Holiday Gift Catalogs Are Helping Charities Raise Big Sums, Despite The Recession

Charity gift catalogs, those glossy publications that offer people the chance to donate a sheep or to educate a girl instead of buying a Cuisinart or an iPhone, are a growing part of year-end fund raising at many nonprofit groups.

The holiday-themed publications are proliferating, as more charities seek to illustrate to donors how their gifts make a difference and tap into whatever undercurrent of anticommercialism has been fueled by the recession. The American Red Cross, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and several other organizations released catalogs for the first time this year.

And many nonprofit groups say the catalogs are raising more in 2009 despite the recession.

World Vision, the Christian charity that fights poverty abroad, has received $7.1-million from its catalog so far this year and expects to bring in at least 20 percent more than it did in 2008, when it raised $25-million.

Food for the Poor, another Christian aid group, has raised about $100,000 more than it had by this same time last year. Over all, the organization raised $3.75-million from its Christmas catalog.

The humanitarian group Oxfam America, which offers its gift catalog only online, has received about $25,000 more so far this year than it had by the same period in 2008, when it raised a total of $1.3-million.

Charities say that small-dollar items and tangible “gifts” like goats or chicks appeal most to donors. Nonprofit officials say that people are interested in seeing exactly how charitable dollars will effect change—and some groups are trying new things to capitalize on that desire for a connection.

World Vision, for example, sent a staff member to travel the world this year taking photographs and videos of people who have benefited from its programs. The charity provides updates on its online catalog and on a Facebook page, http://facebook.com/TrueSpiritOfChristmas, which has more than 16,000 “fans.”

‘Symbolic’ Gifts

Oxfam America overhauled its online catalog this year, shortening its Web address to oxfamgifts.org (from oxfamamericaunwrapped.org) and adding a “gifts in action” page that includes video interviews with beneficiaries.

On the new Web site, Oxfam also articulates more clearly that the money raised does not necessarily go to the purposes selected by a donor, a move designed to overcome a common complaint leveled against gift catalogs in recent years.

Oxfam, along with World Vision, Mercy Corps, and many other groups, offers “symbolic” gifts, meaning the charities have discretion to spend the money where it’s most needed.

Some other organizations, including Food for the Poor and Save the Children, say their gifts are more literal. Angel A. Aloma, executive director of Food for the Poor, says that a gift of a goat, for example, supports its goat program and is priced to correspond with the average cost of a goat in the countries where the charity works.

Whatever their approach, nonprofit groups need to be very upfront about how they handle the money so as to avoid angering donors, say experts. The World Wildlife Fund, for example, includes language about how it uses the money on each page of its catalog. Other groups run a disclaimer one time at the front of the publication.

Charities face other challenges as well in creating gift catalogs.

Robbin Gehrke, a senior vice president at Russ Reid, a company that helps charities with their marketing and communications, says catalogs are a “distinctive marketing enterprise, and what you know about fund raising will only take you a third of the way.”

The arrangement of photographs on a page, the order in which items appear, the sorts of products offered, to whom the publication is promoted—all these factors can make or break a catalog, she says.

Nonprofit groups that have been producing the gift catalogs for some time say they analyze how each item performs and make tweaks from year to year. For example, Food for the Poor stopped offering people the chance to donate musical instruments to schoolchildren this year because few people donated in response to it, says Mr. Aloma.

New or Previous Donors?

Nonprofit groups are also experimenting with whether to use the catalogs to attract new donors or get additional donations from longtime supporters. While the publications can win new supporters, charities say, catalogs sent only to people unfamiliar with the organizations might not pay off in a big way.

The Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights, a nonprofit group in Chicago that helps individuals living in poverty or physical danger, sent out 50,000 catalogs last year to people who’d never before contributed. The charity has yet to make back its roughly $75,000 investment, although its vice president of donor and community relations says she expects to this year or next. This fall the group sent out postcards to people who’d given in the past directing them to an online version of the catalog.

Save the Children, too, switched this year from using the catalog as a recruitment tool and instead mailed it to existing supporters.

Gail Arcamone, associate director of direct response marketing at the international aid organization, says sending the publication to potential donors wasn’t generating enough money and that the group will focus on perfecting it with existing supporters first. Last year’s catalog brought in about $350,000.

By contrast, St. Jude hospital focused on existing donors with its first catalog, mailing 45,000 copies to people who’d given at least $25 in the past two years. The hospital will compare the results of the catalog with a regular end-of-year mail appeal and perhaps reach out to new donors in the future.

Typically, the most expensive gifts in holiday catalogs tend to be around $5,000 or $10,000, but a few years ago the World Wildlife Fund experimented with using a catalog to reach very wealthy donors. The environmental group, which each year produces a catalog that illustrates the types of animals it helps save, created a publication in 2007 that enabled people to give $40,000 to expand monitoring of pandas, for example, or $100,000 for an investigation into illegal ivory trading.

The idea was that fund raisers would take the catalogs on visits with major donors. But the publications didn’t add all that much to conversations with donors so the environmental group stopped making them.

While catalogs require experimentation and updating, groups that are new to the game see the successes of organizations like World Vision, the World Wildlife Fund, and others and hope the publications can become important sources of revenue for them as well.

“If it works, this could become the year-end giving appeal to donors,” says Lori O’Brien, director of development at St. Jude, which hopes to net $200,000 with its catalog in the first year. “It showcases the work that St. Jude does in such a powerful way that we love it, and we hope it gives donors the chance to feel good about supporting St. Jude.”