Focus On: Lists: Digging For Donors

That’s no problem if the rental expense doesn’t drive your cost per donor through the roof.

But what if it does and renting simply isn’t an option? Or if the list owner only wants to rent? Do you not order the list? Cancel your order?

If you really want the names on exchange, don’t throw in the towel just yet. Consider negotiating a cooperative exchange.

Cooperative exchanges have rescued lists that otherwise would have been dropped from mailings for several mailers including Consumers Union, National Arbor Day Foundation and March of Dimes. When properly orchestrated, they are a triple-win proposition.

All you need to make a cooperative exchange work for you is a willing third party that either owes you names or wants names from you and whose list your exchange partner wants to use. The cooperative exchange transaction would look something like this:

Each cooperative exchange is treated as a one-time deal. After all three parties receive their names, the transaction is complete. Parties can choose to enter into additional cooperative deals in the future, but they are under no obligation to do so.

Look for profitable new universes in familiar places.
Every now and again, a large nonprofit puts names on the market for the first time. Recent releases such as the Mercy Home for Boys and Girls’ active donor names and the Consumers Union lists generated a lot of excitement.

Large new lists don’t hit the market as frequently as we’d like. Sometimes, they come and go faster than we can blink. Many fundraisers’ bubbles burst, for example, when St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital changed its plan to put its list on the market. Plenty of people were waiting to test that list.

But even when new lists are not hitting the market, there are still plenty of places where you can find profitable universes. Some of them are closer than you might think.