Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

The objective of this campaign was both to raise funds, and to thank and engage loyal Tiger Haven donors. The very cool talking card not only features a very lionly greeting from Ramses, but also a special recorded thank-you message from Tiger Haven’s founder and president. There is no denying that the numbers bear out the success of this package. At 16.69 percent response rate, it surpassed the average rate of 2013 donor packages (10.60 percent), and at $102,323 net, it far surpassed the average net of 2013 donor packages ($69,333).

But Tiger Haven was equally thrilled with the deepened connection to the organization that the package seemed to create with its most loyal donors, as evidenced by a flood of calls and emails from donors who were delighted with it. The organization took a risk on an expensive package ($3.27 each), and it paid off.

Email ($10 million and over)
30 Days of Giving Email Campaign
National Park Foundation
(Submitted by RobbinsKersten Direct)

The Numbers (based on the email series)
Recipients: 350,000 (3,125,873 over seven emails)
Response rate: 0.05 percent
Total cost: $3,500
Income generated: $133,564
Average gift: $92.47
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.026

Short and sweet. That’s what our judges liked most about this seven-email, end-of-year campaign for the National Park Foundation.

But they also found it funny and refreshing, and full of nice touches that seem to have made quite an impact on recipients. Among them: multiple opportunities to give, a holiday e-card and a giving thermometer to allow recipients to monitor progress.

“The overall campaign on both email and the website had a $500,000 fundraising goal,” explains Polly Papsadore, vice president of marketing at RobbinsKersten Direct. “The emails included a giving thermometer and included different segments for offline donors, online donors and nondonors. The overall 30 Days of Giving campaign surpassed that $500,000 goal by 10 percent. Email contributed 24 percent of the revenue.”