Best donor development campaign
Howard Lake | 5 May 2011 | Blogs
For the best campaign to persuade current supporters to renew and upgrade their giving, using any or several fundraising techniques.
The shortlisted entries in alphabetical order are
Cancer Research UK
Crisis
WaterAid
Cancer Research UK
Faces – Upgrade pack
This mailing was sent to warm regular donors asking them to upgrade their regular gift. It aimed to inspire regular givers about the impact of their gift on people’s lives. The result would be to motivate them to increase their monthly gift and to bring them closer to the work so they would continue supporting if they couldn’t increase their gift. Targets were DD and standing order monthly donors who had given between £2 and 330 a month for more than 12 months. As well as the mail pack, a dedicated microsite was created where supporters could engage with stories from other supporter, scientists and cancer patients in their local area and across the UK. The projected number of upgraded donors was 1,293 at a cost of £20.33 per upgrade. In the end 1,977 supporters upgraded at a cost of £18.53. The five year RoI was 8:1 and the pack beat the control pack response rate by 28%.
Crisis
Crisis at Christmas warm direct mail 2011
This campaign aimed to raise £910,000 for Crisis at Christmas 2010, to upgrade the support of 25,000 existing donors by motivating them to give another cash gift, to develop engagement and deepen loyalty and to build the crisis at Christmas brand. The segmentation and targeting was build on previous engagement and transactional behaviour of supporters and prompting was based on their last gift to Crisis at Christmas. A High Value appeal targeted supporters who had given £100 or more in the past three years. The standard value income target was £446,934 and the high value target was £124,066. Results achieved £467,462 from the standard value appeal and £289,549 from the high value appeal. Reminder appeal packs brought in a total income of £268,276 .
WaterAid
WaterAidworks – middle donor investment campaign.
WaterAid wanted to get supporters with the potential to give significant gifts (between £475 and £4,999) giving them, but also wanted to test thoroughly the theory that higher investment in a middle donor programme would deliver significantly improved net contribution so that investment could be channelled out of one area and into another. A straight-talking, highly personalised programme was developed, giving a ‘warts and all’ insight into the opportunities and challenges of delivering water and sanitation in one district of Mozambique. The proposal asked for a significant investment. Each letter referenced any recent engagement the donor had had. Forecasting was difficult because there was no similar activity to refer to. Targets of a total income of £77,218 with an RoI of 3.9 were set. Actual results were income of £119.100, an overall RoI of 6.05 and 70% Gift Aid take up, showing that a higher average gift could be elicited if people were asked appropriately.
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.