Food for the Poor notched a 23% response to a recent mailing targeting high-end donors. Contributions will be used to help build homes in 16 Caribbean and Latin American nations.
The Deerfield Beach, FL charity also is running a 4.5% response to a separate effort that went to less affluent contributors, said director of development Zach Hinton.
Earlier this year, Food for the Poor sent about 7,000 mail pieces to the $1,000-plus donors on its house file for the 5,000 Miracles campaign, as well as about 50,000 pieces to “midrange” donors who gave between $100 and $999.
“We thought we might be able to raise money from our midrange donors,” said Steve Stapleton, director of client services for StrategicOne, Food for the Poor's agency. “So we just used some modeling techniques” to uncover those donors from their house files.
As a result, the interdenominational Christian charity received an average gift of about $2,200 from the more affluent donors and some $500 from the midrange group. Income was nearly $5 million, said marketing analyst Mark Diggs.
The higher-end givers tended to be Roman Catholics age 55 and over who learned about the program either through their churches or radio or print ads. Most have been giving to Food for the Poor for several years, said Diggs.
The midrange contributors have the same attributes but tend to be newer to the file, he noted.
The high-end mailing, sent in an 18-inch plastic tube, contained 13-by-19-inch floor plans of houses the organization would build in countries like Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana or Nicaragua. Each plan contained a brief description of local conditions and why the group chose certain building materials. Each plan also featured Food for the Poor's local Florida phone number and Web site address (www.foodforthepoor.org).
Inside the tube was a double-sided letter and a solicitation card seeking donations as high as $12,000. The card allowed for donors to set up automatic monthly or quarterly bank account drafts for their donations.
Food for the Poor's next project will be a membership mailing to help build wells in parts of its service area. Hinton was unsure if this effort would use the same techniques as the 5,000 Miracles campaign.
“It will be about a year before we know how effective this strategy was,” he said.
