Bagging the Brown Bag

In November 2003, A2H shelved the brown bag and started mailing the grocery voucher.

“That brought down the cost of acquisition, and yet we were getting better-quality donors, if not the same quantity,” she adds.

Good, better, best
The grocery voucher averages between a 0.9 percent and 1 percent response rate and a $22 to $25 average gift amount. But, ever conscious of mail fatigue, A2H began testing what it calls the trucking-voucher mailing against the grocery-voucher mailing in the hopes of netting stronger results as well as “long-term, quality donors,” says Karen Paciero, director of individual philanthropy for A2H.