Case Study: Human Rights Campaign Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal, Part 3

At the DMA Nonprofit Federation's New York Nonprofit Conference, the Human Rights Campaign was honored as the Nonprofit Organization of the Year. One example of just how deserving HRC is of this tremendous award is its success in repealing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) legislation in the military.

Over the next few weeks, FundRaising Success will share an in-depth case study on HRC's DADT repeal campaign from 2010, which is published in full in FS sister brand DirectMarketingIQ's report, "The Art & Science of Multichannel Fundraising."

Here is part 3. View part 1 here and part 2 here.

Creative
The sheer amount of creative HRC used was staggering. Dozens upon dozens of communications were deployed via every channel based solely on the DADT repeal, and on top of that, HRC included at least one paragraph in every message it relayed, such as election e-mails and mail pieces. There were so many that you could fill an entire book with all of the appeals. HRC was kind enough to pass along a few examples of the types of creative it used during the campaign.

The direct mailer HRC sent in April as an appeal, renewal and acquisition test was sent in a No. 10 envelope that just begged to be open. It had the teaser "Time Sensitive Petitions Enclosed" in blue ink inside a yellow bar, and below that to the right of the address window was the text "URGENT RENEWAL REMINDER" in a stamp-like blue font. (It was versioned for the renewal, appeal and acquisition with slightly different language.) And it was also branded with the Human Rights Campaign logo in the return address field. On the revers side of the outer envelope, HRC tried something new. For the first time, it showed an image of the premium it had created, a dog tag keychain with the text "REPEAL DON'T ASK DON'T TELL" on it, which was below the HRC address information and www.hrc.org URL (which was on the flap). Next to that was more blue text inside a yellow bar, just like the front: "Make a Statement! Special Offer Inside …"