ARTHRITIS FOUNDATION

Helping each of its 750,000 constituents cope with the effects of a crippling disease is as central to the Arthritis Foundation’s marketing efforts as it is to its mission of service.

So it’s not surprising that customer-centricity and the technology needed to enhance it come first to Lindy Litrides’ mind when she talks about the organization’s solid record of fundraising. It has increased by double digits in all but the last two years.

“[We have] a deep commitment to a customer-centric business model that is both mission-driven and market-driven,” says Litrides, the foundation’s senior vice president of relationship marketing. “That’s one of the forces that really drives us in how we establish, drive and measure our programs.” Building member relationships is now, and always has been, crucial to the group, she says.

Says Litrides: “The success of an organization like the Arthritis Foundation in meeting its mission is dependent on the support and involvement of its donors and constituents.” The nonprofit has found that this means providing them with information on the disease that afflicts them or those they care about.

“[We found that] what people wanted most was information about arthritis and about advances in research on arthritis,” she notes.

So in 1991, the foundation began asking donors and members to identify which of the more than 100 types of arthritis affects their lives — important data, since 95 percent of the organization’s constituents either have a form of the disease or have a family member with it. Promising to return details about the particular type of arthritis, the group collected disease information on 270,000 of its roughly 600,000 members that first year.

After discovering that people were most interested in rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, followed by fibromyalgia, the nonprofit began mentioning those diseases in its renewal statements between 1995 and 1997. By 2000, the foundation was sending certain donors complete appeals and research news alerts focusing on the three diseases.

The result: Aggregate revenue per contributor targeted with disease-specific mailings rose 61 percent, with gift-giving frequency up 24 percent. As a result of sharing disease information, Litrides says, “We found they contribute more, and they contribute more often.”

Overall in 1999, direct response initiatives accounted for $19.4 million of the $120 million the group raised.

The Arthritis Foundation is also experimenting with linking interested donors to corporate sponsors. This way, customers can receive data directly from the experts involved in research and treatment of their particular disease.

But rather than just giving sponsors the green light to contact customers, Litrides says the foundation was first asking its constituents if they wanted the information.

“We wanted to make sure this was an opt-in situation,” she adds. If customers agree, “[we can] improve service to customers because if they want this information, it will help us in the long run. This should help drive revenue and participation.”

To facilitate and manage its customer-centric approach, the Arthritis Foundation has spent the last four years developing a centralized DM framework, enabling the national office to record donations, target appeals and share customer data with the 55 local chapters that serve the foundation’s members where they live.

The next step in the group’s success may lie in its Web site, relaunched last April. While still technically in “soft launch” mode, the new site has already netted $65,000 in memberships, donations and product sales.

“When it all comes down to it, people still want to give to help other people,” Litrides says of the foundation’s approach. “Fundraising and marketing is a people-to-people business. “We’re getting back to the basic understanding of why people connect with our organization.”