20 Mar Does Personalization Work?
Increased personalization makes good intuitive sense for marketing anyway – especially in today's world. ...
Membership
01 Nov Is your lapsed member letter getting a response rate that is too good?
On the one hand, 15 percent is a terrific response and much better than the 1 percent response typical of direct mail recruitment. On the other hand, many of these same members might have responded earlier if they had been asked....
11 Oct Donor Loyalty Programs
Several clients have asked me recently about establishing donor clubs based on cumulative giving. In general I recommend against it, unless the organization already has a well-established system for recognizing annual donors....
04 Oct Are You Communicating Wins?
At the very moment in history when government leaders are turning to non-profit organizations to pick up the slack from defunded programs, foundation giving is declining, corporate support is flat, and ten percent of individual philanthropists say they will quit giving altogether until the economy...
27 Sep Recycling: How Many Renewal Letters Should We Send?
The following post is an updated version of a post I wrote in September 2009 The answer to this question is “As many as it takes”. Part of the job in fundraising is to build a strong, broad base for your fundraising by recruiting and retaining basic...
20 Sep Recruit Advocates; Be a Storyteller
A couple of things jump out of Read’s article for me. The question of how to recruit advocates instead of “merely donors” is interesting and speaks to the need for fundraising to be seen as relationship-building. ...
30 Aug Using Email for Renewals
Many organizations, including land trusts, are beginning to use email to carry the first renewal message. Follow-up to non-responders is carried by more traditional first class postage letters. Here are several things to think about if you are beginning to experiment along these lines:
19 Apr The Importance of Donor Files
I just got back from Columbus, Ohio, the site of this year’s Land Trust Alliance’s Midwest Land Conservation Conference. Meeting and working with practitioners and Board members from the twelve states represented there inspired me to pick this blog up again. As a relative newcomer...
10 Feb Newsletters, Envelopes, and New Members
Last week, I posted about looking at gift memberships and member-get-a-member campaigns in a new way, and I offered some ideas about how to get the most out of these activities as “acquisition” tools. You can find that post here. This week, I have another...
13 Jan Housecleaning
In my last few posts, I’ve written about year-end tasks – making sure your donors feel appreciated and doing some first-level analysis of your giving data to better understand the trends within your own organization. Here’s another bit of January housework: Cleaning. Phyllis Diller was famously...