Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

The Numbers
Recipients: 300,792
Response rate: 1.36 percent
Total cost: $129,371.78
Income generated: $378,255
Average gift: $92.14
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.34

Longwood Gardens was faced with no small problem in 2013, when results for its 2012 appeal had fallen nearly 50 percent from the previous year. The 2011 campaign got a 1.1 percent response rate with a non-traditional package that contained a four-page letter, a benefits insert and a reply form.