Welcome to the next phase of this application process! This skills test will give you a sense of your responsibilities in the day-to-day work of the role, as well as help us further evaluate your skills as a digital fundraiser. It is for evaluation purposes only. Win Without War will not use your work without your explicit permission.

While we are not looking for a perfect final draft or in-depth fact checking in your answers, we hope to see clear, persuasive writing, creative thinking, and a grasp of basic industry practices around digital fundraising and donor cultivation. Please feel free to note any assumptions that you’ve made along the way in a separate section following your answers.

Part 1: Digital Fundraising Appeal (~2 hours)

Imagine a world where Congress has just authorized $886 billion for weapons and war. At the same time, families everywhere struggle to cover the cost of everything from food to electricity to healthcare. This year’s National Defense Authorization Act should be a non-starter, and that’s why Win Without War is about to go all in on a campaign to shut it down.

Please draft an end-of-month, deadline-driven fundraising email to our activists highlighting this problem and the opportunity for them to help by supporting our work.

The draft should introduce the issue and TOC, but most importantly motivate the reader to take action by making a contribution to the campaign. The copy should also include at least two ask links or buttons (do not worry about actually linking to a real page) and four suggestions for subject lines.

You should keep the following considerations in mind:

• The email should run 400-600 words, with clear and concise language that summarizes the theory of change and motivates the reader to donate. Consider: What’s the problem? Why should an activist care? What can Win Without War do about it — and how can we be successful? What do we need from our activists? Why now?
• We will focus our evaluation on the copy and content of your work, but if there are ways that you want to bring more creativity to the exercise (formatting, imagery, call out boxes, etc.), please feel free — but do not forget the time guidelines! If you have ideas for these additions, but do not have space or skills to create them, feel free to add those caveats in bullet points below the email to help us get the full sense of your thinking and strategic vision.
• If there are any details you would need to know to complete this exercise, but don’t know, please feel free to make any assumptions you need to and share those assumptions with us in a section below your email draft.

Part 2: Donor Cultivation Strategies (~1 hour)

Now, imagine that your email was a success and dozens of new donors have contributed to Win Without War as a result! Can you describe five tactics you would consider deploying to help convert them to become sustaining (monthly) donors?

Please use bullet points to organize your work. Each bullet should include a 1-2 sentence summary of the overall concept and why you think it will work.

If time allows or you have thoughts on next steps, you may also consider including additional details such as a timeline for implementation, deliverables we’d need to create, or any external support/expertise you’d need to execute the strategy, etc. Again, please make any assumptions you need to as you draft this brief donor cultivation plan, and share them with us in your response.

Suggested template

If it’s useful, feel free to organize your response using the template at this link.