Spinning Date Into Donor Gold

“Our housefile program is fairly aggressive. We find that when we reduce the number of mailings, we reduce our gross and net revenues,” Whorton shares. “But we also found that two-thirds or even three-fourths of our file are very sensitive to the volume of mail they receive.”

For the most part, these individuals are higher-value donors who don’t require much goosing to get their gifts. Going forward, Whorton plans to leverage supplemental mailings to upgrade and solicit emergency gifts, and when donors hit a plateau in their giving.

New lists, new donors
While the current pool of contributors is invaluable to CRS and its mission, when it came time to find new names, the organization, at first, simply put more pressure on its list broker to cast a wider net.