Focus On: Premiums: Primed for Premiums

Fundraisers radically modify the value proposition with prospects and donors when they offer incentives for giving. Albeit engaging, some experts consider the technique to be short sighted, for renewing premium-acquired donors can be arduous and cost prohibitive.

“Donors have become more inured to premiums over time and often will not respond to appeals without them,” says Fred Vallejo, a Utah-based freelance copywriter who has scribed packages for the African Wildlife Foundation, PBS and the National Audubon Society. “The selling of a premium starts right on the outer envelope and continues in the Johnson Box of the letter and letter itself. When you promote it to that extent, it drives the creative brainstorming and copy platform, and becomes the reason to give.”