August 8, 2002 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Grist Magazine describes its environmental coverage as “gloom and doom with a sense of humor” — an irreverent approach that the online publication successfully applied to its first e-mail fund-raising campaign.
Based in Seattle, Grist publishes a daily e-mail digest that summarizes the day’s environmental news, and posts original reporting on its Web site. Most of Grist’s financing comes from foundations, and the e-mail campaign was the organization’s first attempt to raise money from its readers.
From May 22 to June 7, the magazine sent three e-mail appeals — which each included information about a matching-gift opportunity — to the more than 50,000 people who receive the daily e-mail. So far, Grist has raised a little more than $80,000 altogether, with online gifts accounting for almost $70,000.
The first appeal was a letter from the mother of the publication’s editor, Chip Giller, featuring a picture of Mr. Giller as a smiling toddler with his mom. “I’ve been telling that boy ever since I handed him his first allowance, ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees,’” wrote Mrs. Giller. “But he keeps hugging them anyway.”
The second appeal was a more traditional letter from the magazine’s staff, and the campaign’s final pitch was a letter from an environmental activist who was supposedly sitting in an old-growth hemlock to draw attention to Grist’s fund-raising drive.
The campaign has far exceeded the organization’s expectations, says Mr. Giller. Grist didn’t go into the drive with a firm goal, but Mr. Giller remembers thinking that $20,000 would be a remarkable result.
Humor, says Mr. Giller, was “instrumental” to the campaign’s success. He believes that the clever, self-effacing tone of the appeals resonated with the magazine’s readers, who tend to be in their 20’s and 30’s, and was a good match with the magazine’s editorial tone.
He cautions, however, that humor might not be the right approach for every group.
“Say you were a group that pretty much took a solemn tone, and then in your appeals you used humor; that just wouldn’t match,” says Mr. Giller. “I don’t think you’d want it to come out of nowhere.”
To see the appeals: Go to http://www.gristmagazine.com/about/support.asp.
