Declining Fundraising Results

Discovering breakthroughs that reinvigorate your marketing

Problem / Opportunity:
A well-known national ministry was experiencing declining results — donor acquisition, donor retention, revenue and net income. Nowhere was this decline more noticeable than in the falling response to the organization’s flagship monthly magazine. The ministry had tried a variety of strategies to reinvigorate the publication’s net income and ROI. But these were primarily cost-cutting measures, including a reduction in size from 8½” x 11″ to 6″ x 9″ and a reduced mailing frequency from 12 to 8 times a year. None of these steps improved the sliding results.

Successful Strategy:
Since Masterworks did not control either the content or the format of the magazine, our challenge was to develop a new and innovative strategy that would achieve the following:

• Reverse the trend of declining response and income.
• Provide greater visibility to the magazine content and give donors more compelling reasons to request premiums and give straight donations.
• Reactivate lapsed donors who had not been motivated to give during the previous 12 to 24 months.
• Improve overall ROI.

We decided that after 25 years of mailing the magazine as a stand-alone with one or two pages of premium offers and an easily ignored bind-in response envelope, it was time for a breakthrough. For longtime donors in particular, their magazine would have to start arriving in a completely different way. We decided to test a new delivery approach in which the magazine would be mailed in a 9½” x 6½” double-window carrier envelope.

This method has proved successful for a variety of continuity programs that mail monthly CD, book and DVD catalogs to their members. Inside, to give added visibility to premium and straight fundraising offers, we designed multiple inserts highlighting both. The kit mailed off a newly designed, easy-to-use 8½” x 12″ reply device with a personalized note from the president.

We tested this new kit format against the stand-alone magazine using a variety of combinations of premium and straight fundraising offers.

Results:
During the testing phase, we increased the magazine’s net income by nearly $1.6 million with this treatment. In a head-to-head test, the new format generated the following results:

• Response rate: nearly tripled to .93% compared with .35% for the stand-alone magazine.
• Net income: more than tripled compared to stand-alone magazine.
• Net yield per thousand mailed: increased by tenfold compared to stand-alone magazine.
• Average gift: increased 54% compared to stand-alone magazine.

• ROI: increased 261% to 4.88 compared with 1.35 for the stand-alone magazine.