Direct Response

Ted Hart speaks with Neil Gallaiford, president and CEO of full-service marketing and fundraising agency Stephen Thomas, on this special leap day edition of his Nonprofit Coach radio show.

TrueSense Marketing has been selected as a direct marketing partner for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Division of Development and the Jimmy Fund.

At a time when for-profit theaters may be feeling the pressure to cave in to the economic pinch and roll out the revivals, nonprofit San Francisco-based American Conservatory Theater is still taking chances.

With mail continuing to provide the best return on investment of any prospecting medium, and with the power it can have on a housefile, it's a shame to abandon it completely. Even if you can't afford to put a bigger piece (i.e., a catalog) in the mail, there are affordable alternative mailers that can work well if used as part of an integrated marketing strategy.

Three fundraising professionals shared 30 ideas for fundraising success at Fund Raising Day in New York. Here are ideas 1-10.

LW Robbins, a full service direct response fundraising agency that has served nonprofit organizations exclusively for over 40 years, announced a new partnership with American Health Assistance Foundation (AHAF), a leading nonprofit organization that is dedicated to finding cures for age-related degenerative diseases.

Los Angeles-based Brewer Direct has inked agency of record agreements to manage direct response fundraising programs for the Kansas City Rescue Mission and Gospel Rescue Ministries of Washington D.C. The additions bring the agency’s roster of Rescue Mission clients to 18 nationwide.

Work for the Kansas City Rescue Mission will focus on developing a new, fully integrated donor acquisition strategy. For Gospel Rescue Ministries, Brewer Direct will design, implement and manage end-to-end direct response fundraising campaigns across multiple channels.

"Borrowing" ideas from other nonprofits has resulted in some big fundraising breakthroughs. The secret, however, to successful borrowing hinges on these few unbreakable rules.

The message I heard after year-end 2010 was clear: One-off appeals (whether letters or e-mails) don't work well anymore. These days, the organizations with the most direct-response moxie are the ones that craft engaging 
campaigns with many touchpoints. Multipronged campaigns not only raise money — they build deeper relationships that pay off 
over time.

When the Southeast Texas Food Bank was incorporated in 1991, it did no fundraising whatsoever, it had two donor names (the executive director and a board member) and its budget was around $700,000. Today, it has 25,000 donor names in its database and an operating budget of $1.9 million.