Direct Mail Homework
Who will your target audience(s) be for this coming year? When using direct mail as a medium for fund raising, firms measure their performance by comparing the dollars earned with the dollars spent (Bhagat and Donovan). Hence, for the coming year we should concentrate on those who can give us the maximum amount of money while we keep our costs at the lowest possible. Also, most of our donors are in the retired age bracket. For these reasons we should concentrate on targeting middle age people; those who have are concerned about others and also have the means to help them.
What proportion of your budget will you allocate for new requests versus ongoing communication? At least half of the budget should be allocated for new requests as the company is in dire need of altering its current donor list age bracket. What other communication tactics might you use to try and reach potential donors? The firm can use many other tactics such as online mailing, setting up a website, making online forums where people can come and discuss new ideas and giving an advertisement in the newspaper.
However, newspaper advertisement will cost a lot and thus, the chosen newspaper must be the one which is widely read by the target audience. How might you distinguish yourself from other charities making requests for funds? A lot of fundraisers show their donors the monetary benefits of raising funds through them. We do not think this is a healthy practice as those giving away something should not be interested in getting more back.
Hence, we will distinguish ourselves from others by highlighting the benefits that society will get out of our the donors’ gesture to help others. Is there any certain determinant you can think of that might help you identify good potential donors? While identifying potential donors, we will need to know if they have been giving donations in the past and how they feel about that. That can be identified through inviting people to online discussions and then contacting those whom we think have the potential via direct mail to give donations.
