Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

BRONZE: The Wilderness Society — Year-End Email Campaign — (Submitted by ABD Direct)

The Numbers
Recipients: 181,241
Response rate: 0.53 percent
Total cost: $4,688
Income generated: $47,652
Average gift: $49.95
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.10

In 2013, The Wilderness Society set out to increase revenue without degrading its file through donor fatigue or spiked unsubscribe rates. The organization increased emails from two to three in the final days of December, but it employed a number of techniques to keep recipients receptive, including: