Work that moves the numbers.

The Foundation wanted to grow its spring appeal to individual donors. From 2020 through 2024, the appeal (March 1 to April 30) drew 177 to 209 gifts a year.

In 2025, we wrote and mailed the campaign, reaching new prospects and asking current supporters to give more.

733 gifts and $95,827, up 251% in gifts and 162% in revenue over 2024. Our mailing alone produced 680 gifts, including 448 from new donors, and $56,486, well above the projected 567 gifts and $35,550.

WEDU PBS, public television for West Central Florida, wanted its member newsletter to do more than share what’s on air. Each issue needed to raise money, net of costs.

We produce InFocus three times a year in print, email and on the web, with a reply card, two email sends and a donate button. Each issue pairs program highlights with ways to give, from one-time gifts and monthly membership to vehicle donations and planned giving. Major donors are mailed as their own group, and we test as we go.

In fiscal 2026, the print edition raised $305,851 on $76,548 in costs, netting $229,303, or about $4 for every $1 spent. Roughly 600 major donors gave $129,575. The average gift has grown from $71 in fiscal 2019 to $170, and since moving to three issues in fiscal 2023, net revenue has averaged more than double the two-issue years.

A public library foundation in Florida mails each year to acquire new donors and win back lapsed ones. Its 2024 package relied on a general membership appeal and drew modest response.

For 2025, we redesigned the package with a book image in the Foundation’s signature color on the envelope, a slit-and-nest format and a band of program photos alongside the copy. We replaced the membership appeal with a goal-based ask, offered a tote bag at $100 with an opt-out, and added a one-page follow-up letter.

New-donor gifts climbed from 110 to 206 and response from 0.62% to 1.09%, cutting the net cost of acquisition by 39%. Among lapsed donors, response grew from 4.49% to 5.26% and net revenue from $5,227 to $5,936.

A community foundation came to us 16 days before its annual fall festival, its signature fundraising event. It had sold 731 tickets the year before and set a goal of 800.

We had Meta ads running within a day. Over the next two weeks, we ran 12 designs built around the festival’s offers, from two-for-one deals to last-chance reminders, targeting adults within driving distance.

The festival sold 896 tickets and grossed $38,819, beating its goal by 12% and the prior year by 23% in tickets and 27% in revenue. Sales tracked directly to the ads brought in $6,390 on $2,650 in spend, about $2.40 for every $1.

When federal funding for public media was cut in 2025, our public television clients had to show donors what was at stake and why to give now.

In August 2025, we mailed acquisition, add-gift and lapsed-donor appeals that made the loss local: what it meant for each station’s community, and what a gift would protect.

Compared with August 2024, acquisition response rose 155%, the average gift 37% and ROI 251%, and acquisition paid for itself for the first time in four years. Add-gift response grew 68% and lapsed-donor response 94%.

The organization wanted digital advertising to do more than support individual fundraising drives. It needed to raise money, grow its audience and build a pool of people to reach again.

Through Digital Reach 360, we ran a year-round program across Google and Meta, including the organization’s Google Ad Grant. Fundraising ran alongside mission messaging, streaming membership, vehicle donation and audience development, so each campaign built audiences for the next.

Over the fiscal year, the program brought in $294,846 in tracked revenue on $56,598 in media spend, about $5 for every $1. Including CBA’s management and creative fees, it returned $2.41 per dollar. It also generated more than 375,000 digital interactions, adding to the pool for future outreach.

A historic house and garden with a large visitor audience began working with us in 2025. It wanted to turn more visitors into members, and more members into donors.

In August 2025, we mailed a membership campaign to past visitors in a bold graphic envelope and to rented prospects by postcard. In November, we followed with an annual fund appeal to active and lapsed members and non-members.

The membership mailing raised $159,196 from 879 gifts on $93,019 in costs, netting $66,177. Past visitors returned $2.56 for every $1 spent, more than double the $1.05 from rented names. The November appeal, under 8,000 pieces, drew 341 gifts, returning about $4.40 per dollar and netting $38,028. Active members, many newly joined, returned $11.15. Over the year, members’ share of all visitors rose from 4.7% to 12.1%.

A leading urban park conservancy had tens of thousands of email subscribers with no postal address and a large group of donors who hadn’t given in years. Both knew the organization, but neither was part of its direct mail acquisition.

We matched postal addresses to about 60% of the email-only subscribers, then scored them with the conservancy’s best-donor model to find the strongest prospects. We scored the long-lapsed donors the same way and used the model to identify smaller donors most likely to upgrade to membership.

In new-member acquisition, these in-house prospects, drawn from both the email subscribers and the lapsed donors, responded 75% better than lists from comparable organizations, reducing reliance on rented names. The model also pinpointed the smaller donors most likely to upgrade to membership.

For gardens and parks, a donor relationship usually starts with a visit. Our clients wanted to turn more visitors and neighbors into members and donors.

We tested QR codes and email follow-up alongside mail, using match-back analysis to tie online gifts to the mailings. We used modeled and co-op data to find likely donors nearby, mailed email subscribers and lapsed members, and tested simple packages against image-heavy ones and membership asks against general appeals.

In one test, a black-and-white package outperformed full color by 40%. QR code giving grew tenfold and brought in new donors. Email subscribers mailed as prospects responded at 1% or higher, and refinements improved some campaigns’ efficiency by 25% to 30%.

The organization uses its Google Ad Grant to drive people to its website to give, register for events and join programs. The account had averaged about $178 a day in free search advertising and 49 clicks. Then, over 48 hours in May, daily impressions fell from 215 to 17. By June, it was using just $559 of its $10,000 monthly grant.

Our audit found that a phone number had failed Google’s advertiser verification, restricting every ad, not just a few keywords. We removed the number, then adjusted keywords and campaign settings until the ads began serving again.

From July through September, the account averaged 60 clicks a day, 22% above its pre-problem level, at a 15% lower cost per click. September brought 1,958 clicks in 29 days, 97% of its best month, and $7,779 in grant spending.

City Year needed corps members in 29 markets, and nine had become especially hard to fill.

We expanded the media strategy beyond Meta to TikTok and Snapchat, then kept adjusting audiences, placements and spend based on what drove applications.

By the end of the cycle, just two markets remained hard to fill, and TikTok and Snapchat reached City Year’s audience at about half the cost per 1,000 views of the initial Meta campaign.

City Year needed more AmeriCorps applications in slower markets and coordinated recruitment across 29 cities, without adding to its staff’s day-to-day workload.

We ran a three-phase campaign across Meta, programmatic platforms and Google Search, optimized it daily and worked with City Year’s recruitment team to tailor messaging to local needs.

City Year reached 158.8% of its national recruitment goal, and 93.1% of its markets exceeded their local recruitment goals.