And the Winners Are …

Renewal (50,000 Mailed and More)

Doctors Without Borders/MédEcins Sans Frontières Mental Health Renewal Package
Submitted by L.W. Robbins Associates

Numbers
Number of Recipients: 700,000
Total Income Generated: $2.6 million
Average Gift: $93
Total Out-of-Pocket Costs: $253,000
Response Rate: 4 percent
Cost to Raise a Dollar: $0.10

“Gripping,” “emotional” and “specific” are words one of our judges used to describe the copy in this powerful package from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières that focuses on an aspect of the organization’s work that isn’t always in the spotlight. And it didn’t hurt that it produced a 100 percent increase in revenue from the previous year’s renewal effort.

Polly Papsadore, director of marketing for L.W. Robbins Associates, explained that treating the “mental health” of patients in crisis
situations around the world is an ever-growing part of MSF’s work. It’s not one that gets a lot of attention, and it isn’t always easy to raise money to support it.

To shine a light on the importance of its work in this area, MSF turned to a technique that has worked well for it in the past — utilizing first-person accounts from both children and adults who benefit from it. Amid the package’s many elements are two 4-inch-by-7.5-inch postcards featuring illustrations drawn by patients expressing their fears, their experiences and the situations and surroundings that have caused their emotional distress — in this case, the 2004 tsunami and ongoing violence in countries around the world. The exercises that produce the drawings are stepping stones to recovery for the patients, Papsadore said.

One of the postcards shows illustrations done by a child in the Democratic Republic of Congo — one depicting one person murdering another with the word “Violence” next to it, and the other an illustration of an MSF clinic and the word “Safety.” The other shows illustrations of the tsunami by an Indonesian child — the first showing a wall of water, the second the struggle to escape, and the last one survivors in boats floating alongside dead bodies.