A stagnant annual-giving program prompted changes to how City of Hope approaches donor cultivation and acquisition that, in many ways, defy conventional fundraising wisdom.

By Abny Santicola

The organization sent out an RFP in search of a vendor that could make that happen. Lanham, Md.-based database-marketing agency Merkle answered the call with a surprising solution.

“When we took them on, one of the biggest things we realized through doing a deep-file analysis is that City of Hope was not optimizing their number of mailings to their donors,” Merkle Account Director Kristen Oaksmith says.