Many charities use fund-raising letters as a major component of their overall fund-raising strategies, spending significant funds to present their constituents with opportunities to give. One group of non-profit organizations that uses fund-raising letters are Bible colleges, undergraduate theological training institutions that receive much of their funds directly from donors. This dissertation found the literature of fund-raising letters suggests that personalization, professionalism, and persuasion are the areas in which letters need to be developed in order to be successful. This research paper then applied those categories of strategies to actual letters sent in the years 2000–2002 by several accredited Bible colleges from the United States and Canada. Content analysis was the method used to identify different components within the collected letters.; The remainder of the study pursued three lines of inquiry. The first area of research revealed that there is a wide latitude for usage of letter components and strategies in Bible college letters. They do not always use every component (greeting, dateline, etc.), but every strategy suggested by the literature was used at least occasionally in the sample collected for this study. The second area of research showed which strategies are used by colleges of different sizes, denominations, and regions of the country. The third area of research revealed that personalization strategies have the most positive effect on giving, while persuasive strategies, for the most part, do not significantly improve the giving results.
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