Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

BRONZE: Wounded Warrior Project — 2013 Year-End Digital Campaign (Submitted by CDR Fundraising Group)

The Numbers
Number of recipients/response rate: Varies according to channel
Total cost: $220,046
Income generated: $8,981,596
Average gift: $147.72
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.02

You just can’t underestimate the power to testing, and this effort by CDR for the Wounded Warrior Project bears out that truth. Like many organizations, WWP saw a significant change in performance of its Google grant in 2013. The grant, which had previously been used to drive year-end giving, could only serve as a supplement to paid advertising. With this in mind, WWP sought to capitalize on year-end fundraising by testing into new control messaging before year-end giving was in full swing. This testing was able to put WWP in the best possible position in the final weeks of December when its investment would be the highest and had the greatest potential for return.