And the Winners Are …

Grueling is the word that crossed the lips of the intrepid judges for our 2006 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence as they made their way out of our offices one hot afternoon in August.

Not that we’re particularly demanding taskmasters, but the competition was, indeed, fierce. Much to our glee, it grew from 33 packages in 2005 to nearly 90 this year (sent in by 21 agencies and four nonprofit organizations). Some of the categories remained the same, but we added a few and tweaked a few others.

Entries were broken into three main categories: Direct Mail, E-philanthropy and Multi-channel. Under Direct Mail, there were Acquisition (50,000 mailed and more); Acquisition (fewer than 50,000 mailed); Renewal (50,000 mailed and more); Renewal (fewer than 50,000 mailed); Special Appeals; and Grand Control of the Year. Our 2006 Package of the Year is the one that garnered the most points from among the Direct Mail winners.

Our judges — Jill Murphy, manager of member services at the DMA Nonprofit Federation; Steve Froehlich, director of development analytics at the ASPCA; Paul Bobnak, director of North American Publishing Co.’s Who’s Mailing What! Archive; and FS Senior Editor Abny Santicola — spent a full day poring over the entries.

Judging was fairly informal, with the judges locked — um, I mean — situated comfortably in NAPCO’s Franklin Room, free to compare notes and seek each other’s opinions. They judged each package on a scale of 1 to 5 in areas that included results, revenue, copywriting and creative. Following are the efforts that they found to be among the best of the best for 2005. — M.B.

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PACKAGE OF THE YEAR and Winner, Special Appeals

Food for the Hungry May 2005 Child Sponsor Celebration Appeal
Submitted by Merkle/Domain

Numbers
Number of Recipients: 11,255
Total Income Generated: $104,840
Average Gift: $30.59
Total Out-of-Pocket Costs: $23,589
Response Rate: 37.31 percent
Cost to Raise a Dollar: $0.18