Direct Mail-less

When I first started in the fundraising racket, direct mail was not just de rigueur in order to reach out to large audiences; it was probably the most effective and efficient way to raise unrestricted, annual funds. I started direct mail programs at a number of the organizations where I worked, and to this day, I am convinced that those programs were the key to ultimately building a successful major gift program. So I was as surprised as anyone to discover in the past two or three years that I no longer have a strong faith in direct mail. In fact, if an organization doesn’t already have a strong direct mail presence, I think it is a mistake for them to begin one.

The most obvious, provable reason is the high cost of mail—direct, nonprofit, or otherwise. Where we used to say that direct mail costs between fifty cents and a dollar to raise a dollar (more if it is an acquisition mailing), those numbers have gone way, way up. You’d have to do a lot better than the average 4% response rate for a good (read regular donors) list to make this a worthwhile way to raise funds.

Less provable, more anecdotal is what people do with mail nowadays. Now, I am old enough to remember when the mailman was a pretty special person, and waiting for his (or, less often, her) arrival made up much of my time when I was a freelance writer. Today, I take the mail out of the mailbox, look for the odd bill I don’t pay online, pull out the few magazines we get, and the rest gets tossed. In the past, I would at least open direct mail appeals from a professional curiosity. I no longer even do that.

From what my friends and colleagues tell me, I am not atypical. That suggests to me that unless you have a core audience who cares enough about your organization that they will open up anything that comes with your logo, you are wasting precious resources with direct mail.

So what’s an organization to do? E-solicitations? Well, it’s more cost effective, but unless you have (a) a good list and (b) a real understanding of what will make someone not just open your email but click through to donate, the cost to raise a dollar may be low but so will the amount of dollars raised.

Before we talk about solutions, however, let’s step back a bit and talk about purposes. Not the purpose why someone would support you, but the purpose of a particular fund raising technique. Yes, yes, to raise money. But there is always something else.

That something else for direct mail was to help bring an awareness of your organization to those who might not otherwise know about you. From the large pool of annual givers often came the smaller pool of major donors. More importantly, most planned gifts tended to come from annual not major donors.

These are all important and worthy purposes. Technology has increased methods of awareness building, and I would argue that your money would be better spent on a great website (knowing who your audience for that site is), interesting blogs, and, if necessary, paper newsletters (that can certainly have a reply envelop inserted).

Building a pool of donors is another story, and requires, I believe, some new definitions. We used to talk about annual, special and major gifts, generally using a dollar amount to differentiate. I would argue that today we have to focus on personal solicitations, and that the issue each organization has to resolve is what is the baseline that makes an individual visit worthwhile.

Janet Levine is a fundraising consultant. She can be reached at jlevine@levinemorton.com. Her online grantwriting class is available at www.levinemorton.com/classes.html.

Words Count

Fundraising, as we all know, is the right person asking the right prospect for the right amount of support for the right project at the right time. It’s also asking for that support in the right way.

What that way is depends, in part, on who you are asking. A direct mail piece will make the case differently than a grant proposal, even when you are requesting support for the same project. Likewise, a 30-year-old technology billionaire prospect should be approached one way, while his 60-something boomer dad will require a different method.

Sometimes, though, the issue isn’t who but what, and here words really are all.

"Hey, I need you to fund my salary,” just doesn’t resonate nearly as well as “Support for our organization helps us to provide food and shelter for the homeless.”

That the unrestricted support your organization raises may actually go to pay your salary doesn’t negate this. The homeless—or whoever your clients may be—cannot, in fact, be served unless there is appropriate staff and resources.

Making your case also means positioning yourself in such a way that people will want to support you. That means showing off successes and minimizing those things that don’t shed light on your better side. Or, as the keychain a former employee gave me states, “No Kvetching.”

The importance of this really struck me about a week ago. I received a direct mail appeal from an organization where I have been a small annual donor for several years. I had become a donor because I liked what they were trying to accomplish. So I opened the envelope, expecting to read about their accomplishments, find out about new initiatives, generally feel good because I was a supporter.

Instead, what I found out was that a large grant they had been getting for many years was being discontinued. “We need you to make up this loss,” the letter said, then went on to tell me that they couldn’t survive without this support.

Did that case make me reach for my checkbook? Not at all. In fact, my first thought was, “Ummm, wonder what that funder knows that I don’t?” The second was to seriously consider following that funders lead and pull my support.

Why? First off, it made me feel that they weren’t handling their business very well. And making sure that you have enough funds to run your programs is a major part of a nonprofits business.

Secondly, I don’t like feeling like a loser—and I don’t like supporting losing organizations. I want to put my money where I think it will make a difference and not just keep an organization from closing its doors.

Telling me about their successes this past year, and showing me that I was making a difference, would have kept me as a donor. The fact that I’ve been a regular, albeit small, donor for some time should have also triggered some special attention. A phone call, personal note from the executive director or president of the board, asking me to increase my support and help make a bigger difference, would have had the right kind of impact.

Actions may speak louder than words, but never lose sight of the fact that words do count, and make sure you use them wisely.

Janet Levine is a fundraising consultant. She can be reached at jlevine@levinemorton.com. Her online grantwriting class is available at www.levinemorton.com/classes.html.

Yes

Is Direct Mail Dead? - Philanthropy.com:

"'The economics of direct mail are failing,' writes Mark Rovner, a fund-raising consultant on the blog Sea Change Strategies. 'That is more or less an uncontroverted fact It costs more to mail, and fewer new donors come back with each mailing. This trend has been masked somewhat by higher average gifts by donors you already have, but sooner or later, the acquisition crisis is going to affect bottom lines. For some, it already has.'"