Direct Mail

For any fundraising appeal, the ask string is critical in communicating your financial needs to a potential donor, large or small. For the Nature Conservancy, an aggressive direct mail tester of new creative concepts, copy approaches and formats, ask-string modeling has made the one-to-one dialogue with prospects much more relevant. “Ask-string modeling identifies individuals with the means to give and their philanthropic tendencies,” says Lisa Steen, senior fundraising manager for new-member acquisition. The Nature Conservancy mails 22 million to 24 million pieces and attracts 250,000 new members annually. “The technique helps acquire donors at a substantially higher first gift with potential to upgrade more

SOf all the elements that go into a direct mail effort, the most important single purchase is the list, says direct marketing consultant Paul Goldberg. There are two ways to order lists, he says: Use a broker or do it yourself. “By broker I don’t mean an organization,” Goldberg explains. “Basically, all brokerage companies are the same. They have access to the same mailing lists; they charge the same prices; their data cards are more or less the same. Instead, choose a list broker for the specialist working there.” Ask this question: Does he or she know the market and do the hard work

All acquisition packages should be this effortless to navigate and still maintain an effective degree of emotion, credibility and urgency. New York’s Lighthouse International, which raises funds to help blind and impaired-vision individuals secure the skills and resources they need to live independent lives, is crystal clear about its mission, its needs and its prospects’ needs.

The costs associated with telefundraising tend to be higher on a per-unit basis than direct mail or e-mail, maintains Joe White, vice president of sales and marketing for the Share Group, a full-service nonprofit agency based in Somerville, Mass. But when it comes to acquiring and upgrading monthly sustainers, the telephone is far and away the most cost effective, he says. White has added telefundraising to the marketing mix for myriad clients as a retention tool and has experienced varying degrees of success. “Increasingly, we have begun building phone-only files,” White says, “by calling direct mail donors who have not made a gift in

The U.S. Postal Service’s final rule change to its Domestic Mail Manual, which amends standard-mail postage rates, including nonprofit rates, will take effect June 1, 2005, according to the Oct. 27, 2004, issue of the Federal Register. The new rule modifies a proposed rule appearing in the Federal Register in April. That proposal called for an “exclusive-purpose” test in which “personal” information about an addressee would be permitted at standard-mail rates only when “advertising” or “solicitation” is the exclusive purpose of the piece and personal information is included solely to increase the effectiveness of the ad or solicitation. The proposed rule would have been

Direct mail is the only advertising medium that enables the sender to create a personal message. I did not say “personalized” — as in having the recipient’s name plastered all over the place, such as with return address labels or on a sweepstakes entry form. In this instance, “personal” means that the letter writer can make an intimate and emotional connection with the reader. As freelance copywriter Bill Jayme said, “In direct mail — as in theater — there is indeed a factor at work called the willing suspension of disbelief.”

Multi-channel fundraising is simply the idea that an organization uses more than one medium simultaneously (mail and telephone, for example) to conduct fundraising campaigns. Integrated fundraising is merely the process of making sure these campaigns are designed to work synergistically with one another.

He was an extremely gifted and articulate communicator, a man of passion who, when he was finished with his speech, left you wishing he wasn’t.

So when I drafted an emergency fundraising letter for his organization, I used his words, his phrases, his syntax, his simplicity, his stories. And the letter turned out, I thought, really, really good. It captured both his personality and the mission of the organization.

The first time I set foot in a lettershop, I was in awe of all those big machines that take huge volumes of paper material and somehow create direct mail. As I stumbled around pallets and forklifts, my guide was busy giving me a lesson on cut-sheet versus continuous-form laser technology. When we finally exited the cavernous room to the relative quiet of the foyer, I thought I had just gotten off a wild carnival ride.

Fundraisers radically modify the value proposition with prospects and donors when they offer incentives for giving. Albeit engaging, some experts consider the technique to be short sighted, for renewing premium-acquired donors can be arduous and cost prohibitive.