In last week’s blog, I focused on best practices to help non-profits jump start their fund raising programs. This week, we will focus on a case study from the Coast Guard Foundation.
In 2010, CGF achieved rapid breakthroughs in its annual fund. It expanded active donors by 35 percent, increased the number gifts by 50 percent and increased gross revenue by 40 percent.
To being, the CGF hired a third-party direct-response fundraising agency partner. Then it embarked on new acquisition list strategies, which had a dramatic impact on response, and implemented new creative, frequency and timing approaches to boost acquisition and renewal.
As a result, CGF increased acquisition mail volume by 73 percent from 140,000 direct mailers in 2009 to 243,000 last year and mailed at different times of the year to avoid the “all eggs in one basket” scenario. CGF also increased the number of renewal mailings from six to seven and increased mail volume by 800 percent. The thinking there was that the increased frequency and volume would keep donors aware of CGF, make sure the organization was hitting donors when they were ready to respond and help CGF reap the harvest of year-end giving. In both acquisition and renewal, CGF incorporated personalization, continual testing and multi-channel integration.
The results spoke for themselves:
• More than three times the response rate of the acquisition mailing from the previous year.
• Acquired 680 new donors with a $64.37 average gift — this after reducing the ask string from $50 to $25.
• The strong acquisition results netted a profit of $14,649 for CGF when acquisition is typically an investment with an initial loss.
• Significantly increased the donor base.
• In renewal (using a pillar package with personal stories), donors responded with a 5.28 response rate and $86.53 average gift.
Next week we will look at another case study from a different non-profit agency.