Wesley Enhanced Living's Dawn George on Innovative Capital Campaigns
April 29, 2009 By Heather Fletcher, Senior Editor, Target MarketingTM: 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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