Background
A few months ago, CBA Vice President Brooke Coneys wrote an article entitled: “What’s in a Name? I Should Know,” in which she described the testing we conducted for Tucson’s KUAT television and radio properties as they incorporate their stations into a new entity called Arizona Public Media or AZPM.

In the summer of 2008, we tested using the original station name and logos against the new AZPM brand in acquisition, add gift and lapsed fundraising campaigns.  We’d like to bring you up to date on the test results and progress in incorporating the change of brand into the membership fundraising program. (Read on …)

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CBA has been in the business of helping others via direct marketing for over 32 years. We often receive praise and criticism from the organizations we partner with. But I don’t remember ever being critiqued by a member/donor who received our mail piece.

Pat Callahan, Director of Membership at AZPM Tucson (formerly KUAT), passed along notes written on our December ‘08 special appeal letter from one of her members.

(Read on …)

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Recently we set out to determine if the gift ladder we have been using in our Special Appeals is in fact doing its job: getting as many members as possible to become multi-gift donors and maximizing the amount of their gifts.

Specifically, we are looking for ways to increase response and income, but are concerned that too many members are downgrading their gifts.  Although we realize that the weak economy is influencing smaller gift giving, we want to know if any of the suggested amounts are more compelling than others and we especially want to know how the donors are using the “Other” option; to go higher or lower? (Read on …)

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CBA has developed a ZIP enhancement model called the “ZIP Performance Index” or ZPI, to allow regional organizations to more effectively allocate their marketing resources by applying prospect selection and deletion intelligence based on geographic location and other influential variables.

Recent scholarship has shown that over the past several decades there has been an increasing level of clustering in America, such that people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and politics are self-segregating into states, cities and importantly, even neighborhoods.  Our experience in looking at results of direct marketing campaigns by geography has proven that certain areas – most easily defined by ZIP code – perform consistently better for organizations than others.  This behavior, when coupled with basic demographic data such as income, gender and age, and when analyzed correctly, leads to targeting the most profitable areas and the most profitable list segments for acquisition campaigns. (Read on …)

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The Postmaster General has requested that Congress overturn the 1983 law that requires mail to be delivered 6 days a week, saying “”It is possible that the cost of six-day delivery may simply prove to be unaffordable.”  John E. Potter, the Postmaster General since 2001, who began his career as a New York postal clerk in 1978 said that in addition to the $2.8 billion loss the USPS suffered last year, there would likely be a shortfall of $6 billion this year.  The reason is that total volumn declined by 9 billion pieces last year, the largest drop in history.  USA Today has the rest of the details.  Which day will go?  Saturday seems to be the most obvious choice, although Tuesday has the lowest volume.

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Let’s kick the New Year off right!  The year 2009 promises to be a tough economic time, but it will be manageable for the non-profit world if we keep our cool, use our imagination and apply some common sense rules to doing business.  And we may have to try some new and alternative techniques in our fundraising programs.

Here are 9 suggestions for making it through the financial thicket. We’d appreciate hearing some of your suggestions and thoughts right here on “CBA Talk.”  Perhaps we can come up with 99 more ideas for an even better 2009.

1. Don’t panic (Read on …)

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A postal worker in Michigan admitted this week to hiding thousands of letters and packages in a storage facility she had planned to keep renting “until the day she died.”  Jill Hull says she was overwhelmed by the job, and instead of asking for help, she took it upon herself to put the 10,000 pieces of mail in storage.

Unfortunately, this is not exactly an isolated incident.  While the vast majority of mail gets delivered eventually, in 2008, there were 333 cases of mail being stolen, delayed or destroyed from North Dakota to North Carolina.

The NY Daily News has a good account on their website.

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Jane Wales — Co-Founder of the Global Philanthropy Forum, President and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, Vice President at the Aspen Institute and Chair of the Poverty Alleviation track for the Clinton Global Initiative — writes an op-ed piece in today’s San Francisco Chronicle about how President-Elect Obama can partner with non-profits to solve many of the challenges awaiting him once he takes office, including as she notes “poverty at home; uneven access to health care and quality education; the climate crisis; and the need for post-war reconciliation and reconstruction abroad.”

(Read on …)

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“Despite a deepening recession, only eight percent of hospital fundraising executives who expect to raise less money this year than in 2008 said their institutions would have to curtail critical health care services for the poor and underinsured,”, according to the results of the 2009 Association of Healthcare Philanthropy Recession Survey. “The overwhelming majority of AHP members surveyed said they will continue to provide vital community services, which range from free mammography and cancer screenings for the poor to community clinics, hospice facilities and immunizations for the uninsured.”

Instead, the more than three-quarters of fundraisers for nonprofit hospitals and health care systems who say the current recession is negatively affecting their programs say budget trimming will likely come from construction and equipment purchases.

(Read on …)

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Examiner.com has a quick piece on several animals organizations using sex to raise money.  It covers a Las Vegas shelter’s “Hooters for Neuters” event, a Georgia group’s “Pinups for Pitbulls” calendar and how some West Hollywood firefighters also got into the act.  The article’s worth a look for the pictures alone: http://www.examiner.com/x-669-Pet-Rescue-Examiner~y2009m1d5-Sexy-fundraising-for-homeless-pets

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