When we first announced the Starting Over series, the very first comment we received came from Sarah Nutbrown who works for a small nonprofit in New Zealand.

Sarah wrote, “We’re just starting to build up individual giving, with limited resources, all ideas on where we focus our energy are more than welcomed. Sean Triner said recently that if you don’t already have a good DM programme, don’t do DM acquisition because of the costs nowadays. How do we recruit? Face to face? Telephone? Personal solicitation of major donors? I absolutely appreciate that stewardship and retention are hugely important, but we have to get them through the door first to be able to retain them!”

Great question. What does a young, small organization do to build a donor base in the absence any realistic ability to mount a direct mail acquisition campaign?

Better yet, let’s expand the question this way: What if direct mail didn’t exist? What if nonprofits had to build, survive and grow without it?

Imagine that the offices of all the list brokers were shuttered. There were no list exchanges, no cooperative data banks, no more agency purchase orders for you to sign and order up a few thousand new donors.

Frankly, I think every fundraiser — whether with a small, start-up or working for a huge, million donor group — would be wise to ask themselves: “What would I do if direct mail vanished from the planet?”

At least one fundraiser has put his imagination — and growth and survival skills — to good work. In a brilliant commentary titled Direct Mailpocalypse appearing in the 1 July issue of The NonProfit Times, Steve MacLaughlin, the Director of Analytics at Blackbaud, put himself into a world where dependence on decades of direct mail suddenly came to an end.

What would you do if your ability to conduct annual or semi-annual acquisition direct mail campaigns vanished?

Here are Steve’s insights from his imaginary visit to the new direct mail-less world, outlining the transitions fundraiser would have to make:

• Get far more serious about retaining existing donors.

• Shift to other channels (telephone, broadcast, face-to-face, online and social media. Regardless of channel, there was still no substitute for testing, re-testing and use of the right message at the right time.

• A more ‘agrarian approach’ to donor cultivation. An increased combination of “smaller interactions to acquire and retain donors over time, planting seeds, nurturing relationships and letting donors grow roots”.

• Realization that fundraisers “now needed to invest for the long-term with more focus on lifetime value versus simply living on subsistence, from year to year, on what direct mail brought in the door”.

• “A world without direct mail meant that you had to try new things and be willing to fail faster.”

• Switch from the use of descriptive analytics, such as income, age, and location, to using more predictive analytics to prioritize where to focus resources. Predictive modeling helps fundraisers focus on donors with higher likelihood to give, renew and make larger contributions.

• “Modern analytics could help them identify the diamonds in the rough instead of just turning over the same old rocks.”

• “Monthly donors weathered the changes better than anyone else. Most had been giving long enough that they had tuned out direct mail years ago.”

• “It no long mattered how many donors were in the house file. This is a world where it’s all about the value of their donors — not their volume.

• Metrics that incentivized short-term growth like response rate or attribution were replaced with more valuable measurements like multi-year retention and lifetime value.

In short, Steve concludes that “if direct mail did disappear today, it would cause some short-term challenges, but it would not end all fundraising.”

The point he’s making — and why I’ve focused on his Mailpocalyse commentary in this Starting Over series — is that with or without direct mail there’s a need every new or existing organization must face: in this fast-changing world it’s essential to diversify revenue sources.

So, don’t despair if you lack thousands or millions to invest in a conventional burn and churn direct mail program. Think about the more “agrarian” approach that Steve suggests.

Treasure each new donor as the precious resource she/he is and cultivate that seedling relationship knowing that with care and attention it will grow and blossom.

Take advantage of all the proven, and inexpensive technologies and channels open to you. Call and thank your new donor. Find out why she/he made that first gift. Then use the knowledge you gained about that individual donor to provide experiences that will put your organization front and center in that donor’s mind and heart.

Maybe we should all be praying for a Direct Mailpocalypse.

Roger

P.S. Sean Triner’s advice, summarized in Sarah’s comment at the top of this post, that new organizations avoid direct mail because of its expense is sound. It’s not just that direct mail is expensive; it’s also too often the case that organizations jump into it without having any of the essential follow-up processes in place.

An organization without a well-developed thank you, welcoming, donor identification, donor feedback, and proven donor experience program has no business investing heavily in acquisition until those other essential ingredients are present.