Webinar Follow-up: An Hour With Roger Craver

On Feb. 25, FundRaising Success hosted the webinar, “Integrated Direct Mail 101: An hour with Roger Craver.” Joining Roger, a fundraising guru and founder of Craver, Mathews, Smith & Co., for this lively conversation was his colleague Ryann Miller, managing director at DonorTrends.

Though we managed to get to a lot of the questions submitted live by attendees during the webinar, there were some we just didn’t have time to get answered. Here then, as promised, are Roger and Ryann’s responses to those questions. As you’ll see, they run the gamut of subjects from paper stock and postage to telefundraising and text campaigns.

Q: What do you mean by SMS? Do people actually do text campaigns?
Ryann Miller: There are two types of SMS campaigns: 1) pushing out messaging (reminders and the like), and 2) action-oriented campaigns that ask you to forward something on or make a micro donation. Mobile fundraising campaigns are becoming more commonplace in the U.S. It is important to remember that these campaigns are for micro donations — usually $5 at a time. The Salvation Army launched a successful mobile campaign during the Thanksgiving-to-holiday season. Check out an article on it.

Q: How much lower are online stats now [compared to previous years]?
Roger Craver: The response rates for online giving in 2008 vs. 2007 were on par with those of the year before. The size of the average gift was 15 percent lower.

Q: What is Third Class mail?
RC: This is a classification of mail in the U.S. Under Third Class or Third Class Nonprofit, organizations are given a huge discount in price for submitting presorted mail (sorted in the way a letter carrier walks his/her route).

However, unlike First Class mail, the U.S. Postal Service is under no obligation to deliver it in a timely way. Thus, Third Class mail can take weeks or sometimes even months to deliver. Because of its cost advantages, Third Class mail is generally used for acquisition or prospecting efforts.