A new strategy helps Mothers Against Drunk Driving revive its stagnant fundraising, recommit to its missin and invigorate its staff and volunteers.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

MADD’s new quarterly direct-mail appeal for bequests, which mailed 25,000 to 30,000 pieces in its first year (2004), has done “remarkably well,” he says, and flagged hundreds of people who want information about putting MADD in their wills and about a hundred others who already had done just that.

The program already has yielded a $750,000 bequest on the national level, and state affiliates have brought in $800,000 and $500,000 gifts, among others.