Pulse: Raising Money by Mail

SR: I see too many organizations that say, "Well everybody else is doing direct mail; we need to do direct mail, too." And they don't really think through why they want to do it or what outcome they want, and so they don't really have a good way to measure success. If you're very clear why you want to send out an appeal, and you know who you're going to send it to, and you craft a good 
message that's going to appeal to the people you're 
sending to, then you're setting yourself up for success. 
If you get into knee-jerk fundraising … you're going to 
be disappointed.