A Personal Touch Lifts Donations and Helps Charities Save Money

Jim Young, the top fund raiser at the Navigators (No. 226), in Colorado Springs, says he took the words of a fund-raising mentor to heart when he made some changes in the way the religious group solicits donors.

“He said that you raise funds by who you mail to, but you get more efficient at raising funds by who you don’t mail to,” Mr. Young says.

Over the past year, the Navigators has cut down on its appeals but raised the same amount or more than it did in the past by tailoring solicitations based on donors’ histories of supporting certain programs.

An appeal to support the group’s military ministry went out to only a few thousand people earlier this year, for example, down from 20,000 last year, but it still brought in about $15,000, the same as before.

The latest appeal focused on the group’s work with soldiers instead of describing everything the Navigators was up to, on college campuses and in big cities.

A mailing this year to raise money for the organization’s mission work in Africa saw a return in gifts compared with expenses that was nearly 40 percent better than a similar appeal sent to more people last year. “We had all this data about our donors and we just needed to use it so we could get the right message to the right donor,” Mr. Young says.

Personalized Letters

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (No. 282), in Washington, is stepping up its efforts to make personal connections, too. That’s helping the center get a positive response more often from donors. Before the recession, says Marie Mattson, the Kennedy Center’s vice president for development, “it used to take four No’s before a donor said Yes. Now it takes eight No’s to get a Yes.”

To combat that trend, the Kennedy Center this year sent 2,500 invitations to the National Symphony Orchestra’s opening-season ball, and it also sent 750 of those people a separate letter, which included a personal invitation to attend the ball and other information, such as Kennedy Center events that those recipients had attended in recent months. This year’s ball raised $1.3-million, up from $1.1-million in 2010 when the center sent just 200 personalized letters.

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