And the Winners Are …

--- E-philanthropy ---

The Save Darfur Coalition Million Voices for Darfur Campaign
Submitted by M&R Strategic Services

Numbers
Number of Recipients: 250,000 +
Total Income Generated: $744,000
Average Gift: $66.79
Total Out-of-Pocket Costs: $19,200
Response Rate: 1.1 percent
Cost to Raise a Dollar: $0.30

This e-mail-based campaign started out as a combined on- and offline advocacy effort to recruit 1 million people to sign postcards to President Bush calling for a stronger U.S. response to the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where more than 400,000 people have been killed since 2003.

“Million Voices for Darfur was a campaign that stretched many months but did not begin an intense focus on online fundraising until the beginning of March 2006,” wrote Andy Stone, consultant with M&R Strategic Services, who submitted the campaign. “In two short months, through Million Voices for Darfur, The Save Darfur Coalition raised $750,000 online.”

In that same time, he wrote, the coalition’s e-mail activist list more than quintupled in size.

Online fundraising for the campaign consisted of three powerful e-mail blasts to the organization’s e-mail address list. The first — Subject: I need your help today in Darfur! — was signed by actor Don Cheadle, who has been vocal in opposition to the atrocities in Darfur since he starred in Hotel Rwanda, which chronicled events surrounding the genocide in the east-central Africa Republic of Rwanda. The second — Subject: Darfur genocide is a shame to mankind; help stop it — was sent from Paul Rusesabagina, the person on whom Cheadle’s character in Hotel Rwanda was based. And the third — Subject: I went to jail to help stop genocide — was signed by Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern, who was arrested outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington D.C. during a Save Darfur Coalition protest.