Breathing New Life Into Relief Fundraising: Sustaining Disaster Gifts

1. Revitalize the program with prospecting efforts
While there are many arguments stating that direct mail is in decline, per the Direct Marketing Association’s 2012 Response Rate Report, mail campaigns draw a better overall response than digital channels. In cases of existing customers, this rate is almost 30 times what e-mail appeals return. Additional studies show that a prospective donor is still far more likely to respond to a piece of mail than an unsolicited e-mail. The costs of online marketing certainly help increase its popularity, but such low costs also allow fraudulent solicitations to flood e-mail inboxes, making recipients skeptical of most of the e-mail they receive.