America’s Second Harvest’s new direct-marketing approach yields ‘remarkable results’ and proves that donors are hungry for more intimate relationships with nonprofits.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

“For the first time, we formalized our Web and e-mail solicitation program [and] ventured into telemarketing,” Shoemaker explains.

Delany agrees that direct marketing fundraising at A2H shriveled due to a combination of complacency and shortsightedness.

“It fell off because there was a level of comfort there, and then when you really started to analyze what was going on, you saw some trends that were not things that you wanted to let go on for the health of the organization,” he says. “The biggest thing is that we were working with a small number of institutional donors who came in with large gifts.”