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By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

It was a big year for the Gold Awards, folks! First off, we switched up the way we conducted the judging. Rather than having a handful of judges join us in our Philadelphia office for a day of debating, noshing and judging, this year we went electronic and had a somewhat larger handful of judges do their work remotely. Everyone got scans of the entries, and the judges were encouraged to communicate by phone or e-mail to compare notes. Granted, we missed the  on-site camaraderie — and the bagels — but doing things this way allowed us to include more judges from across the country.

And 2010 marked the year with the largest number of entries to date. All told, the 108 submissions represented 15 nonprofit organizations and 30 agencies. We're thrilled, and want to say congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who participated. FundRaising Success appreciates your continued interest and support. We especially want to thank our intrepid  judges: Paul Bobnak, director of the Who's Mailing What! Archive; Joe Boland, FundRaising Success senior editor; Steve Froehlich, vice president, direct response development, ASPCA; Steve Kehrli, development director, PETA; Kimberly Seville, creative consultant and freelance copywriter; Dave Stuart, head of new business development, Russ Reid; and Scott Swedenburg, president, Mail Enterprises. We're so happy to see the Gold Awards growing, and we hope that you enjoy reading about and learning from the results as much as we enjoy bringing them to you.

CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR

Muscular Dystrophy Association

Research Leaders

Submitted by DaVinci Direct

Also Gold Award winner DIRECT MAIL: RENEWAL (fewer than 50,000 mailed)

• The Numbers

Recipients: 3,279

Income Generated: $271,507

Average Gift: $227.20

Out-of-Pocket Costs: $5,794

Response Rate: 36.44 percent