Here are the efforts our judges chose as the best of 2006 in the FS 2007 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence.

By Abny Santicola and Margaret Battistelli

Cost to Raise a Dollar: $0.03

Of the 66 radio stations in the San Francisco/Bay Area, KCSM is one of only four focused exclusively on jazz. But there’s something even more special about it: It owns the third-largest jazz collection in the world.

A few years ago, when KCSM found itself with a direct-mail program in decline and set to work to create a program that would build strong relationships with existing and lapsed members with the goal of increasing response rates and contributions, it decided to center its program around that collection, and positioned itself and its on-air hosts as infinite sources of jazz knowledge.