Despite fundraisers’ hopeful expectations, online-acquired donors often cost as much as theur DM-acquired counterparts.

By Kimberly Seville

No medium — mail, telephone, e-mail or any combination thereof — works as well with online-acquired donors as it does with their direct mail counterparts. Which isn’t to say it’s not worth bothering; it just means we need to consider them differently and have an aggressive retention strategy to keep as many of them as we can.