Case Study: DM-fueled Patriotism Delivers for National WWII Memorial

Every fundraising campaign has its challenges. And time usually is of the essence. But some campaigns have time restraints that are more compelling than others.

Such was the case when the American Battle Monuments Commission needed to raise funds to build the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Immediate problem: The veterans of World War II, those members of the public who would be most interested in supporting the cause, were dying off at an alarming rate, explains Steve Winchell, president of Stephen Winchell & Associates Inc., the Arlington, Va.-based agency that partnered with ABMC for the direct mail portion of the campaign. And those that are still alive are at an age where philanthropic giving traditionally declines.

“Our biggest challenge was the age of the donors. The World War II Memorial initiative didn’t start until 50 years after the event was over,” Winchell says. “The generation of people who fought and lived through it were in their mid-70s when this project started.

“They’re retired, living on fixed incomes, no longer in their working years,” he adds. “It’s harder for them to make contributions.”

But with a hard-hitting direct mail campaign that roused patriotism not only in aging vets but in their families and friends and in the survivors of those who died in the war, the ABMC netted “a couple of hundred thousand dollars” on the first rollout, Winchell says. And the momentum never stopped.

When the memorial was dedicated on May 31, the DM campaign alone had raised $42 million — roughly a third of the total contributed income, according to Mike Conley, a spokesman for the ABMC.

The winning DM strategy included packages with high-profile celebrity endorsements such as Walter Cronkite and Bob Dole; opportunities for veterans, survivors and their families to add their personal stories to a WW II Memorial database; and a pre-penned “letter to the editor,” which recipients were asked to mail to local media outlets.

Getting started
The U.S. Congress authorized the memorial in May of 1993, with legislation stipulating that funding for it would have to be raised mainly through private sources. After three years of prep time, fundraising efforts began in force in 1996, and the ABMC partnered with Winchell & Associates to handle DM. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out the age issue. Everyone involved knew they had to act fast.

But it wasn’t all uphill, Conley explains. The project had one very important factor in its favor: patriotism.

“In direct mail, you pretty much expect to not make money at the beginning,” he says. “We started making money from the very beginning. That’s how committed people were to this memorial project.

“We were blessed with a cause that had a universal appeal,” he adds. “There isn’t an American alive who doesn’t have a family connection to World War II. Everybody in the nation was involved in that war, whether it was on the front lines or on the homefront.”

The timing was right, too, Conley says, calling it “serendipity” that just as the fundraising campaign was getting started, the film Saving Private Ryan and Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation fueled the country’s connection to WWII. Plus, folks were feeling nostalgic because we were nearing the end of a century.

“All of these things created a national inclination to look back on those war years and recognize how important they really were and how special that generation was,” he explains. “

The right stuff
Sen. Bob Dole had signed on early as the national chairman of the campaign and, with the success of Saving Private Ryan, the ABMC approached Tom Hanks, who participated ina two-year public-service advertising campaign that amounted to the equivalent of $90 million in free advertising, Conley says.

“There are thousands and thousands of worthy causes in this country,” he says, “and it’s a real challenge to have your message heard. So having somebody as recognizable as a World War II veteran and national leader coupled with America’s most popular actor taking your message to the people, it popped our message out of the wheat fields and got us great visibility.

“A lot of things jelled to create greater receptivity when the direct mail pieces hit the mail boxes,” Conley adds. “People had heard about it and now we were putting the opportunity to donate right in their hands.”

The bulk of direct mail donors were premium acquired, having received certificates, lapel pins, posters and reproductions of WWII-era prints.

The advanced age of the core group of donors would make renewals a tough proposition, Winchell explains, so the goal was an acquisitions blitz that would bring in donations and perpetuate itself by fueling the buzz that was swirling around the project. (As it turns out, Winchell says, renewals turned out to be stronger than expected.)

So in addition to hardcore asks, direct mail pieces gave prospective donors the opportunity to be include in the World War II Registry, an electronic database listing of the names of Americans who contributed to the war effort. Through DM pieces and the National World War II Memorial web site (http://www.wwiimemorial.com), veterans and their families can add names, as well as stories and memories to be stored at the memorial itself, Winchell says.

Other interactive elements of the campaign — both via DM and online — include a message board where vets can leave and retrieve information about reunions and other events.

“Not all of our communications (with donors and prospective donors) were specifically fundraising,” Winchell adds. “There was content there that added weight to it.”

Newsletters also were an important element in helping donors and prospects feel attached to the memorial. The whole campaign fed off of the “intangibility” of being a part of something historic — both the war and the memorial.

Keeping the buzz alive
Finally, Winchell said, the DM campaign kept its media feed going by including a pre-written letter that recipients were asked to sign and send to local newspapers and other media outlets. The letters asked for media coverage of the memorial project.

“It triggered hundreds of additional stories throughout the country,” Winchell said, “and really raised the national awareness of what was going on here. It played a key role in generating millions of dollars worth of ink, not just in the large papers, but the small ones, the weeklies, all the things are are read by veterans and others throughout the country.”

In the end, the memorial project brought in $195 million, Conley says. Of that, $16 million was federal money, and $15 million was from earned interest. The fundraising campaign grabbed $164 million, with a third of that coming from direct mail, he adds. Other donated income came from corporations, local sponsors and even schools where students collected “pennies, nickels and dimes” to the tune of $800,000 after appearances by World War II veterans.

The money raised was enough to cover the building costs and a nice endowment for the future, Winchell says, adding, “We were surprised at how well [the fundraising campaign] did.”

Adds Conley: “It was almost textbook in terms of how it all clicked.”