Strike a Match

The results
The emergency mailing was rolled out to 9,381 donors and received an impressive 11.5 percent response rate. Overall, it brought in $78,470 in donations while costing just a fraction of that thanks to that “cheap and dirty” look and feel — $9,097 to be exact, meaning the cost to raise a dollar was less than 12 cents.

And according to Brad Sisley, chief operating officer and senior vice president of development at CGF, the appeal went beyond just the direct-mail recipients, particularly with the help of word-of-mouth and media coverage.

“The Coast Guard is a very tight-knit community. People know who we are, so we get a lot of white gifts in the mail from Coast Guard members, families, friends,” he says. “And people who want to support us in times like this come out of the woodwork.

“People are very generous when something comes up like that. The Coast Guard is a small military service and the only U.S. service dedicated and trained to save lives. What the Coast Guard does goes beyond the military or the patriotic American,” Sisley adds. “There are recreational boaters, fishermen, the shipping industry — they all rely on the Coast Guard every day to keep the ports open, to provide rescue crews, to keep the seas clear. So when something like that happens where people die, it brings out all those people providing generous support.”

Beyond the reach, the package itself conveyed the proper tone.

“The emergency appeal was effective because it was communicated in a timely fashion. The subject of the package was being played out in the news, on TV and the Internet. It was happening right then and there,” Laudano says. “The timeliness and the emotion of the tragedy, and how it spoke directly to the mission of the organization, that was the secret to this appeal.”