Demystifying Exchanges

Carefully monitoring your exchange partners, as well as limiting the number of times your file is mailed, will have negligible effects on your own donor file. A client, who had been working with us for years, finally received permission from its board to start an exchange program. We first included in a renewal campaign an opportunity for donors to opt out and not have their names exchanged. This accounted for less than 1 percent. Each record on the exchange-fulfillment file was flagged. After one year of exchanging, renewal rates were examined, and the exchange portion of the file did just as well as the non-exchange segment of the file. This report assured the board that exchanges were not having a negative impact on revenue. It did, though, reduce overall acquisition costs.