Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

Additional Website Winners
SILVER: The Wilderness Society — Year-End Lightbox (Submitted by ABD Direct)

The Numbers
Recipients: 5,587
Response rate: 13.64 percent
Total cost: $3,000
Income generated: $79,215
Average gift: $103.96
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.04

While year-end is typically the most important giving season of the year — both in mail and online — The Wilderness Society found that traffic to its site historically dropped off at that time because the number of people looking online for camping trips and other outdoor activities declines. So to generate more online income in the winter months, TWS needed to ramp up its site to really grab the attention of the visitors it did get.