Eight years ago, the American Heart Association took stock of its direct mail fundraising and felt it could do a better job. Three years later, the organization began seeing double-digit revenue growth. Now it’s poised to pull in almost $43 million in direct marketing revenue for fiscal 1999-2000, some 16% ahead of last year.
To help accomplish this, the AHA vastly increased direct mail testing – it conducts more than 50 annually – and the number of mailing packages it sends out, says Sherry Minton, director of direct response fundraising.
The organization is now testing many things like premiums, including boxes of a dozen cards for Valentine’s Day. This past May, Mother’s Day cards were included in the mailing. Holiday cards provided a 149% boost in income compared with 1998 mailings.
“In fundraising, if you can lift response by two-tenths of a percent you’re doing an amazing job,” says Minton.
Before it upped its testing schedule, the AHA’s standard control package was a single remit slip with a letter on top of a buckslip (or donation request). Since then, a new control – a “double remit” with a donation request on top and letter below – is being used for renewals.
The AHA also began to look more seriously at the future value of its donor names. Two years ago, an extensive study of its house list was launched which provided the organization data like where a donor originated, income levels and other demographics. From this effort, the AHA has been able to pump up its donor retention rate from 45% to 50%, says Minton.
The AHA sends out 13.2 million renewal and 63 million acquisition mailings six times a year.
The group generally uses acquisition lists from a variety of sources, such as nonprofits, magazine subscriber files and even compiled lists. Minton stresses that the AHA never uses sweepstakes files for acquisition, as do many other charities. This saves the AHA a few headaches, as several charitable marketers have voiced concerns that possible restrictions on sweeps list use could hurt them – especially when politicians are not necessarily well informed about the list industry.
Minton says she helped convince top management it might be acceptable to break with the AHA’s longtime ban on telemarketing. While the association will never phone outside prospects, says Minton, it has found that “combined mail and telemarketing renewal efforts perform well.”
Around 1997, the AHA also began integrating its direct mail database into its planned giving file. Now, all of the latter’s names come from established donors.
Ever alert to fundraising opportunities, the AHA also was not afraid to reverse course. A few years ago, Minton says, the AHA was “kind of phasing out” a neighborhood program where volunteers in its affiliates solicited funds from local residents six times annually. But when the AHA realized these efforts raised around $2.5 million a year it decided to maintain them and keep the names, which it hadn’t done before.
The AHA has noticed its core demographic group getting steadily younger, declining from an even split of men and women 55 and older to those just 50 and older.
The association isn’t raising much money from its Web site (www.american heart.org), except for a small area that’s devoted to planned giving. It’s mostly using the site to disseminate information and prevention strategies about heart disease. The AHA also lobbies congressional representatives and senators by e-mail.
On the whole, Minton says she’s interested in soliciting funds via the Web, but concedes she just hasn’t been able to get to it with all of the AHA’s other efforts under way. She is considering asking donors for their e-mail addresses in future mailings.
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