Tale of an Integrated Fundraising Effort

Tale of an Integrated Fundraising Effort

FS Advisor: March 21, 2006

By Abny Santicola, editor, FundRaising Success Advisor

The Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign, founded in 1980, is the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender political organization, with 600,000 members. When GLBT issues took the national stage in a big way in 2003 and 2004, HRC embarked on an effort to mobilize its direct fundraising efforts to make the most of the media attention. The all-out effort involved coordinating campaigns across direct mail, telemarketing and e-mail.

Direct mail and telemarketing already were integrated, but the necessary next step was beefing up the organization’s ability to raise funds online and join the integration. Ann Crowley, membership director for HRC, says prior to 2003 the organization tended to do online fundraising internally. The process was slow and elementary, Crowley adds, and, as attention turned toward GLBT issues, the organization was unable to handle the level of response on its own. So it turned to online consultancy, Donordigital.

Initiating a new online effort, HRC first rolled out The Million for Marriage Web page, to try to grow its e-mail list. After garnering a list of e-mail names, the next question was how to convert them to donors. It went out with several online campaigns on gay marriage, testing, as it still does, to see which techniques are best to convert donors by e-mail. Some areas the organization has tested are subject lines; length of e-mail; length of donation page; using a straight spokesperson vs. GLBT spokesperson; and using a marriage-focused message vs. a general HRC message.

After establishing an online fundraising presence, HRC’s next goal was to integrate online efforts with direct mail and telefundraising. The organization sent out a renewal mailing, followed up with an e-mail campaign. A second direct-mail appeal spoke of marriage amendments that would be on the November 2004 ballot, and this theme was incorporated into telemarketing scripts.