Strike a Match

Also included is a form for credit card gifts, which also asks about employee matches and offers a monthly giving option. And the business reply envelope enclosed includes a deadline: “URGENT! Please respond by March 31, 2012” (the package was mailed March 9).

The results
The emergency mailing was rolled out to 9,381 donors and received an impressive 11.5 percent response rate. Overall, it brought in $78,470 in donations while costing just a fraction of that thanks to that “cheap and dirty” look and feel — $9,097 to be exact, meaning the cost to raise a dollar was less than 12 cents.