Winners of the 2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

“And the best part?” Twombly says. “More than 60 percent of the donations were received from first-time HRC donors.”

Website
Milwaukee Rescue Mission
(Submitted by Grizzard Communications Group)

The Numbers
Response rate: 2,524 total responses
Total cost: $27,700
Income generated: $327,455.15
Average gift: $129.74

In 2013, the Milwaukee Rescue Mission realized its website wasn’t very user-friendly, and it lacked clear creative and strategic direction, as well as online, data-driven analytics.

The site was revised with cohesive branding, relevant content and original, local imagery. It also is more user-friendly, with refined colors schemes, borders and fonts.

“The new website was designed not only to be mobile-responsive, but also with a user-friendly CRM,” writes Erin Himes, account director at Grizzard Communications Group.

Some of the more striking features of the new site include an interactive online catalog that gives donors a more hands-on approach to their giving and an infographic-like page called “Understand the Problem” that uses a progression of images, video and statistics to explain the homeless situation in Milwaukee and MRM’s role in the solution.

Additional Website Winners
SILVER: The Wilderness Society — Year-End Lightbox (Submitted by ABD Direct)

The Numbers
Recipients: 5,587
Response rate: 13.64 percent
Total cost: $3,000
Income generated: $79,215
Average gift: $103.96
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.04

While year-end is typically the most important giving season of the year — both in mail and online — The Wilderness Society found that traffic to its site historically dropped off at that time because the number of people looking online for camping trips and other outdoor activities declines. So to generate more online income in the winter months, TWS needed to ramp up its site to really grab the attention of the visitors it did get.