July 2008

1. Online: Growing your e-mail list
By Michael Stein

2. The donor-centric pledge
By Tom Ahern and Simone Joyaux

3. Answerman: Measuring the health of your donorfile (Part 2)
By Peter Schoewe

4. Fabulous free resource!

5. Best Practices: Destination marketing
By Tom Gaffny

6. Ask Mal

7. Extra!: Marketing legacies online? (Part 1)
Rob Blizard

8. Where's Mal

9. Tips for e-marketing legacy gifts
By Rob Blizard

10. Spotlight on Succcess: New twists on university fundraising
By Managing Editor Deborah Block and Paul Karps

11. Resource Alliance Webinars

12. How’s e-mail doing?

1. Growing your e-mail list

By Michael Stein

Growing the size of your e-mail list is essential for a successful Internet strategy. The larger your list, the more people you can message regularly with campaign updates—and the more who will come back to your Web site, attend your events, and donate online. Just as you’re committed to growing your direct mail list, you should grow your e-mail list.

Here are some strategies to help you grow your list. With any e-mail-gathering effort, make sure you get explicit, documented, opt-in permission to use their e-mail address to send out updates about your organization so you’re in full compliance with the law.

Collect e-mail on your Web site

The visitor traffic on your Web site is one of the best places to grow your list. Make it easy for visitors to find the “e-mail signup widget,” which should be prominently visible on all pages of your site. You can test ways to increase signup through this widget by offering incentives—such as raffles and contests (“Sign up for a chance to win a free book”)—that have been shown to increase e-mail signup conversion rates. Because Web site visitors are often hesitant to sign up for generic e-newsletters, consider displaying samples of past e-updates. By offering issue-specific e-updates to subscribers, they’ll feel like they won’t be burdened by unwanted content.

Promote e-mail signup in your print materials

It’s common for print materials such as brochures, newsletters, flyers, and annual reports to encourage people to visit your Web site for more information. Also, be sure to promote your e-updates, so people are aware of them early on.

Ask for e-mail addresses at events and speaking engagements

If you’re staffing a kiosk or booth or hosting a houseparty, ask people face-to-face for their e-mail address, and explain why you’re doing it. Have a signup sheet ready or take business cards. When you or others representing your organization give a speech or make a presentation, invite listeners at the end to sign up to receive your e-updates. Just promoting your Web site is no longer an effective strategy for staying in touch with supporters.

Get your staff, Board, and volunteers involved in gathering e-mail addresses

Train your whole team to collect e-mail addresses at every opportunity, such as events, meetings, or on the phone. Everyone from your CEO to your receptionist should be asking for e-mail addresses. “May I have your e-mail address so we can stay in contact? E-mail saves us money, and lets us contact you when there’s breaking news.” Consider a monthly or quarterly reward for a team member who collects the most.

Coordinate with your direct mail vendor for e-mail list growth

The synergy of e-mail with direct mail is a growing opportunity that your organization should explore. Direct mail should invite potential donors to give online, which will allow you to identify more e-mail addresses for your donors. All direct mail response forms should include a request for an e-mail address and an opt-in permission. If you’re able to segment your donor list appropriately, you can include a special insert with a request for e-mail address disclosure.

Test the use of a “co-registration service” to grow your e-mail list

A co-registration service, such as Care2, can help social sector nonprofit organizations grow their e-mail lists for a per-name fee. A limited test will allow a group to assess the potential of such a service.

Conduct “chaperone” e-mail messaging campaigns

Contact trusted partner organizations and conduct a “chaperone” e-mail messaging campaign to sign up new supporters to your list. A “chaperone” campaign is an e-mail message sent by another organization on your behalf, coming from them, and containing your messaging content. The action component would direct interested recipients to a landing page on your Web site that has an e-mail subscription signup form (with samples to view).

Identify partners to place free Web site and blog banners

Contact trusted partner organizations who can place free Web site and blog banners to drive traffic to custom-designed landing pages that integrate engaging content with a prominent e-mail signup form.

Michael Stein is Senior Online Strategist at Mal Warwick Associates, 2550 Ninth Street, Suite 103, Berkeley CA 94710, phone (510) 843-8888, fax (510) 843-0142, e-mail Michaels@malwarwick.com.

2. The donor-centric pledge

By Tom Ahern and Simone Joyaux

Raise your right hand. Repeat after me . . .

We, [fill in the name of your nonprofit organization here], believe…

That donors are essential to the success of our mission.
That gifts are not “cash transactions.” Donors are not merely a bunch of interchangeable, easily replaceable credit cards, checkbooks, and wallets.
That no one “owes” us a gift just because our mission is worthy.
That any person who chooses to become our donor has enormous potential to assist the mission.
That having a program for developing a relationship with that donor is how organizations tap that enormous potential.
That we waste that potential when donors are not promptly thanked.
That the “lifetime value of a donor” is the best (though often overlooked) way to evaluate “return on investment” in fundraising.
That donors are more important than donations. Those who currently make small gifts are just as interesting to us as those who currently make large gifts.
That acquiring first-time donors is easy, but keeping those donors is hard.
That many first-time gifts are no more than “impulse purchases” or “first dates.”
That we'll have to work harder for the second gift than you did for the first.
That a prerequisite for above-average donor retention is a well-planned donor-centric communications program that begins with a welcome.
That donors want to have faith in us, and that it's our fault if they don't.
That donors want to make a difference in the world—and that our mission is one of many means to that end.
That donors are investors. They invest in doing good. They expect their investments to prosper, or they'll invest somewhere else.
That we earn the donor’s trust by reporting on our accomplishments and efficiency.
That individual donors respond to our appeals for personal reasons we can only guess at.
That asking a donor why she or he gave a first gift to us will likely lead to an amazingly revealing conversation.
That fundraising serves donors’ emotional needs as much as it serves the organization's financial needs.
That we are in the “feel-good” business. Donors feel good when they help make the world a better place.
That a prime goal of fundraising communications is to satisfy basic human needs, such as the donor's need to feel important and worthwhile.
That the donor’s perspective defines what is a “major” gift.
That every first gift can open a door to an entirely new world for the donor, through participation in our cause.

Excerpted from Keep Your Donors by Tom Ahern and Simone Joyaux, published in Nov. 2007 by Wiley/AFP. Copyright © 2008 by Tom Ahern and Simone Joyaux. Reprinted with permission. Contact Tom at (401) 397-8104 or a2bmail@aol.com.

3. Measuring the health of your donorfile (Part 2)

By Peter Schoewe

Last month I wrote about three of the fundamental metrics of fundraising: the number of active donors on your file, donor retention, and conversion and return on initial acquisition investment. In this column, I’ll wrap up the discussion, noting two other key measures of donorfile health.

4. Gifts per donor and revenue per donor

These two measures illustrate how successful your fundraising program is in inspiring your active donors to support your organization. Gifts per donor measures, on average, how many gifts an active donor has given in a year’s time. The minimum value for gifts per donor is one, because by definition an active donor has given at least one gift in the past year. You can calculate gifts per donor by dividing total number of gifts by active donors. For example, if you received 5,423 gifts in the fiscal year and had 4,358 active donors, the gifts per donor would equal: 5,423/4,358, or 1.24.

Revenue per donor is similar to gifts per donor and is a measure of the value, on average, of each active donor to your organization. It can be calculated in two ways. As with gifts per donor, you can calculate it by dividing total revenue by the number of active donors. You can also calculate it by multiplying the average gift on your file by the number of gifts per donor. So, continuing the example from above, if total revenue for the fiscal year was $195,228, that would mean the average gift was $195,225/5,423 gifts, or $36. Revenue per donor could then be calculated in either of the two following ways: $195,225/4,358, or $45, or $36 (average gift) x 1.24 gifts per donor, again $45.

5. Upgrading and downgrading

Depending on the trends you’re seeing in gifts per donor and revenue per donor, you may be experiencing changes in your revenue based on the pattern of donors upgrading or downgrading their level of giving. An upgrade or downgrade can occur due to either a change in the value of the gifts a donor chooses to send or a change in the frequency with which those gifts are sent. (It’s often easier to upgrade donors by increasing the frequency of their giving rather than the value of their gifts.) The trends in upgrading and downgrading can first be measured as a percentage of the multi-year active file that falls into one of three categories:

Upgraded donors: donors who gave more in the current fiscal year than in the prior fiscal year.
Stable donors: donors who gave exactly the same amount in the current fiscal year and the prior fiscal year.
Downgraded donors: donors who gave less in the current fiscal year than in the prior fiscal year. This category should not include donors who ceased to give, or who gave nothing in the current fiscal year.

For example, if 31,000 donors gave gifts both in the current fiscal year and the prior fiscal year—and 9,800 increased their giving in the current year, while 9,500 stayed at the same level and 11,700 decreased their support—you could calculate the percentage of upgrades and downgrades as follows:

(9,800/31,000) x 100 = 31.6% upgraded donors
(9,500/31,000) x 100 = 30.6% stable donors
(11,700/31,000) x 100 = 37.7% downgraded donors

It’s often instructive to calculate the value of the upgrades and the downgrades. To do this, you simply sum the value of the gifts from each category of donor by fiscal year, and subtract the prior year’s sum from the current year’s sum. (The value for the stable donors will always be $0, because they gave the same amount in both fiscal years.) For example, if the 9,800 upgraded donors above gave a total of $458,640 in the prior fiscal year and $496,860 in the current fiscal year, the value of their upgrade is $38,220. On the other hand, if the downgraded donors gave $505,440 in the prior fiscal year and $450,450 in the current fiscal year, the value of their downgrade is -$54,990, meaning that the pattern of upgrading and downgrading on the file resulted in a loss of $16,770 in revenue in the current fiscal year.

By placing emphasis on the use of file health measures to guide fundraising strategy, I don’t mean to imply that you should ignore your donors and their communications with you. On an individual level, you should always be sure to respond to donors in a timely and meaningful fashion. But always remember that a single complaint means much less than an overall metric. It’s possible to have a file of happy and committed donors—along with revenue that’s falling off a cliff. But if you’re watching your donorfile’s health—and testing new initiatives aimed at moving a metric up or down—you can be confident that your fundraising strategies are properly aligned with your goals.

Peter Schoewe is Senior Consultant, Mal Warwick Associates, 2550 Ninth Street, Suite 103, Berkeley CA 94710-2516, phone (510) 843-8888, fax (510) 843-0142, Web www.malwarwick.com, e-mail peter@malwarwick.com.

4. Fabulous free resource!

It’s called SOFII (“Sophie”), the Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration. And if you’re a fundraiser, you’ll drool over the amazing material available for free on this Web site. Check it out without delay! You’ll want to bookmark this site, and return to it again and again.

SOFII is the brainchild of legendary British fundraiser Ken Burnett, the evangelist of relationship fundraising and author of indispensable books on the subject. Recently, Burnett and the London-based Resource Alliance reached agreement for the latter to support the site. SOFII’s home has begun to migrate from Burnett’s home in France to the Resource Alliance office in London with the hiring of Carolina Herrera, who’s now coordinating the fast-growing operation.

Don’t fail to register for SOFII. It’s easy, painless, and promises many valuable dividends to come, as new examples of world-class fundraising make their way onto the site.

—M.W.

5. Destination marketing

By Tom Gaffny

At the 2008 DMA Nonprofit Conference in Washington DC, late in January, Epsilon Executive Vice President Tom Gaffny delivered an extraordinary workshop, relating the findings of his year-long study of online best practices. The presentation included a staggering 192 slides and revealed so much about the state of fundraising online today that it was virtually indigestible at one sitting. Tom graciously agreed to allow us to publish his findings piecemeal as a new column in this newsletter. What follows is the fifth installment.

In my year-long study of the online practices of 144 nonprofit organizations, I learned about 12 ways that charities are using the online medium to bring donors closer to the cause . . . again and again. They’re thus making their organizations more relevant, more provocative, more stimulating, and more engaging.

Here, once again, are those 12 techniques:

Be relevant—be local
Highlight the video
Engage constituents
Leverage techniques that work in the mail
Send information in bite-size chunks
Work at channel integration
Personalize your organization
Be visual—be provocative
Say “thank you” in different ways
Ask friends to “get the word out”
Be timely—be there
Highlight your partners

In my previous two columns, I addressed the first two of these 12 approaches. This month I’ll cover the third.

Engage constituents

No doubt you’ve been hearing for years that it’s essential to involve people online to a far greater degree than you’re used to doing by mail or phone. However, if my probes online are any reasonable guide to the extent to which fundraisers are acting on that truism, genuine constituent involvement isn’t nearly as widespread as it needs to be to maximize the potential of the Internet. But there are exceptions. Strong ones.

Take a look, for example, at this e-mail communication from the Alzheimer’s Association:

And here’s another outstanding example from the same organization:

And here’s another excellent sample of genuine constituent engagement from the ASPCA:

Here’s yet another example from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation:

The featured involvement device in this message is about as personal as you can get:

As you can see, all three of these organizations—Alzheimer’s, the ASPCA, and Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation—are offering the sort of membership benefits that a supporter might expect. But strong constituent engagement isn’t limited to organizations that are known for customer service. Advocacy organizations such as Catholic Relief Services can effectively use this technique, too.

Here’s a closer look at the involvement device on this message from CRS:

Stay tuned for future columns, as I explore constituent engagement in my next column, and the remaining nine online best practices of the American nonprofit sector in the months that follow.

Tom Gaffny is Executive Vice President, Epsilon, 601 Edgewater Drive, Wakefield MA 01880-6235, phone (781) 685-6825, fax (781) 685-0817, Web www.episilon.com, e-mail tomgaffny@epsilon.com.

6. Ask Mal

Since 1994, when the Mal Warwick Associates Web site went online, Editor Mal Warwick has answered fundraising questions posed by visitors to the site. Hundreds of those Q&As are available here. In this feature, we'll spotlight one Q&A from the most recent month.

Question: How do you get lapsed donors to give again via direct mail as well as telemarketing? I would appreciate a brief answer, as well as some materials, books to read that would help me on this issue.

Mal answers: Most organizations that operate ongoing direct mail fundraising programs use both mail and telephone contact to reactivate lapsed donors—often in combination, but typically with greater emphasis on the phone. A standard effort might include the following elements:
a “last chance” renewal notice in the mail;
a “Welcome Back!” letter after another month or two, possibly including a brief questionnaire inquiring about the reason for lapsing and offering another chance to be reinstated without missing an issue of the newsletter; and
lastly, a telephone call 6-8 weeks following the Welcome Back letter, sometimes offering a special incentive to re-join.

Increasingly, nonprofits that have e-mail addresses on file for their donors are also introducing an online contact in this effort.

The best advice I can give you to learn more about this process is to read my book, Revolution in the Mailbox, Revised Edition. The topic is covered in that book, though not as thoroughly as you might wish. But it will help you understand the context in which donors lapse—and the many steps you can take to minimize that occurrence.

7. Marketing legacies online? (Part 1)

By Rob Blizard

Editor’s note: This article discusses the online marketing practice and potential of “planned giving,” the American name for a concept known to most of the world as “legacy giving.” Tax laws in the United States allow for a bewildering array of charitable tax-avoidance schemes that often require assistance from specialists in accounting, law, and financial planning. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of legacy gifts in the U.S. are simple bequests, which do not require more than an absolute minimum of professional help.

Remember the refrains of the 1980s bubblegum tune Video Killed the Radio Star? That ditty bemoaned the triumph of MTV icons eclipsing longtime singers who first found fame with radio audiences. “Rewritten by machine and new technology,” the song wailed.

Likewise, during the sweeping advent of online commerce in the last 10 years, planned giving professionals may have expected a lot from e-marketing. Communicating via Web sites and e-mail loomed as the new-fangled “video star” that might equal or surpass the tried-and-true “radio star” methods of generating planned gifts: direct mail, phone calls, personal visits, and special events.

But has such a transformation taken place?

Unlike MTV, e-marketing for planned gifts, despite some notable successes, may be the revolution that wasn’t. Or at least the back-burner revolution percolating on low heat.

Early returns

Planned giving programs across the nation have taken the e-marketing plunge. They’ve launched their own portion of their organization’s Web sites, interacted with donors via e-mail and online forms, added gift calculators, and worked with consultants to add estate-planning material. Standing back after a decade of beefing up their online planned giving presences, however, one might ask to what cumulative effect.

In its Fundraising Well newsletter of September 2007, Blackbaud, which provides services to numerous charities, issued results of a survey of 600 nonprofit professionals to “compile a thorough picture of the state of nonprofit Internet marketing today.”

Results showed that the majority of respondents stated their e-newsletter subscription to supporters has grown over the past 12 months (59%) and their organizations accepted donations online (70%). Nonprofit Web sites have, without question, served as successful venues for accepting smaller-dollar donations.

Even so, for many planned giving folks around the country, the jury still seems to be out on e-marketing’s efficacy. Is it anything more than simply another tool in the planned gift marketer’s tool belt to generate quality leads and/or close gifts?

“Although we are getting a fair amount of traffic on our Web page that we launched five years ago,” says John Woods, Director of Planned Giving at the University of Arizona Foundation, “I do not think a lot of our audience is Web-savvy yet. I also do not see an increasing percentage of our leads coming from online activity.”

Woods, who uses a vendor to supply Web content and design for his planned giving pages, says he plans to work with the same vendor to develop what are known as “blast e-mails.” These messages are sent to mass lists of donors for whom organizations have verified e-mail addresses.

Despite Woods’ desire “to ideally have additional resources to e-market more,” he admits that he “cannot track the usefulness” of his online gift calculator. He also is not able to connect activity on his Web pages to bottom-line numbers. Furthermore, interest in a special e-brochure is low: “We are not getting a lot of responses, but they are better than nothing.”

Not so stellar

Better than nothing. That sentiment is echoed in the comments of John McKee, Director of Gift Planning at the University of Maryland. His program has operated a vendor-provided planned giving Web page for four years. In 2003 and 2004, he also tested e-newsletters to estate planning professionals and a small list of prospects.

“I can’t recall any of the donors ever mentioning those e-mails,” McKee says. “And since then, we have not done any direct e-marketing.”

Instead, he notes, “We have success with old-fashioned methods: direct mail, referrals from major gift officers, and an estate-planning course that we mail to donors. Online activity has never been a significant source of leads. In fact, I notice declining traffic from the time we launched our planned giving Web pages, despite including our Web address on all of our mailings and letterhead.”

Furthermore, McKee says, the online calculator on the University of Maryland Web site “gets action only about once a month.”

“We can see site visitors run calculations themselves, but in my opinion the calculator does not provide much value,” he explains. “I would prefer that donors ask us for information so that we can talk to them about what they are trying to accomplish before they have numbers in front of them. For me, the illustration is not helpful at the beginning of the discussion but, rather, closer to the end.”

The view of online marketing as a necessary but lackluster marketing component is poised to shape McKee’s planned giving communication efforts for some time.

“Our e-marketing is useful for providing information and assisting with donor relations, but phone calls, face-to-face visits, and direct mail will be our central marketing strategies for the foreseeable future. Paying for in-depth articles is a certainty while we can afford them, but I don’t see making an extra investment right now when the site is not generating a significant amount of leads. We could do almost all that we do without our Web site, I suspect.”

Newer players

As one example of a nonprofit new to marketing planned gifts online, the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) just last year expanded its e-marketing and debuted planned giving Web pages among other initiatives.

Francene Walker, National Director of Individual and Planned Giving, says, “We receive a small number of inquiries from these pages but I would not consider this a trend. Perhaps donors use the gift calculator for their private information, but their inquiries via phone and e-mail don't suggest that they use it to finalize their decision to give a gift. They often want to talk to someone first.”

She acknowledges, however, that UNCF has done little to drive donors to the planned giving Web site. Why not? Walker never expected online marketing to be a panacea for boosting planned gift inquiries.

“When it comes to donors making large gifts, I never had huge expectations of any of the online tools—for planned giving or otherwise. Fundraising is about building relationships and, while I expected some leads from the Web site, I did not anticipate e-marketing to be an enormous generator of leads.”

Still, the experience has been a tad disappointing, despite lessons learned. “Rarely,” she declares, “has donor contact from our Web site resulted in a closed gift, other than people letting us know that they have named us in their wills.”

As a result, an assessment of e-marketing at UNCF is in the works for 2008. Walker says that more than anything else she would like to add a bequest-notification form to her site.

Check all that apply

Blackbaud’s 2007 survey results show that just a small minority of nonprofit Web sites offer members-only sections (18%), allow supporters to interact with each other (9%), or display differing gift amount options based on a visitor’s complete giving history (5%).

The options for Web site enhancements are vast. But are they fruitful or even wanted?

Despite less-than-amazing returns from their planned giving Web page forays, Woods, McKee, and Walker all say they wish they had more staff resources to engage in additional e-marketing initiatives. They each currently spend $5,000 or less per year for e-marketing services. Other planned giving marketing activities take greater priority, however.

“Right now,” McKee points out, “we are too short-staffed to consider new online marketing efforts. And we are focusing instead on direct mail, more visits, and donor database improvements. My instinct is that those activities are much more beneficial in generating new gifts than anything electronic I can think of.”

Needless to say, other e-technologies—like instant messaging, podcasts, or online advertising on other sites—are not figuring into the marketing plans of planned giving directors Woods, McKee, or Walker.

Forms of e-stewardship, such as setting up special e-mail lists so the organization can deliver news to donors or talk to major or planned gift donors in a different way, also seem to be in nascent stages.

Rob Blizard serves as Gift Planning Director for George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens in Mount Vernon VA and as a member of the Board of Directors for the Montgomery County (MD) Humane Society. Contact Rob at roberteblizard@yahoo.com.

8. Where's Mal

August 6-7, 2008 – Minneapolis MN
Planned Parenthood Federation of America Development Officers Conference
Workshop: The Copywriter's Workshop: Crafting Brilliant Letters, E-mails, and Telemarketing Scripts for Breakthrough Fundraising Results
Workshop: Creating the Perfect Year-End Campaign
Workshop: The Do’s and Don’ts of Response Devices

August 7, 2008 – Minneapolis MN
Association of Fundraising Professionals Minnesota Chapter
Workshop: Crafting a Message to Win More Supporters for Your Cause

October 14-17, 2008 – Noordwijk, The Netherlands
28th International Fundraising Congress
Master Class: The Copywriter’s Workshop: Crafting Brilliant Letters, E-mails, and Telemarketing Scripts for Breakthrough Fundraising Results
Site: NH Leeuwenhorst Hotel

October 23-26, 2008 – La Jolla CA
Social Venture Network
Site: Estancia La Jolla

December 8, 2008 – Stockholm, Sweden
Right Livelihood Award Foundation
2008 Award Ceremony
Site: Swedish Parliament

January 29-30, 2009 – Washington, DC
Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Conference
Site: Renaissance Hotel

February 25-28, 2009 – Hanoi, Vietnam
Resource Alliance Vietnam National Workshop

9. Tips for e-marketing legacy gifts

By Rob Blizard

Since consensus dictates that online marketing for planned gifts is essential, although perhaps not transformative, managers can take some significant steps to educate and encourage donors and prospects. Among the tips offered by Nathan Stelter of The Stelter Company and Charles Schultz of Crescendo Interactive are these suggestions for improving your chances of generating leads:

Change content on a regular basis.
Build your e-mail list by capturing addresses whenever possible.
Reach out proactively to donors and advisors, but avoid overkill if sending out blast e-mails, which may turn off recipients.
Consider using data enrichment services (i.e., e-mail appends, age overlays) to fill in gaps in your database.
Piggyback onto current organizational blast e-mails and use your own e-mail signature line to promote your message.
Use direct mail pieces—and not just those that focus exclusively on planned giving—to market planned giving Web pages.
Ensure ease of navigation from the main home page.
Ensure that your Web site and other communications sufficiently welcome and encourage e-contact and always respond rapidly to e-inquiries.
Consider messaging that overlaps and reinforces all planned gift marketing efforts. For example, promote the online gift calculator in direct mail pieces.
Include a clear call to action and make it easy for readers to determine how to respond, i.e., list contact information prominently.
Remember that many donors, especially older ones, feel uncomfortable providing personal data or information about their wealth via e-mails or online forms; therefore, consider online forms that ask for a minimum of information.
Have educational content available online or ready to send in e-mail responses.

10. New twists on university fundraising

By Managing Editor Deborah Block and Paul Karps

When San Francisco State University hired former ad man George Machun to manage its Annual Giving and Alumni Association programs, the goal was clear: use this as an opportunity to put aside traditional notions of university fundraising and try some new ideas.

In fact, as Machun tells us, “One of the reasons they hired me three years ago was that they were looking for someone who did not have any experience with higher education fundraising. They were looking for someone coming out of the private world who was in advertising and marketing and would bring those skills to the job.”

And with a job title—and corresponding business card—that simply says “Marketing,” this is exactly what Machun did.

An Alumni Association-Annual Giving synergy

With both the Alumni Association and Annual Giving programs headed by the same person, a definite synergy has been created between the two. Instead of getting former students to join the Alumni Association on an annual basis, recent graduates are offered a special $49 lifetime membership, while others receive a lifetime rate of $89. Machun explains that he then doesn’t have to go through the enormous expense of renewing them every year. “We make more money doing it this way.”

Even more important, “If I can get someone to raise their hand and join the Alumni Association, it immediately tells me that for whatever reason those people are attracted to the school and want to remain so. And they immediately become our strongest Annual Fund prospects. So I know who I’m targeting over the next 20-30 years.”

In other words, apart from all the events and activities normally associated with an Alumni Association, at SF State it’s used to isolate the most attractive prospects for fundraising. New members are then contacted by the call center right away for a donation to the Annual Fund.

Mining the database

Another innovation instituted by Machun is the development of an extensive computer model to generate additional names for the Annual Giving program. Every summer, before the new school year begins, Machun runs a regression analysis on his universe of 250,000 former students—factoring in 25 different data points for each individual. A final score ranging from 1 to 30 is then created, with the results ranked by decile. However, only the top half gets called.

“That,” notes Machun, “immediately gets my response numbers up, since I’m not calling people who won’t give to the university. The model takes all the attributes of the donor and looks for the same attributes in non-donors. And it works. My participation rates in the phone program are skyrocketing.”

Like the connection between the Alumni Association and Annual Giving, the phone and mail programs are, as Machun explains, “inextricably linked. I don’t separate the two.” New donors come in through the phone and renewed in the mail the following year. But if they don’t respond after a reminder mailing, they’re passed on to the call center. The mail program itself only mails to donors, not non-donors.

Making research a priority

Machun is also adamant about the need to ask alumni what they think, what they want, and why they should support the university. The goal, adds Machun, is to learn what people expect of you. “Don’t tell them what to do. Ask them what they want you to do.” So to find out, he does a great deal of online survey research.

For example, he used it to see which of four distinct themes would provide the most effective overall message. Significantly, the concept of accessibility was the clear winner. Then again, this gets to the very mission of the California State University system: to have as many people as possible get a four-year degree at a reasonable price. The cost is about half that of a University of California degree, whose campuses tend to be more into academic research and mostly take higher-achieving students.

According to Machun, “Accessibility rings true with our alumni. It’s music to their ears. SF State was a very accessible education for them. They don’t see it as exclusive or world class.”

Not surprisingly, the theme of SF State as a world-class university tested dead last—with some people even taunting the idea—despite the urging of some administrators to push this message.

What also resonated was the notion of SF State as a “state-assisted, not state-funded” school—the idea that the state provides some financial support, but the university has to raise money to fill the gap.

But accessibility is the key message. Says Machun, “Alumni understand that. And are willing to support it. They see it as the way to help other people. So we use real live examples of real students around the issue of accessibility. Students who otherwise might not be able to come here.”

To see a sample of a SF State Annual Fund appeal taking this approach, click here.

11. Resource Alliance Webinars

Mal and other top speakers are only a click away. You can see experts in the field live on your desktop courtesy of the Resource Alliance, Inc. and Forum for Fundraising. The live Webinars allow you to interact with the presenter almost as though you were in the same room.

For more information about upcoming Webinars or to register, click here.

12. How’s e-mail doing?

A survey of 21 large national not-for-profits finds that the percentage of people who opened or responded to the groups’ e-mail decreased in 2007. According to a study by M+R Strategic Services and the Nonprofit Technology Network, as recounted in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the percentage of people who opened the messages dropped from 21.3% in 2006 to 17.6%. Meanwhile, the percentage that clicked through to a Web link fell from 4.9% to 3.8%. Ironically, the organizations increased the amount of money they raised online by 19% during that same time period.

Mal Warwick, Editor
Deborah Block, Managing Editor
Kieu Tran, Production Manager

Contributing Editors:
Nick Allen, Donordigital
Ken Burnett, Cascaid Consulting
Harvey McKinnon, Harvey McKinnon Associates
Jerold Panas, Jerold Panas, Linzy & Partners
Steve Thomas, Stephen Thomas
Joe White, Share Group, Inc.

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Mal Warwick's Newsletter: Successful Direct Mail, Telephone & Online FundraisingTM
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