Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

BRONZE: Art Institute of Chicago — 2013 Year-End Appeal (Submitted by The Lukens Co.)

The Numbers
Recipients: 76,611
Response rate: 2.14 percent
Total cost: $84,375
Income generated: $158,895
Average gift: $97.12
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.53

Any membership organization knows how difficult it can be to persuade members to give to an annual fund when they pretty much look at their membership dues as their donations. The Art Institute of Chicago was no exception. So it took a look at what it had been doing — a single-channel, annual year-end campaign — and did it better by turning it into a multichannel campaign (based on what was working in its acquisition and lapsed-donor reinstatement programs). Our judges liked the gumption it took to try a new approach to an old problem but basing it on something that was seeing success for the organization in another capacity.