List Management

Assume that you have just stepped into the marketing job for an established nonprofit organization. Your predecessor has disappeared in the midst of planning a 100,000-name prospecting mailing, leaving you with a clever new package, ready to test against an established control; an updated housefile; and a yellow sticky note on your computer screen that says: “Set to go. Just have to order the lists. Call our broker.” Where do you begin?

You can have the most deserving cause and a highly compelling appeal, but your direct mail is going to be wasted if it’s sent to the wrong lists. That’s why, for any direct mail fundraising campaign, the list is the most important element within the nonprofit organization’s control — that, according to Mal Warwick, chairman of Mal Warwick & Associates Inc., Berkeley, CA.