Responding Negatively to Solicitations
Guidelines and Alternate Phrases
Begin with a neutral opening, stating you have considered the request.
We have received your letter about support for the local YMCA summer program.
Thank you for writing us to present your fund-raising goals for the rebuilding of Hague Street.
Thank you for letting us know of your needs for funding further research.
We thank you for writing us about the opportunity to contribute to the Maxim Foundation for Social Research.
The project for restoring Milton Square to attract tourists has interesting possibilities.
We admire your dedication and tenacity in your ongoing efforts on behalf of the local Heart Fund.
Agree on the worthwhile efforts of the organization making the request, if possible.
The museum project you contacted us about sounds wonderfully educational.
The work you are doing with the Boy Scouts sounds both fascinating and educational.
We have received your letter about expansion at the children’s home; your plans sound exciting and will obviously afford the needed room to house more abuse victims.
We hear from time to time about the successes you are having in your counseling centers.
We agree these people are very deserving.
We are happy to learn your organization has taken on the responsibility to see something is done about these community problems.
Your efforts with these deserving groups should be appreciated by all of us who want our children to grow up in a safe, healthy community.
Begin with your reason, and then state your decision not to contribute on this occasion.
We have asked our committee to review all the requests we have received from excellent organizations such as yours, and the members have chosen to support those they feel most worthy. We regret we have contributed our available funds elsewhere this year.
As you are probably aware, so many fine organizations such as yours come to us for financial help each year, and we find great difficulty in deciding which causes are most deserving. This year we have allocated most of our funds to the three local drug-rehabilitation facilities.
Because we’ve already overextended our budget for charitable causes this year, we simply cannot help you out this time.
We’ve found our own funds for worthwhile causes such as yours have had to be directed to helping some of our own employee families through this difficult economic time.
As you can probably imagine, we receive hundreds of requests for funds each year, and, as much as we’d like to, we simply cannot respond to all of them.
Our committee for earmarking our charitable contributions has directed our funds toward different organizations this year.
Our policy is to contribute five percent of our profits to charitable contributions, and we already reached that point earlier in our fiscal year.
We don’t mean to offend you and your noble intentions, but our organization simply does not agree with the tenets of your organization and its programs.
We wish we could feel more positively toward your fund-raising efforts, but I’m afraid we disagree with the organization’s philosophies and basic interests. Therefore, we must decline to underwrite this current effort.
In our organization we have a policy to match every employee’s personal donation with one of our own to the same organization. Therefore, the list of those who receive our contributions is determined by the wishes of our employees individually in their personal giving.
We wish we could contribute to your cause, but we simply don’t have funds available this year to do so.
Express your good wishes for the organization and the successful fund-raising/volunteer campaign if you agree with the cause.
We wish you the best in your efforts.
We hope you meet your goal; your cause is entirely worthwhile.
You have our best wishes for raising the funds to meet this literacy need.
We wish you success in soliciting the volunteers who can help you meet this great need.
We appreciate all you’re doing on behalf of the community, and we wish you success in this most recent undertaking.
Your organization meets a great need in the community; we wish you success in your fund-raising efforts.
Your organization can make a big difference in the lives of the needy; we wish you success in this effort.
You have our thoughts and prayers in your efforts.
Your plan sounds feasible and sound. We wish you success with it.
Yours is an excellent organization, and we wish you every success.
Thank you for contacting us about this opportunity; we hope to help you out at a later time.
We wish you the best in your fund-raising efforts. Yours is a worthy project.
We know many benefit from your services each year; we hope you’ll continue to be able to keep up the excellent work.
Thank you for spending such time and effort in improving the community. We wish you success.
Without organizations such as yours, our community would not be the nice place to live that it is. We hope you will have every success in meeting your service objectives this year.
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