Incentives

A look at the 2011 DMFA Acquisition Package of the Year, Center for Urban Community Services NYC Note Cards Package: Scenes of the City We Love.

A look at the Direct Marketing Fundraisers Association Package of the Year winner: the Fountain House Flying Cat Pads and Cards renewal campaign, with Amy Tripi of Tripi Consulting.

Nonprofit marketing firm Quadriga Art International (QAI) says the old practice of including a premium gift in a direct-mail package is making a comeback. QAI says several organizations in Europe including UNICEF, Care International, SOS Children’s Villages and Handicap International are all seeing higher response rates from using premiums.

The holiday season provides ample opportunity to proposition potential donors and renew supporters' contributions. According to Michael Nilsen, senior director of public affairs for the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), approximately half of all charities get between 30 percent and 60 percent of their contributions during the last quarter of the year. Roughly 20 percent of AFP member organizations noted that in December alone, they received 50 percent of their annual contributions noted Nilsen.

Five fundraising professionals offered ideas for success and growth for this year and beyond to wrap up day 1 of the DMA Nonprofit Federation's 2011 Washington Nonprofit Conference.

Do you have the guts? I have 10 ideas that might scare the daylights out of you. They're probably difficult, politically unpopular or against the rules of your organization. Furthermore, these ideas might not work for you. They could even be very, very bad for you. But I don't think so. These are good ideas that have worked for others who made them happen despite the difficulties. I dare you to try at least one.

When you look at the incentives nonprofits have been offering over the years in their direct-mail appeals, it always seems the same: a hat, an umbrella, a sheet of address labels. But look away, then look back, and you'll see this perception is no longer entirely accurate.

We'd like to introduce SOFII to those of our readers who don't know about it and share some of the fundraising efforts that have made it into the site's Best of the Best Showcase.

During their presentation, “30 Ideas in 60 Minutes: Your Hour of Creative Power," at the Association of Fundraising Professionals Fund Raising Day in New York held last Friday, Jeff Brooks, creative director at TrueSense Marketing; Moira Kavanagh Crosby, president of MKDM; and Dennis Lonergan, president of Eidolon Communications, provided direct-response and online fundraising strategies to make your fundraising solicitations stand out from the crowd. Here, Crosby outlines her 10 strategies from the session.

In a recent study, M+R Strategic Services studied results of year-end fundraising e-appeals from Easter Seals, Human Rights Campaign, Save Darfur Coalition and The Wilderness Society that were launched in December 2008. Each organization sent an e-appeal with a premium ask and one without the premium. Premiums varied across organizations and included scarves, calendars, T-shirts and blankets.