Strike a Match

Then there was the added challenge of sending another fundraising appeal shortly after a highly successful emergency appeal. LW Robbins and CGF worried that perhaps the emergency appeal would cannibalize the Fallen Heroes mailing.

And on top of that, there is always the challenge of educating donors on why it’s vital to support a government-funded organization.

“One challenge we have is to educate people on the fact that the federal government doesn’t pay for everything. The Coast Guard is the least funded military operation out of the five in the United States. We do things the Coast Guard doesn’t have the money to do or is not allowed to do with the money it does get from the federal government,” Sisley says. “We need to educate the donor base on that.”

That’s what the Fallen Heroes campaign is all about, building an endowment for the Fallen Heroes Scholarship Fund to support the children of Coast Guard members who lost their lives in the line of duty.

So to help build that endowment and lift response, CGF and LW Robbins had already made plans to alter the Fallen Heroes campaign with the hopes of increasing response — namely by incorporating a matching-gift offer and sending a follow-up
mailing.

CGF typically runs a matching-gift campaign at the end of the year, when people are already more inclined to give. The foundation sat down with LW Robbins and decided, since it already had a matching gift set for the end of the year and had another donor willing to match gifts for another appeal, why not incorporate the additional match to this Memorial Day Fallen Heroes campaign? The thought was that maybe the matching-gift offer would help increase response in a month that is typically less responsive for CGF donors.