Centrepoint launches new Summer donor recruitment campaign
Howard Lake | 3 June 2003 | News
Centrepoint, the national charity for homeless young people, is testing cold mail recruitment over the summer for the first time this year, with a new mail pack focusing on the special needs of homeless teenagers who have suffered abuse at home.
This approach differs from the past when the charity has found it far more cost-effective to recruit new donors in the winter, when the needs of the homeless are particularly obvious because of the cold weather.
The addition of a summer campaign to the annual recruitment programme reflects the expansion of Centrepoint’s mailing activity, following its withdrawal from face-to-face recruitment last year.
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“Over the last two years we have achieved consistently strong results with our winter cold mail programme, to the point at which we have now focused on this as our primary recruitment channel”, says Rachel Brady, Centrepoint’s Direct Marketing Manager. “However, we’re keen to overcome the restriction of only having winter recruitment campaigns if at all possible. The needs of the young people we work with certainly don’t go away over the summer months, it’s just that they’re less obvious to donors on the street.”
The test campaign has been developed by charity specialist direct marketing agency Whitewater, which has been responsible for all of Centrepoint’s direct marketing fundraising activity for the last two years.
The mailer focuses on Centrepoint’s work with young runaways who have fled their family home after suffering sexual and physical abuse – one of the most frequent reasons for young people to become homeless.
Initial testing will involve a selection of lifestyle and consumer lists which have performed well for the charity in the past.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.