Leap of Faith

As for the big picture, City of Hope’s revenue grew from $641 million in 2006 to $667 million in 2007.

Oaksmith says the key to making these improvements with minimal additional costs was revising City of Hope’s segmentation strategy to focus on investing more money where it would get the highest ROI. Lower-performing donors, who in the past had been receiving just as many appeals as the higher performers, were downgraded to maybe three or four appeals and one or two newsletters a year. The organization took the cost that was saved there and reinvested it in high-value donors, adding high-touch prospectus packages — mailings that have a much higher ROI and net revenue than normal appeals — and special package treatments like closed-face envelopes and postage on the return envelope.