means, use AI. Name it. Prompt it. Invite it to your creative table. But only if you know where you’re going. And where you should be going is straight into the heart of your donor.

Read the full review here.

Roger Craver is Editor of The Agitator.