Author
Mal Warwick

ISBN
1889102091

Cost $24.95 + shipping

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The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to...

Raising $1,000 Gifts by Mail
by Mal Warwick, 105 pp., $24.95. (Click here for quantity discount information)

Whoever heard of raising $1,000 gifts (not to mention $2,000 and $3,000 gifts) by mail? That's the realm of personal solicitation, right?

Not true, says Mal Warwick, in his book, The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to Raising $1,000 Gifts by Mail.

And Warwick should know. He's spent the last decade and more perfecting the art of high dollar direct mail.

Are you skeptical?

OF RELATED INTEREST: In Open Immediately!, Stephen Hitchcock offers straight talk on direct mail fundraising. Each of the 81 focused chapters provides down to earth guidance on virtually every facet of raising money by mail.

Consider just one mailing Warwick cites (and he has more than 100 such mailings to draw from).

A total of 2,352 pieces were mailed to donors who had given $100 or more. This small mailing - now get ready for 'numbers that will blow your socks off,' to use the author's words - this small mailing generated $148,000!

That translates into an average gift of $463. But better still, the mailing garnered 54 gifts that topped $1,000. And five of the recipients sent in $5,000 or more.

And what was the final fundraising cost for this effort? About eight cents per dollar raised!

That's the good news (an understatement, to be sure). The even better news is that you can generate, if not these stratospheric numbers, at least results that will soar over your current direct mail returns.

How do you do it? Must you tap a hot-shot firm or be a prizewinning writer?

While these wouldn't hurt, of course, Warwick touts self-reliance. He shows you - with carefully selected examples and illustrations along the way - how to succeed on your own, walking you step by step through the process of crafting the right letter, the right brochure, the right response device, and the right envelope.

In this admirably slim book - about an hour's read - Warwick convinces even the most doubting Thomas. Commit to the strategies he outlines, and you'll be startled, if not astounded, by the results.

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About the Author

Consultant, author, and public speaker Mal Warwick has been involved in the not-for-profit sector for more than 40 years.

Mal is the founder and chairman of Mal Warwick & Associates, Inc. (www.malwarwick.com), a fundraising and marketing agency that has served nonprofit organizations since 1979, and of its sister company, Response Management Technologies, Inc., a data processing firm for nonprofit organizations. He is also co-founder (with Nick Allen) of Donordigital (San Francisco, Calif., and Washington, DC), which assists nonprofit organizations online, and was a co-founder of Share Group, Inc. (Somerville, Mass.), one of the nation’s leading telephone fundraising firms.

This is Mal’s 17th book. His previous works include the standard texts, Revolution in the Mailbox and How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters, both of which are now in second editions.

He is editor of Mal Warwick’s Newsletter: Successful Direct Mail, Telephone & Online Fundraising™, and is a popular speaker and workshop leader throughout the world. He has taught fundraising on six continents to nonprofit executives from more than 100 countries.

Among the hundreds of nonprofits Mal and his colleagues have served over the years are many of the nation’s largest and most distinguished charities as well as six Democratic Presidential candidates and scores of small, local, and regional organizations. Collectively, Mal and his associates are responsible for raising at least half a billion dollars—largely in the form of small gifts from individuals.

Mal is an active member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (Alexandria, VA); a member of the Board of the Resource Alliance (London, UK), organizers of the annual International Fundraising Congress in Amsterdam, and the Congress’ Ambassador to the USA; and served for ten years on the board of the Association of Direct Response Fundraising Counsel (Washington, D.C.), two of those years as President. In 2004, he received the Hank Rosso Award as Outstanding Fundraising Executive from the Association of Fundraising Professionals Golden Gate Chapter and Northern California Grantmakers.

Since 1990, Mal has been active in promoting social and environmental responsibility in the nationwide business community. He was a co-founder of Business for Social Responsibility in 1992 and served on its board during its inaugural year. In 2001, he was elected to the board of the Social Venture Network and now serves as Chair.

Mal was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador for more than three years. Since 1969 he has lived in Berkeley, California, where he is deeply involved in local community affairs. Early in the 1990s, he co-founded the Community Bank of the Bay, the nation’s fifth community development bank, and the Berkeley Community Fund, where he remains active on the board. He also served for 11 years as Vice-President of the Board of the Berkeley Symphony (1991-2002).

He is the grandfather of Dayna, Iain, Matthew, Gwen, Andrew, Kaili, and Benjamin, who live with their various parents or on college campuses throughout the United States.

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Table of Contents

1. Forget everything you know about direct mail fundraising
2. A bird’s-eye view of a classic high-dollar package
3. Putting high-dollar mail in its proper place
4. This is not your grandfather’s direct mail
5. A guided tour through a contemporary high-dollar appeal
6. Bringing your high-dollar program to life
7. Sustaining your returns over the long haul
8. So, why does this stuff work?

Excerpt This article is from Mal Warwick’s book, Raising $1,000 Giftsby Mail, ©Emerson & Church, Publishers.To obtain reprint permission, please call 508-359-0019.

Raising $1,000 Gifts by Mail
This is Not Your Grandfather’s Direct Mail

When I’m asked how high-dollar direct mail differs from garden-variety direct mail, I’m always tempted to say “in every possible way.” But it’s more accurate to say that there are four distinct dimensions in which the two approaches diverge: (1) in who the letters are sent to; (2) in the case for giving; (3) in the packaging; and (4) in the follow-up. Let’s take a look at each of those four dimensions in turn.

The list of prospects or donors must be painstakingly chosen.

Time for a pop quiz. Which of the following would you include in an invitation to join a $1,000-a-year annual giving society? (Select any that apply.)

A) Donors who have contributed one or more individual gifts of $250 – 999 during the past three years.

B) Donors who have contributed two or more individual gifts of $100 – 999 during the past three years.

C) Donors who contributed $1,000 – 4,999 at some time in the past but have not given during the past year.

If you selected (A), (B), and (C), go to the head of the class. Your answer might not make everyone happy, but you’re clearly on the right track.

Some people would question whether donors of as little as $100 should be included in mailings that might cost $5 or more per piece. Others might contest the inclusion of any donor who has ever given more than $1,000 in a mailing that asks for only that amount (which is something I would only do with lapsed $1,000+ donors.) But I’ve produced strong results using all three criteria. If you doubt that, take another look at the results reported at the beginning of Chapter 1.

Ideally, grouping all these segments together, you’ll muster a list of at least 1,000 high-dollar giving club prospects. With one thousand – or, better yet, several thousand – you’ll gain enough economies of scale in production to keep the unit cost somewhere within the bounds of acceptance.

The temptation will probably be strong to drive the unit cost even lower by including a number of prospective donors in the appeal. But this would be a mistake. An offer tailored to high-dollar donors is likely to be ineffective with donors who habitually give less than $100.

The case for giving must be compelling and tailored to high-dollar donors.

In direct mail, the case for giving is built around an “offer” – a marketing concept that conveys how much money the signer wants the reader to send and what the gift will accomplish. Most traditional direct mail fundraising offers fall into one or another of the following four types:

A) “Send $25 now, and we’ll save the life of this [select one: child, small furry animal, adorable major mammal, starving person, natural wonder].”

B) “With your $25 contribution, we can continue the great progress we’ve made in the fight [for/against] [fill-in-the-blank].”

C) “Your $25 gift will remove the object of your [select one: fear, guilt, shame, doubt, etc.].”

D) “If you send us $25, we’ll guarantee that [the ideal you hold most dearly] is kept alive in the hearts and minds of humankind.”

Now, for just a moment, step out of your fundraiser’s skin and apply the B.S. test to these four propositions. Could you stand face-to-face with anyone over the age of six and say any of these things with a straight face? And do you think for even one second that any serious person would respond to an appeal of this sort if you asked for $1,000 instead of $25?

I’m going to assume your answers to those questions are the same as mine, okay? Let’s move on, then.

With a little bit of careful thought, we can imagine what sorts of offers might be taken more seriously. This line of thinking will lead us into an examination of donor motivation – the real reasons people respond to fundraising appeals.

Traditionalists in the field of direct marketing speak about five “hot buttons” or “triggers” that explain donor motivation (just as they allegedly explain buyers’ behavior): fear, guilt, greed, exclusivity, and anger.

These base emotions lie at the heart of the offers that dominate direct mail fundraising today, as you can easily deduce through a quick re-reading of the four stereotypical approaches I listed above.

To some degree, one or another of these five emotions is probably associated with almost any offer we might imagine. But I regard this approach as simplistic and misleading.

The human psyche is far more complex than any five-point typology would suggest. And positive emotions can be just as powerful as negative ones.

In fact, marketing research makes clear that religious or spiritual values are among the most compelling drivers of philanthropic behavior – not just in North America, where the research has been most extensive, but all across the globe.

After all, every major spiritual tradition – Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity – lays great emphasis on sharing and generosity. Philanthropy is universal, though it may take different forms from one culture to another. Surely, the universality of giving behavior alone suggests that positive emotions must play a role in fundraising!

In fact, I believe there are five positive triggers that just as often play key roles in motivating donors to give: hope, love, faith, duty, and compassion.

The appeal must be packaged in a truly engaging way.

Which of the following methods do you use to sort the mail when you return from a vacation or a business trip?

1) Immediately discard anything that’s not personally addressed to you.

2) Set aside anything that looks interesting or important and toss out the rest.

3) Put all first-class mail in one stack and “junk mail” in another (to be glanced at casually if you have the time and the inclination sometime later).

4) Separate the mail into four piles: bills, personal mail (if any), solicitations, and commercial advertising matter.

No matter which approach you (or your high-dollar prospects) might follow, your high-dollar package needs to stand out enough to be selected into the pile that actually gets read. It must appear to be personally addressed. It must have an air of importance about it. And it must bear first-class postage (preferably live postage stamps).

Forget the trappings of standard direct mail: the lurid teasers, the bulk rate postage, the raggedy ink-jet addressing systems, the barcodes, the window envelopes, the cheap 50-pound paper stock. High-dollar direct mail packages must avoid the look and feel of junk mail at all costs. They must be distinctive.

As a practical matter, this will usually mean that your package must incorporate, among other things, the following elements:

• An oversized envelope;
• First-class postage stamps that are hand-affixed and include at least one colorful commemorative;
• Addressing that appears to have been done by a human being;
• High-quality paper stock for all package contents.
• Personalization on both the letter and the reply device to match that on the carrier; and
• A reply envelope bearing a first-class stamp (or no postage at all) – but not a Business Reply Envelope.

Ready now? Do you have all your ducks lined up in a row: targeting, messaging, and packaging? Terrific! Now the real work begins.

You must follow up – and follow through!

It won’t take more than a few seconds’ reflection to realize that a high-dollar mailing of the sort I’ve been describing would be only marginally useful as a one-shot proposition.

Oh, sure, you might be able to upgrade a significant number of your donors and realize a substantial profit. Chances are, you’d receive phone calls and letters from a few of your donors, perhaps including members of your board, who are impressed with the letters you’ve sent. (If you do your job well, you’re bound to receive such comments from people who’ve always detested direct mail.)

But if you merely send out a simple high-dollar mailing once every year or so, you’ll be squandering the true value of high-dollar direct mail fundraising. Keep in mind that, from a strategic perspective, high-dollar direct mail is a way for you to bridge the gap between the small-donor world and the realm of major gifts.

Functionally, high-dollar mail needs to serve as a communications platform to upgrade the most promising candidates from your small-donor program to a level of giving that’s high enough to warrant attention from major gifts staff and volunteers. That requires a continuing program – a fundraising track of its own, really.

And like any well-managed fundraising track – membership, major gifts, legacies, whatever – a high-dollar fundraising program consists of at least the following elements:

• Gift acknowledgments;
• Cultivation, education, and reporting;
• Annual renewal efforts; and
• Special appeals.

Every one of these efforts must be conceived and managed with a view toward the special needs, preferences, and circumstances of high-dollar donors. For example, it’s a mistake to include such donors in a standard annual renewal series or in traditional special appeals – even if the immediate result might well be to turn a substantial profit. Keep your eye on the long haul, and your rewards over time will be even greater.

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