Now That's a Good Idea

When I was straightening up my office the other day, I came across a mound of paper that turned out to be some of the non-winning entries in the 2012 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence. (Yes, I know they were more than three months ago — don't judge me.) As I was sorting and finally filing them, an envelope from City of Hope caught my eye.

It was a pretty simple envelope that heralded the organization's double-my-gift campaign. Inside were the letter and some matching-gift coupons. But one thing that really got my attention and made me say, "Now, that's a good idea," was the simple inclusion of logos for 3M and Post-it on the outer envelope, with the words, "They will double your gift to help beat cancer," "handwritten" with an arrow pointing to the logos.

It just struck me as clever, and seems somehow more immediate and real than merely including a note saying basically that someone, somewhere will match your gift. Plus the red 3M and yellow Post-it logos added some nice splashes of color to the plain, white envelope with blue band.

The letter was part of a multichannel campaign designed by Chapman Cubine Adams + Hussey for City of Hope. The campaign itself had some pretty impressive results. From the submission materials: "The summer 2011 matching-gift campaign saw an 83 percent increase in net revenue over the same time in 2010. The performance increased across all channels — direct mail was up 43 percent, while Web revenue was up 131 percent. The telemarketing appeal generated an additional $51,122 in gross revenue. Overall, the average gift was up 30 percent ($65 vs. $50 in 2010), while response was up 26 percent over 2010. As a result, the summer 2011 matching-gift campaign generated $189,882 more gross revenue than the 2010 summer appeal — a 63 percent increase!"

The submission also talked about how telemarketing was introduced to the mix and other winning elements. But I like to think that those two little blips of color on the DM envelope had something to do with it too.