Charities Win Honors in Direct Marketing Contest

Thirteen fund-raising appeals by charities have won honors in the 69th Annual International Echo Awards competition sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association, in New York.

The appeals, which won Gold, Silver, Bronze, or fourth-place “Leader” awards, consisted mostly of direct-mail solicitations used by charities last year. Nine of the awards were given for mail appeals, while the remaining four were given to other types of fund-raising solicitations such as television spots or print advertisements. For example, a telemarketing campaign that persuaded more than 5,800 people to donate blood to the American Red Cross was among the winners.

The winning solicitations — judged on the basis of creativity and marketing strategy, as well as their financial returns — illustrate how charities used such appeals to raise an estimated $38.8-billion last year, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

Many of the winners spent relatively little to raise big money. A simple letter from Covenant House netted $2.5-million for the New York shelter for runaway kids; the charity paid just $163,019 for the mailing. And the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, spent $21,795 to net more than $306,000 from 70 direct-mail donors who got an invitation to continue supporting the five-year-old institution.

Following are descriptions of some of the winning entries. See also the complete list of winners.

Camp Oochigeas, in Toronto, used a three-dimensional cardboard teepee as an invitation to a special event. Both the invitation and response device were folded, accordion style, into the bottom of the teepee. Mailed in a clear plastic box to 600 people, the one-of-a-kind invitation generated ticket sales — or outright gifts — from 400 of the people who got it. Because the labor and costs of creating, producing, and mailing the invitation were donated by the advertising agency, it cost the charity nothing — and helped the camp net $88,000 from its event.

The World Jewish Congress, in New York sent 424 of its most-generous donors a packet of newspaper clippings and other material that was designed to look as if it were individually tailored to each recipient. Mailed in an “interdepartmental” envelope tied with a string in back, the letter asked donors to support the charity’s efforts to bring restitution to Jewish families whose assets were seized during the Holocaust. The package prompted a gift from nearly 20 per cent of the recipients. Their average gift was $1,261, the highest ever generated by one of the charity’s mailings. At a cost of only $8,047, the appeal netted $90,230.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, now five years old, used a child’s poem and a child’s drawing from its collections to generate operating support from donors, many of whom had made big gifts to help open the museum but had not given since then. The appeal, which outlined some of the museum’s continuing projects, raised more than double the expected amount: more than $306,000 from 70 people.

Christie Hospital, in Manchester, England, had cardboard tubes designed to look like batons that are passed from runner to runner in a race. Suggestive of the hospital’s own “race” against cancer, the batons were hand-delivered by runners to 40 community leaders who were each asked to buy tables for 12 at a fund-raising dinner held in conjunction with the hospital’s capital campaign. At the event, the community leaders passed out the batons and asked their table mates to put a pledge or donation inside. Collected atthe event, the batons yielded pledges worth $3.5-million, $1.1-million more than expected.

The National Museum of the American Indian, slated to open in 2004 in Washington, D.C., mailed solicitations to some 40,000 people who had already given to the new facility. The appeal, the most successful in a seven-year period of fund raising for the museum, consisted of three pieces: an announcement to alert donors that they would soon receive a gift, a calendar featuring some of the artifacts that will appear in the new museum, and a follow-up letter to people who didn’t respond to the first two mailings. The three-part appeal helped keep the new museum in donors’ minds for an entire year. It also pointed donors to a Web site for the new institution. More than a quarter of the recipients made a gift. The first mailing alone, which was predicted to generate a 4-per-cent response rate, brought in contributions from more than 13 per cent of the recipients.

Covenant House, a shelter in New York, used an appeal describing how winter weather hurts street kids. Donors who live in the northern United States were told that kids could freeze outside. Donors in the South were told that runaway kids who migrate south in winter need help. The appeal netted $2.5-million from 76,180 people who made an average gift of $33.59.