Fundraising Letters: Casanova Never Mailed One Love Letter a Year, So Neither Should You

By Alan Sharpe, CFRE
The worst thing you can do in direct mail fundraising is mail only one appeal a year.

Direct mail is part of your annual campaign, yes. But that doesn’t mean you should mail only one fundraising letter every 12 months. Annual doesn’t mean annually in direct mail fundraising. Here’s why you must ask for gifts by mail more than once a year.

Donor’s Move
In North America (where I live and work), one in five (20%) businesses and individuals move each year. You can discover who plenty of these people are, and get their new address, by using the postal service’s National Change of Address service. But it only tells you who has moved during the past six months.

So if you mail your annual appeal in December, you’ll get the new addresses for everyone in your database who moved during the six months before December only. Everyone who moved during the six months since last December you’ll lose. And if you lose a donor you lose the donation.

Direct Mail Donors Give from Discretionary Spending
When your direct mail appeal arrives in the mail, your donors decide to give or not to give based on how much cash they have on hand. If they have money to donate, they give. If money is tight, they don’t.

If you mail only once a year, and if your appeal lands when money is tight, you lose. But if you mail four times a year, or six times a year, more than one of those appeals is likely to arrive when your donor has money to give away.

Other Charities are Asking Even if You’re Not
Your donor, if she is typical, supports 13 charities besides yours. These charities are writing to your donor throughout the year, asking for donations. If she hears from them often but hears from you seldom, who do you suppose will receive her donation?

Fundraising is All About Relationships
You can’t have a close, rewarding relationship with someone you hear from only once a year. Healthy relationships require healthy communication. Not too much, or you become a pest. And not too little, or you become a stranger.

Your direct mail fundraising program needs to mail at least four appeals a year to maintain strong donor relationships and get the most from your donors. Generally speaking, the more often you ask, the more money you’ll raise. Naturally, you can ask too often and drive away your donors. But you can also ask too seldom, and lose both revenue and donors.

Learn More

Read my book Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program. Learn the proven, step-by-step process for raising funds and friends cost effectively, year after year. Available in paperback and as an e-book.