Direct Mail

The outer envelope is the wrapper for your all-important ask. It’s the first thing recipients see, feel and interact with.

It’s fall! That means lots of nonprofits are ramping up their fundraising efforts and asking for donations. It can be a bit intimidating, and it’s easy to get confused about the best path to fundraising success in the mail. Here are three things you can do to get the most out of your fall direct-mail appeal and raise more money for your mission: 1. Evaluate past fundraising direct-mail performance. 2. Plan for fundraising success. 3. Tell a story.

FundRaising Success announces the 2013 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence Direct Mail (Less Than $10 Million) winners: City Harvest and Good Counsel.

FundRaising Success announces the 2013 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence Campaign of the Year winner: Ronald McDonald House Charities.

FundRaising Success announces the winner of the 2013 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence Grand Control of the Year: Union of Concerned Scientists.

FundRaising Success announces the 2013 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence Direct Mail Campaign of the Year ($10 Million and Up) winner: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Communications and development can, and should be, the soup and sandwich of fundraising.

Ah, I could talk about direct mail forever ... but I'll stop here! All this old dog asks is that all you skeptics out there take a few minutes to consider (or re-consider) direct mail — an old-fashioned fundraising tool that can breathe new life into your year-end fundraising.

In this webinar we discuss the fears surrounding mobile & text-to-give, interactive websites, and video… and how to overcome them.

Direct mail and e-mail are dull as dishwater, but they're fascinating to do. You have to have a detail-oriented personality. It’s ultimately about human behavior and analyzing it from a number of different ways. Whether it’s a for-profit enterprise or a nonprofit, it’s all about driving response, trying to get people to become engaged and invest their money. Seeing nonprofits do that is really interesting. You wonder what the thought process was, and why people aren’t aware of what works and what doesn’t work.