It’s important to get your envelope opened, but spending too much money on it can be self-defeating. Finding a balance requires testing ideas, new and old.

By Abny Santicola

“There’s a generation of donors that [these teasers] worked really well for. But those people are in the planned-giving world now or they’ve passed on,” Kinch says, adding that they have been replaced by a donor base that
is less emotional about giving, perhaps because of current social and economic unrest, charity scandals and fundraising abuses they’ve witnessed.