Direct Mail Still Powers Nonprofit Fundraising

Interest in direct mailing lists and services from AccuList USA's nonprofit clients remains strong despite the growing share of donor dollars collected via online giving. Some of the reasons that fundraising pros stay committed to mail power are cited in a recent article for The NonProfit Times by Mark Hrywna. Despite the growing share of donations attributed to online giving, Steve MacLaughlin, vice president of data and analytics at fundraising tech firm Blackbaud, stresses that online giving is still less than 10% of all charitable giving. Fundraisers need to avoid confusing the channel of engagement with the channel of transaction, he advises. Direct mail response certainly is no longer limited to mailed donations as many direct mail recipients go online to give; similarly, a mobile-device outreach or e-mail appeal can generate offline gifts. Even in an increasingly digital world, a good multi-channel mix will include direct mail. Hrywna cites Make-a-Wish Foundation as an example of that continued direct mail investment. When Chief Financial Officer Paul Mehlhorn started with Make-A-Wish Foundation in 2009, he recalls that he was told direct mail was a dinosaur that would be gone in five or six years. Yet last year the national office exceeded 2009 direct mail revenue by several million dollars, going from $13.9 million to $15.3 million. "It looks to me like a program that can stay very strong for the next 10 to 15 years," Mehlhorn asserts to Hrywna. In fact, Mehlhorn says he may expand on his direct mail investment: "As you get past the low-hanging fruit, [online] becomes almost as costly as direct mail. Unless you enlarge your donor pool, you’re going to be spending about the same." Plus, there are some areas where direct mail retains an edge, such as planned giving. Make-A-Wish Foundation has seen revenue from planned gifts just about triple during the past four years, growing from about $2 million to $6 million, and Mehlhorn credits part of that success to actively promoting planned giving in direct mail as well as online campaigns. “A lot of the folks now making end-of-life plans are still in that generation that likes getting mail,” he points out. See the full blog post at http://www.acculistusa.com/direct-mail-still-powers-fundraising-especially-planned-giving/

Quitting Direct Mail Cost Big Fundraiser $30 Million

When it comes to the value of direct mail, sometimes, to coin a song lyric, "you don't know what you've got till it's gone." At least that was the case for the American Cancer Society, which suspended its direct mail acquisition program from January 2013 through June 2014 as part of an organizational consolidation and re-alignment of fundraising strategy. As reported recently by The NonProfit Times magazine, ACS now reveals that, in the first year of suspended mail acquisition, its new donors declined by 11% and new donor revenue dropped by $11.3 million. In addition, the direct mail hiatus impacted renewal programs, planned giving and events, so the charity estimates the mail suspension will end up costing $29.5 million in lost revenue over five years. For every $1 invested in mail acquisition, ACS brings in $7 over the course of three years, explained Catharine Houlihan, ACS director of marketing, in an ACS-led panel discussion of its re-entry into mail at the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation's New York conference. "We need acquisition to feed the core audience or else the entire program loses profitability through the course of the natural customer cycle," she noted in the article. When ACS successfully re-launched its mail acquisition program in 2014, it was part of an integrated multichannel strategy including digital, e-mail and tele-fundraising--but direct mail remained at the core, raising 80% of direct response revenue. The ACS panel noted that while digital and e-mail channels are attractive because they are less expensive, they also take longer to break even and fill the fundraising funnel. For more, read http://www.thenonprofittimes.com/news-articles/live-from-dma-direct-mail-hiatus-cost-acs-30-million/