January 9, 2011 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Many charities are unable to find successful ways to recruit new donors other than direct-mail appeals. But at least one group banished mass mailings altogether last year in favor of e-mail solicitations, Web-site appeals, and other ways to find new donors online.
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental charity in Tucson that fights to keep endangered species alive, decided to eliminate direct mail in 2010 after it conducted an in-depth analysis of its costs.
“We were looking at the total net return of people who come in through direct mail,” says Kierán Suckling, the center’s executive director. “Because standard formulas just look at printing and postage, we put a lot of work into determining our total cost like the newsletter and staff time.”
The result: Beginning with donors recruited by mail in 2006, says Mr. Suckling, “when I took into account the entire net cost, I was not breaking even after four years.”
By comparison, he adds, the center can recoup its costs and make money from donors recruited by e-mail either immediately or—in a worst-case scenario—after two years.
“Direct mail is not financially viable,” Mr. Suckling says.
Animal Ringtones
Now the Center for Biological Diversity recruits all of its donors online. It pays for unlimited use of e-mail addresses—at $2 per name, still more cost-effective than paying 60 cents per name for a one-time mailing to people on a rented list, Mr. Suckling says.
And the center has found other free or low-cost ways to create its own e-mail lists of potential supporters. For example, the charity spent less than $10,000 on a feature that enables visitors to its Web site who provide an e-mail address to download free cellphone ringtones. The ringtones—which are recordings of sounds made by endangered species, including grizzly bears, bald eagles, and Mexican gray wolves—have gathered 170,000 new e-mail addresses so far, says Mr. Suckling.
People who get the ringtones receive the center’s online newsletter, its e-mail action alerts, and other communications about the center’s lawsuits, scientific research, and publicity campaigns to protect endangered animals.
Not for Every Charity
Getting rid of mass mailings has proved to be a boon for the center: By the final weeks of 2010, its first year without direct mail, the charity had raised $1-million more from individuals than the preceding year, an increase of 44 percent, Mr. Suckling says.
The increase in contributions, he adds, will be even higher once last-minute year-end contributions, an estimated $250,000, are accounted for. And, on top of all that, the center saves the $800,000 it had been spending every year on direct mail and direct-marketing consultants, Mr. Suckling says.
But he concedes that while the center can now recruit new donors without direct mail, the same results are probably not possible for charities with different causes.
“We are at the aggressive edge of the environmental movement and very action-oriented,” Mr. Suckling says. “Internet fund raising thrives in an arena where there is constant action.” As a result, he says, “activist groups can often do better” than other charities such as social-service, religious, or arts groups.
