An International Charity Focuses on Recruiting New Donors in One City

As the number of wealthy people around the world grows, more charities are seeking gifts globally.

But World Vision, the international relief group, is going local in a fund-raising drive to recruit new donors in a single city.

The effort, called Count on Spokane, in the Washington city of 450,000, started in August and will run for six weeks.

The charity is spreading the word via direct mail, paid radio and television spots, bus ads, celebrity appearances, and presentations to church congregations.

“By going in with all guns blazing and combining these strategies, we think it will generate a bigger response,” said Steve Quant, World Vision’s director of media acquisition.

But, he said, “it is a big test. A lot of these channels have never worked together before.” If it is successful, he added, the campaign will be expanded to other cities.

The goal is to recruit 2,600 new “child sponsors” to make monthly gifts to help needy children in developing countries.

The drive has attracted just a few new donors so far, but “we are on track, doing exactly what we expected,” said Mr. Quant. “The first two weeks are kind of quiet.”

Modeled on Toronto

The idea for Count on Spokane came from World Vision Canada, where a citywide approach mixing in-person appeals with other methods such as direct mail and advertisements works well, said Mr. Quant. “In Canada, the city model is their main acquisition method now.”

After traveling to Toronto to learn more about the citywide fund-raising approach, Mr. Quant said he adopted some of the Canadian organization’s methods but not others.

“Part of Canada’s strategy is door to door,” he said, “but that is not going to happen here.”

Mr. Quant says that World Vision chose Spokane as the testing ground for the new fund-raising approach in part because it has fewer than half a million residents. That, he says, makes it “the right size for manageable mail drops.”

Compared with Seattle and other larger metropolitan areas, broadcast time is cheaper to buy, and Spokane is just a one-hour flight from World Vision headquarters in Federal Way, Wash.

What’s more, he says, Spokane is home to many families with children, a key group of people World Vision hopes to attract to its child-sponsor program. Giving to help people in poor countries, Mr. Quant says, “is a great way to expand children’s world view.”