Acquisition

FOCUS ON: LISTS Feeling Exhausted? Your prospecting lists — and you — can get a much-needed pick-me-up with an influx of nams from commercial files.
October 1, 2005

By ELIZABETH KORSUN and ERIN DOLAN Even in the face of diminishing returns, fundraisers tend to stick with a “safe” group of prospect lists — in other words, donor files. But these days, if you’re only working with primary-market data to grow your membership, you’re fighting a war of attrition. What an organization really needs to flourish is new blood, an infusion of new people excited to learn about how it’s making the world a better place. Americans already have shown how spontaneously charitable they can be. A tremendous outpouring of support for tsunami victims came from a staggering number of American households,

Here Donor, Donor
October 1, 2005

Premiums can take many forms, from traditional address labels and calendars to the more unusual seed packet or even piggy bank. What they all have in common is the ability to get the mail opened, generate higher response rates (than non-premium efforts), and drive us all crazy with worries about their up-front cost and the value/renewability of the donors they acquire.

Case in Point: Great Writing Wins Donors
June 1, 2005

An effective case statement grabs a person and never lets go. It inspires and motivates the reader to go from her mind to her heart to her purse, writes Jerold Panas, fundraising veteran and author of the new book, Making the Case: The No-Nonsense Guide to Writing the Perfect Case Statement.

Although Panas claims not to be a writer in his opening passage, he has penned eight books on fundraising, the most popular being Mega Gifts and ASKING. His latest offering includes anecdotes and step-by-step tips for crafting a case study to jolt donors into action.

Growing Donors
June 1, 2005

Middle-school students singing carols at a retirement home. Teenagers delivering meals to shut-ins or walking to raise money to fight cancer. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts and Brownies picking up trash at a city park.

Opportunities abound for young people to learn the value of giving — whether it’s time, talent or money. And nonprofit organizations are finding that it’s never too early to start grooming children, teens and young adults to become supporters in the not-so-distant future.

Why So Many New-donor Acquisition Efforts Stink
April 1, 2005

The failure to immediately obtain second gifts from new donors is a grave error. In fact, many new-donor acquisition efforts stink because of this failure.

As a fundraiser, one of your primary obligations is to acquire new donors so your organization’s revenue will increase. This means, of course, that you need to acquire more new donors each year than you lose to offset natural attrition.

The Fundraising Landscape, Circa 2005
January 1, 2005

You might be thinking that the new year will just bring more of the usual fundraising grind, slogging forward step by step, scratching for every dollar.Well, I have good news: It doesn’t have to be that way.

In fact, the smartest fundraisers are paying attention to what promises to be next in breakthrough fundraising trends, strategies and tactics that will revolutionize the way funds are raised in the years ahead. So get on board if you want to ride the coming surge of fundraising effectiveness.

Mining for New Donors: Think Outside Your Universe
September 1, 2004

Acquisition means bringing in new donors, as many as possible. But with donor-list universes shrinking and the cost of acquisition rising, fundraisers are left in quite a quandary.

Digging For Donors
July 1, 2004

Anyone who works in direct mail donor development can tell you that it’s a challenge to find ways to bring in new donors while operating under an ever-tightening budget. With so many organizations mailing to the same lists of donors, fewer new lists being brought to the market and expenses always on the rise, creativity and willingness to take calculated risks will help you reach your new donor goals.

AFP Booklet Addresses Ailing Donor Files
March 1, 2004

Many organizations that have poorly performing files are not adequately investing in new lists, resulting in meager prospect-response rates and low new-donor retention rates, writes Margaret Guellich, CFRE, senior director of development for the American Life League, in her new booklet, “Reviving Your Donor File: Prescription for a Healthy Direct Marketing Plan.” The booklet recently was released as the fourth in the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Ready Reference Series.

Prospecting Lists that Work
November 1, 2003

You can have the most deserving cause and a highly compelling appeal, but your direct mail is going to be wasted if it’s sent to the wrong lists. That’s why, for any direct mail fundraising campaign, the list is the most important element within the nonprofit organization’s control — that, according to Mal Warwick, chairman of Mal Warwick & Associates Inc., Berkeley, CA.