Small Budgets = Big Opportunities - Part 1

How do smaller nonprofits compete — and even beat? Following are four ways (with four more to come next week).

1. It's personal
When you're printing the letters yourself, then folding them and sticking them in the envelope, you can make it look like a real person actually mailed the letter — because one did! Smaller nonprofits use closed-face envelopes, colorful commemorative stamps and a handwritten P.S. They pick up the phone to respond to the question a donor wrote on the reply card. It's high-touch, with nary a glimpse of "institutional" to be found.