Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

The Numbers
Recipients: 346,698
Response rate: 1.43 percent (3.7 percent mail only)
Total cost: $56,985
Income generated: $315,445
Average gift: $64
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.18

When Richard Gere smiles kindly at you from a letter, email, website or anywhere, really, and asks you to give, you give. At least that’s what 1.43 percent of the recipients of this effort on behalf of the International Campaign for Tibet did. And while Gere’s face certainly couldn’t have hurt, it wasn’t exactly that that was the driving force in this campaign’s success. It was his commitment.