List Management

Nonprofits with missions based on religious foundations face special challenges, and the fact that they answer to the Higher Power can work both for an against them.

With bare-bones donor acquisition budgets, regional nonprofit mailers must be smart in their list planning. In direct mail in general, lists can account for 50 percent to 60 percent of the success of a mailing. Here are three tips for improving results:

Don’t get complacent and mail only the same tried-and-true lists over and over again, advises Bonnie Granger, president of Mary Elizabeth Granger & Associates, a list brokerage firm based in Baltimore. “Every donor acquisition campaign should include a number of new lists to test,” she says. “That number depends upon the size of your mailing and the availability of new files that match your donor profile.” Here are some other tips Granger shared recently: * Consider exchanging names with similar organizations rather than renting your entire mail quantity. Not only will this reduce your donor-acquisition cost, but you will have access to the most

For the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy “think tank” based in Washington, D.C., a typical budget is to mail 4 million to 5 million pieces. “We have a rough budget, but how much we mail depends on the year. For this year, plans are to mail 6 million pieces, looking to build on the opportunities created by the economy and the election year,” says Carsten Walter, director of membership programs for the organization. In mailing, Heritage follows a multi-level approach, the key determinant of which is the initial gift size, Walter says. “The higher initial gift size is obviously more desirable,” he explains.

When it comes to the question of which list strategies work to build and develop a base of annual giving donors, the obvious answer is to look for more names that are similar to your regular annual donors. Common industry wisdom says to analyze what your best donors are like and then go find more like them.

While that statement certainly is true, the problem with a simplistic approach is that it neglects important discussions of gift size, lifetime value, future giving potential and other key ingredients of a successful annual-giving program.

Acquisition means bringing in new donors, as many as possible. But with donor-list universes shrinking and the cost of acquisition rising, fundraisers are left in quite a quandary.

A chronic non-responder (CNR) is an individual who has been mailed a succession of times and has not gifted your organization. Mailers feel the effects of these non-responders with respect to the expense of postage, handling, list rental and materials. So how long should you continue to mail to these potential donors? Should you suppress these names? Is it worth the special handling? And just how do you figure it all out?

Anyone who works in direct mail donor development can tell you that it’s a challenge to find ways to bring in new donors while operating under an ever-tightening budget. With so many organizations mailing to the same lists of donors, fewer new lists being brought to the market and expenses always on the rise, creativity and willingness to take calculated risks will help you reach your new donor goals.

Many organizations that have poorly performing files are not adequately investing in new lists, resulting in meager prospect-response rates and low new-donor retention rates, writes Margaret Guellich, CFRE, senior director of development for the American Life League, in her new booklet, “Reviving Your Donor File: Prescription for a Healthy Direct Marketing Plan.” The booklet recently was released as the fourth in the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Ready Reference Series.

Renting lists for your mailing campaigns is a necessary — but inherently risky — expense. You’re spending money for an uncertain outcome because you can’t gauge exactly how names on a given list will respond at any particular moment.

So your priority in any list-rental situation should be to maximize return on investment. Here are five strategies for getting the most value out of your list-rental dollars: