Pulse: Raising Money by Mail

For example, an organization that I've been working with [had] relied on one grant for about 60 percent of its budget, and when the state cut revenue and that grant started to dry up, the organization was in trouble. I like to see organizations have … money coming from a lot of different sources. Direct mail is a good source because if you're working with a lot of individual donors, then the more you have on your mailing list, the more donors you're mailing to, and the more different little pots of money there essentially are. So if one donor goes away, it's OK; you can handle that. Not like if you have all your hopes pinned to one grant, and the one grant goes away; then you've got a big mess to deal with. So I'm a strong advocate of having multiple revenue streams and trying to get those balanced out so that when the bad times come, the organizations can weather it a little bit better.