Direct Mail

With their mailstream competitors continuing to struggle, fundraisers have moved from a major player to a dominant one in the past year. Analyzing the 10,000 or so pieces of direct mail pieces we get in our Who's Mailing What! Archive each year reveals some clear trends, in particular comparing the calendar year of 2009 to previous years.

While financial, publishing and catalog mail have dramatically shrunk their volume in the mailstream since the economy started tanking nearly two years ago, fundraisers have kept up their mailing frequency. In fact, fundraising mail actually rose in 2008 and 2009 as compared to 2007. And since 2007, fundraisers grew from a respectable 13 percent of the mailstream to 20 percent in 2009. That means a full one-fifth of the mailstream is fundraising mail. Wow. It's reflected in my mailbox. Yours?

Pardon me as I steal from Mail Enterprises' ever-gracious Scott Swedenburg today. As usual, his quarterly Direct Fundraising Tips e-letter brought a smile to my face, so I thought I would share some of it with you. Here, Scott offers tips on how to help donors get excited about writing that check.

The day's take was a little smaller than average, just seven pieces. Two stood out from the rest for the sole reason they were not white — one a No. 9, closed-face, ivory outer with a gold foil-embossed corner card, and the other a 6-inch-by-9.5-inch special window with four-color printing on glossy stock. Of the five white packages, the mix included a 6-inch-by-9-inch closed face, a 6-inch-by-9.5-inch right window and three double-window No. 10s — one of which turned out to be quite providential.

Fundraising 101: Direct-Mail Basics, pulls together some of the best tips and strategies the pros have to offer in regard to that fundraising workhorse - direct mail.
Among the information you'll learn from it:

• Typical rookie copywriting mistakes - and how to avoid them
• Things you must know about direct-mail fundraising in a tough economy
• Things you absolutely must know about paper this year

“Do more with less.” You hear it from your boss, or maybe even your board in these tough times. Exasperated, you look back at your last six months: You’ve cut costs, backed off your most expensive programs, and maybe even made some painful staff decisions. So, now what?

Lynn Edmonds
President
L.W. Robbins

When FS' parent company, North American Publishing Co., set out to launch this magazine in summer 2003, the launch team wanted to establish an editorial advisory board that would ensure it started out on the right foot and stayed that way. The board had to include people from all areas of fundraising who were entrenched enough to have a solid grasp of its history but still open enough to be able to see into its future and head there without fear.

We're calling a new rector for my church. This entails creating a detailed profile of our institution, assessing our ministries, analyzing our finances, and praying and reflecting on our next "calling." It also entails letting some ministries go.

Columbia, Md., November 5, 2009 — Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing customer relationship marketing agencies, today announced that its Response Management Group has been selected by Alley Cat Allies to provide contribution processing services in support of the organization’s direct mail fundraising program. Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Alley Cat Allies is a national advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and improving the lives of cats through education, outreach and support for Trap-Neuter-Return programs. The work was successfully transitioned from the previous service company in August and the contract is ongoing.

October 9, 2009 - A number of key organisations are concerned that if the strikes continue between now and Christmas, seen as a key time for fund-raising, then appeals and donations will be severely hampered. They argue that the situation is exacerbated by the current economic downturn.

Everything about the Heritage Foundation's invitation to join its monthly giving program screams, "Look at me! Open me! I'm irresistible!"