20 Direct-Marketing Ideas for Small Nonprofits, Part 4

[Editor's note: This is the fourth and final part of a four-part series. Click here to view part 1, here for part 2 and here for part 3.]

There are many strategies smaller nonprofits can employ to get results that mirror or even top those of the big players in the sector. In their session, "20 Big Direct Marketing Ideas for Small Nonprofits," at the 2012 Washington Nonprofit Conference, Eliza Temeles, senior account executive at MKDM; Jill Batcheller, membership manager at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; and Alicia Toles, annual giving and donor data manager at Food and Friends, shared 20 direct-response fundraising strategies tailored to smaller organizations. Here are ideas 16-20.

16. Expand your messaging
Use what you're already doing to reach your donors with more asks, Toles said. Two easy examples are to include inserts asking for another gift or action with thank-you letters, and create an e-mail signature that your entire staff uses for all e-mails, again with another call to action in it.

"Offer calls to action in a addition to the messages you send," Toles said.

17. Get supporters involved
Everyone in the fundraising sector has heard the saying, "ask for money and get advice; ask for advice and get money." Loosely translated, that means the more you can engage donors, get them involved — in ways other than purely asking for money — the more likely they are go make gifts.

Temeles said that for one of her clients, people who had taken action in direct mail had a response rate three times higher than general prospects, and in e-mail people who had taken action had an open rate of 49.22 percent, clickthrough rate of 3.13 percent and response rate of 0.78 percent. Those numbers were way ahead of the fundraising benchmarks of a 12 percent open rate, 0.6 percent clickthrough rate and 0.08 percent response rate.