You've heard the whispers in the wind - more and more people, especially younger ones - are eschewing personal e-mail and relying on social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to communicate with their friends. As a result, many personal e-mail accounts are not much more than repositories for marketing messages whose subject lines get a quick glance before the owners hit the "Delete" button. Whether things have gone that far or not (and we don't believe they have, yet), the fact remains that anyone with an e-mail account is the target of hundreds of marketing messages a day and the potential target of thousands - many of them fundraising appeals from you and your (for lack of a better word) competitors. Your job as a legit professional looking to raise funds via e-mail is to make your e-mail messages stand out amid the ads for male-enhancement pills and diet breakthroughs and the latest appeal from the beleaguered Nigerian prince who wants to give someone a million dollars to help him keep his family fortune from falling into the hands of his oppressors. It's a pretty straightforward goal, but it's not an easy one. But before we talk about what makes for an effective fundraising e-mail, let's quickly define what doesn't. You might be tempted to think that simply making a PDF of your direct-mail pieces or your physical newsletter and popping it into an e-mail will work. It won't. Neither will "crafting" a one-line e-mail that asks recipients to click a link to your donation page. Nonprofit e-mails - whether to raise funds or awareness - are their own animals and need to be treated as such. Now, on to what works!

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