And the 2012 Winners Are ...

It is also fascinating to me how the direct-response industry has transformed itself over the last decade, testing and investing in new strategies and capitalizing on technology. Our industry continues to evolve and adapt itself.

And so have the Gold Awards. Today we honor not just the tried-and-true direct-mail and telemarketing campaigns, but also full-fledged multichannel campaigns, online fundraising, special events and those organizations that are truly thinking outside the box. This year tried to level the field a bit more, so we attempted to split the submissions into two subcategories — annual operating budget of $7.5 million or less and more than $7.5 million. [Editor's Note: In the interest of full disclosure — there seemed to be some confusion about what exactly "annual operating budget" means. So, rather than have winners in each of the annual operating budget-based subcategories in each category, we went with two gold and two silver winners in each category. Most are based on the under/over criterion but not all. We thought this was the best way to handle the confusion this year, and we'll be sure to be more clear next year. — MB]