Incentives

Jane Nelson-Halverson, owner of Dakota Promotions & Printing, shared a favorite promotion she did for Prevent Child Abuse North Dakota. Through creative use of found artwork and effective networking within her community, she was able to complete a great fundraising promotion for an important cause.

Lisa Mummert, senior account executive for Image Source Inc. in Santa Rosa, Calif., shared a promotion she and a winery created to support Murphy-Goode Operation Homefront, an organization that provides financial and practical aid to veterans in need. They sent thank-you bundles to veterans that included USBs loaded with information about Operation Homefront.

Freemiums and premiums have long been staples of direct-mail fundraising. In this video, Direct Marketing IQ's Paul Bobnak takes a look at this practice with a little twist. He reviews the tried-and-true method of address labels included in a Paralyzed Veterans of America mailing and then lays out how both the Sierra Club and Doctors Without Borders utilize maps as engaging freemiums for donors.

Check out this video detailing the National Audubon Society's freemium mailing.

Fundraising gifts have been hotly debated for 30+ years, and still, people have varying opinions. Yale professors (Journal of Economic Psychology, 2012) did a study on the impact of gifts on charitable giving and the results will shock you: Thank-you gifts actually reduced charitable donations because the gifts made people feel less charitable.

In 2005, Jennifer Bielat, vice president of direct marketing at Easter Seals and member of the FundRaising Success Editorial Advisory Board, shared ways to increase long-term value of premium donors.

The use of premiums in direct-response fundraising, whether it be in a direct-mail, email, telefundraising or direct-response television campaign, has conjured lots of debate over the years. Proponents like to point out the lift a premium often can give a specific campaign, while detractors often cite the lack of donor loyalty for premium-responsive donors.

When veterans’ nonprofit group Disabled American Veterans sends a mailing for contributions, Dr. Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University, said, it gets an 18 percent response rate. When the same letter is sent with personalized address labels, which cost about eight cents, the response rate goes up to 35 percent. “For the cost of the address labels they get almost a doubling of return,” he said. “It’s very powerful rule and very small things can trigger it.”

Do thank-you gifts actually increase contributions? Two Yale University researchers tried to answer this question in a recent study of charitable behavior. They looked at how external incentives influence a person's willingness to engage in charitable behavior, to be precise — and found that when you offer a thank-you gift as part of an initial donation request — such as a pen, tote bag or mug — people end up donating less than if you just asked them how much they'd be willing to donate.

I spoke with consultant Pamela Barden, founder and president of PJBarden Inc. and member of the FundRaising Success Editorial Advisory Board, and copywriter Willis Turner, senior copywriter at Huntsinger & Jeffer, who shared some thoughts on the use of premiums in fundraising. Welcome to the conversation!