Roy Jones

Yesterday, the mother of a sick child Googled the name of a devastating disease. She got thousands of results, but the ones that interested her the most were links to your organization’s Web site; two stories from the national media; a handful of online support groups for patients and their families; a general health Web site with online communities dedicated to the disease; and one site focused exclusively on a heartsick father’s negative experience with an operator on your organization’s support line.

So, you want your $100 check writers to start writing $200 checks and your $250 folks to give you $500? Well, all you have to do is ask. Be warned, however, that any time you push to increase the size of a gift you will, more than likely, reduce the response rate of the initial mailing or offer. But the net impact over the next 12 months can be significant and positive. You see, for every mailing from that point on you can begin building your gift array or ask table based on the highest previous contribution. So if you double or even slightly