July 24, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
How can charities tailor their fund-raising solicitations to suit today’s meager times?
Here’s one way approach taken by Mercy Corps, in an e-mail solicitation to prospective and lapsed donors:
The international relief charity sent this message to 64,000 people who subscribe to its e-mails but who have never contributed, or have given only small amounts and not within the past two years. It sent a very similar e-mail — asking for slightly larger donations — to another 64,000 individuals.
“We didn’t want to downgrade any of our most recent donors,” says Dan Sadowsky, who manages the charity’s e-mail appeals.
The solicitation gives a nod to the recession with the phrase “times are tough for many of us.” It also seeks to help donors visualize how valued small gifts can be to the charity.
“You can look at this e-mail and get the message very quickly,” says Mr. Sadowsky. “One of the advantages of the dollar handles — especially laid out in the format that our designers did — is they communicate the impact very succinctly.”
Still, the e-mail solicitation hasn’t performed well, says Mr. Sadowsky. Only 8 percent of recipients opened the e-mail appeal, compared with 10 percent for a typical e-mail message. It brought in 49 gifts.
Interestingly, however, the average gift Mercy Corps received in response to the solicitation was larger than the amounts specified in the e-mail. People gave an average of $35 in response to the solicitation that asked for gifts of $5, $8, $10, and $17; they gave $32.50 in response to the appeal asking for at least $5, $10, $17, and $25.
What do you think of the appeal? Is your charity discussing the recession in its appeals, or avoiding the topic altogether?
And what’s been your experience with asking for specific dollar amounts? Has your group, like Mercy Corps, found that donors give more than you ask for?
