Raised Letter

Raised Letter

Fundraising Letters Should Raise Donors, Not Donations, When
Mailed to Strangers

Are you willing to spend $1.25 to raise $1? To lose money to
make money? You should be. Most donor acquisition mailings never
pay for themselves. They lose money. And rightly so.

Acquisition letters (letters designed to acquire new donors)
should be a vital part of your development program. Current
donors fall away. Some lose interest in your mission. Some lose
their jobs. Other leave the country. Some die. You need to be
mailing fundraising letters to people who have never supported
your cause in order to replace the donors who fall away every
year through no fault of yours.

But to be successful at acquiring new donors, you need to ignore
one set of numbers and fix your eyes on another. The numbers to
"ignore" are the costs of getting your first donation. According
to James Greenfield, in his excellent book, Fund Raising
(second edition), you can expect to pay anywhere from $1.25 to
$1.50 to raise $1 with an acquisition mailing. That doesn't
sound like a wise use of your resources, does it?

But with acquisition fundraising letters, you need to have your
eyes fixed on the lifetime value of your donor, not the
short-term value of their first gift. You need to remind
yourself (along with your board members, key volunteers and
inexperienced colleagues) that your goal with acquisition
mailings is to acquire friends, not funds.

Let me illustrate.

Let's say you mail a fundraising letter to a list of 10,000
strangers. These are people who have not supported your
organization before but might. Assume that your costs for
writing, design, production and postage come to $0.60 a piece.
Your mailing costs are thus $6,000. Let's say you receive a 1
percent response rate. That's 100 gifts. Further assume that the
average gift is $30 Your income is $30 x 100 donors, namely,
$3,000.

Your costs are: $6,000

Your income is: $3,000

Your net loss for the campaign is: $3,000

Are you in trouble? No. Here's what you tell your executive
director. "We gained 100 new donors. And up to 80 percent of
them will give again, provided we follow up properly and solicit
their gifts in the right way in the future."

Each of these new donors effectively cost you $30 each (your net
loss divided by total new donors). Are you willing to spend $30
today to raise a friend who will likely give your organization
hundreds of dollars in gifts in years to come? You should be,
provided you can remember that your goal with acquisition
letters is to raise a donor, not a donation.

My thanks go to Stanley Weinstein and his book, The Complete
Guide to Fundraising Management (second edition), for his
insight into the economics of donor acquisition.

© 2005 Sharpe Copy Inc. You may reprint this
article online and in print provided the links remain live and
the content remains unaltered (including the "About the author"
message)

About the Author

Alan Sharpe is a business-to-business direct mail copywriter. Sign up for free weekly tips like this at
www.sharpecopy.com
.

what is a 4 letter word that means to encourage to do something?

and what is a 6 letter word for a place of safety?

6 letter word ...means to feel a light itch?

5 letters, to lift or raise especially by using a rope?

4 letters, a long, serious poem that tells story of a hero?

Urge
Refuge
Tickle
Hoist
Saga

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