Direct Mail

There are plenty of appeals landing in my mailbox and inbox. I’ll bet it’s the same for you. I often open them, hoping to be moved or learn something new. And you know, there’s one characteristic that unites too many of the appeals. They’re all head and no heart. They’re built on carefully crafted arguments.…

Since 2006, NonProfit PRO has held a competition for the Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence. This year's competition opened last week. If you’re with a nonprofit or agency (or know someone who is), and you’ve achieved some stellar results, it's time to get the ball rolling. Why should you submit your campaigns? Because great work deserves to be seen and rewarded...

There are 142 days left in 2016. That sounds like a lot, and it is if you start thinking about year-end direct response fundraising now. But if you wait, there’s a good chance you will leave money on the table because of missed opportunities and no time to give it your best effort. For those of you who want to enjoy the holidays knowing that you’ve done all you can to maximize the income your nonprofit will receive, here are some things to work into your planning...

I’ve written a lot about the importance of nonprofit organizations communicating with their donors, but that’s not enough. You have to do it well. You have to knock it out of the park. Sadly, many organizations fail at this. Their communications are OK at best and just dreadful at worst. That’s why I pleasantly was…

As fundraisers, our passengers are our donors. And as most experienced fundraisers have found, even the best change can impact income—at least for a while. I mean, let’s be real—what’s bad about going from a boring, two-color newsletter to one that is four-color and has larger photos? In most cases, nothing. But it’s change, and, as humans, we can be a bit slow to adapt to anything different; and that can keep us from giving until we get comfortable with the "new."...

"We need money! Can you send out an email/mailing/newsletter?" Have you heard some variation of that in your career? It’s tough enough doing a great job when you can plan a project, but when you have no time for the "luxury" of rumination, take a few minutes to answer these five questions to help your direct response fundraising be as effective as possible...

Fundraising is a funny profession. It requires you to learn a specific style of writing that's unlike any other you're likely to have learned—business writing, journalism or grant writing, etc. But if you go to the trouble to learn the conventions of fundraising writing, donors will reward you with more gifts. Larger gifts. And they'll…

In a perfect world, all of our direct marketing costs would be marginal, so they scaled as we mailed, helping us to pick the exact right quantities and people every time. Of course, in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to solve the social ills we are trying to solve as nonprofits. So that’s a…

If your job title falls under the category of “one-person development department,” it’s very likely that, sometimes, you feel like a chicken running around with its head cut off. Ah, the pressure. How on earth is a smart development director to do it all? Brace yourself for the big news, folks: You shouldn’t want to focus on all of that stuff, because you don’t have to focus on all of that stuff. Just look at Trader Joe's...

It's never too early to analyze your last fundraising campaign and get ready for the next. Do you know how effective your direct mail appeal was during last year's holiday campaign? How many of your appeals went into the trash? How many resulted in a donation? Have you been afraid to even look at your…