Wesley Enhanced Living's Dawn George on Innovative Capital Campaigns
April 29, 2009 By Heather Fletcher, Senior Editor, Target Marketing
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Puzzled over how to piece together a building fund? Dawn George, vice president of fund development for Wesley Enhanced Living Foundation of Southampton, Penn., provides background on how she's using magnetized jigsaw bits to solve her fundraising problem for one of the retirement communities the foundation supports.
The game pieces eventually will provide a full, colorful picture of why potential donors should support a $900,000 portion of the $3.1 million public fundraising leg of the $23 million Evangelical Manor Capital Campaign. Eventually, that is, because the 30 puzzle pieces are being sent in 12 installments during the next 12 to 20 months.
Each direct mailing is slated to include a letter detailing construction progress, a donation envelope and the latest game pieces.
Target Marketing: Who is the target audience for this fundraising campaign and why?
Dawn George: The target audience for the fundraising campaign is really a set of constituencies. So they would be the residents who live at the manor, their families or, we also call that grateful families, and ... employees of Evangelical Manor and the surrounding businesses and community stakeholders. And then also, of course, the Wesley Enhanced Living board members and the executives in our organization, as well as existing donors.
TM: Why would this audience respond to piecemeal puzzle mailings?
DG: First of all, in this economic climate, appealing to people's charitable priorities is even more of a challenge. ... We are in the public phase of this capital campaign which, by the way, is the first ever capital campaign for the organization. So in the public phase, it's really the grassroots phase. That's really where you put your tentacles out to the broader community ... The thing that I feel most strongly about right now—and I've been doing this for 25 years, doing meetings, fundraising and marketing—is that we need to be creative. And the challenge for us to be creative is that this needs to capture people's attention, it needs to communicate an urgent need in a way that people can both understand and embrace and it's not too complicated. ... The mechanics of the concept, then, are: Smaller doses are better, they're more concise messages. Also, because the campaign is centered around a construction project, we wanted to be able to communicate clearly and concisely the progress of the construction. So by doing it in puzzle pieces, people are now able to see the way that the puzzle is designed. When a certain component of the construction project is completed, for example the dining room, they'll get the pieces of the dining room that'll show its completion. So it follows the timeline of the construction project, which is why it's 12 to 20 months long. So that's why we use a drip marketing approach to it.
TM: How many donors did Wesley Enhanced Living Foundation target; how many pieces of direct mail went out at a time and why?
DG: For the puzzle campaign, we sent out 1,000 pieces. And, of course, you would multiply that by 12 mailings. So it's a 1,000-piece mailing each time. And so that would be 1,000 [potential] donors.
TM: When does WEL expect donors to respond, and how well are they responding so far?
DG: We've only done one mailing. We did the first two [puzzle] pieces in March. And we're gearing up to do the next three [puzzle] pieces in mid-May. ... We received 23 donations as a result of the first mailing. ... But the number of donations we have to date, just overall, is about 73. Those are very large donations ... because the way a campaign works is you get leadership gifts that are five- and six-figure gifts first, and then you do this grassroots effort ... From the actual puzzle mailing ... the average gift is $31. ... I think the critical thing here is these are people who've never given before. ...
TM: How is WEL coordinating this campaign with other direct marketing channels?
DG: Because one of our goals here is to acquire new donors, we don't have complete information on all of these people. So once a donor gives to the puzzle campaign, then we continue to communicate with them via e-mail and also in other mailings. But then what we're also doing with the segmented population is I'm doing update meetings in large groups, small groups and also one-on-one. ... We are accomplishing our goals. Because we're creating a buzz, we're using something that is very familiar with people, like a puzzle, about a very familiar thing, which is the Manor. People have positively embraced this in a fun way that I think has really gotten them to consider making a donation, if they haven't already ...
The game pieces eventually will provide a full, colorful picture of why potential donors should support a $900,000 portion of the $3.1 million public fundraising leg of the $23 million Evangelical Manor Capital Campaign. Eventually, that is, because the 30 puzzle pieces are being sent in 12 installments during the next 12 to 20 months.
Each direct mailing is slated to include a letter detailing construction progress, a donation envelope and the latest game pieces.
Target Marketing: Who is the target audience for this fundraising campaign and why?
Dawn George: The target audience for the fundraising campaign is really a set of constituencies. So they would be the residents who live at the manor, their families or, we also call that grateful families, and ... employees of Evangelical Manor and the surrounding businesses and community stakeholders. And then also, of course, the Wesley Enhanced Living board members and the executives in our organization, as well as existing donors.
TM: Why would this audience respond to piecemeal puzzle mailings?
DG: First of all, in this economic climate, appealing to people's charitable priorities is even more of a challenge. ... We are in the public phase of this capital campaign which, by the way, is the first ever capital campaign for the organization. So in the public phase, it's really the grassroots phase. That's really where you put your tentacles out to the broader community ... The thing that I feel most strongly about right now—and I've been doing this for 25 years, doing meetings, fundraising and marketing—is that we need to be creative. And the challenge for us to be creative is that this needs to capture people's attention, it needs to communicate an urgent need in a way that people can both understand and embrace and it's not too complicated. ... The mechanics of the concept, then, are: Smaller doses are better, they're more concise messages. Also, because the campaign is centered around a construction project, we wanted to be able to communicate clearly and concisely the progress of the construction. So by doing it in puzzle pieces, people are now able to see the way that the puzzle is designed. When a certain component of the construction project is completed, for example the dining room, they'll get the pieces of the dining room that'll show its completion. So it follows the timeline of the construction project, which is why it's 12 to 20 months long. So that's why we use a drip marketing approach to it.
TM: How many donors did Wesley Enhanced Living Foundation target; how many pieces of direct mail went out at a time and why?
DG: For the puzzle campaign, we sent out 1,000 pieces. And, of course, you would multiply that by 12 mailings. So it's a 1,000-piece mailing each time. And so that would be 1,000 [potential] donors.
TM: When does WEL expect donors to respond, and how well are they responding so far?
DG: We've only done one mailing. We did the first two [puzzle] pieces in March. And we're gearing up to do the next three [puzzle] pieces in mid-May. ... We received 23 donations as a result of the first mailing. ... But the number of donations we have to date, just overall, is about 73. Those are very large donations ... because the way a campaign works is you get leadership gifts that are five- and six-figure gifts first, and then you do this grassroots effort ... From the actual puzzle mailing ... the average gift is $31. ... I think the critical thing here is these are people who've never given before. ...
TM: How is WEL coordinating this campaign with other direct marketing channels?
DG: Because one of our goals here is to acquire new donors, we don't have complete information on all of these people. So once a donor gives to the puzzle campaign, then we continue to communicate with them via e-mail and also in other mailings. But then what we're also doing with the segmented population is I'm doing update meetings in large groups, small groups and also one-on-one. ... We are accomplishing our goals. Because we're creating a buzz, we're using something that is very familiar with people, like a puzzle, about a very familiar thing, which is the Manor. People have positively embraced this in a fun way that I think has really gotten them to consider making a donation, if they haven't already ...
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