Charity Wins Donors With Promise Never to Ask For Another Gift

When I saw this headline on Holly Hall’s Chronicle of Philanthropy article on Monday I groaned out loud, and added an expletive.

What a recipe for fundraising disaster, I thought. No way direct response fundraising works without repeat gifts (i.e., repeat solicitations).

Then I read the article, which is about the prospecting approach used by Smile Train.

Their top-performing prospect package includes this pledge on the outside envelope …

“Make one gift now and we’ll never ask for another donation again.”

Great attention-getter … appealing to the ‘dark side’ (from a fundraiser’s perspective) of many donors’ instinctive reluctance to open the door to a barrage of ‘unwanted’ pitches.

But what follows, once the intrigued prospect looks inside the package and is moved to make their ‘only one’ gift, is clever. As reported by Holly:

“Donors who respond to the mailing are given a reply slip with which they can tell the charity they never want to be asked for a donation again, they want to receive limited communications from Smile Train, or they would like regular updates from the charity.”

That’s a smart twist on the permission marketing principle.

Assuming Smile Train is good on its word, and does not solicit those who opt out, the reality is that many — probably even most — responders will not opt out. They in fact choose to remain engaged … and like the fact that they were asked … more goodwill.

And even those who do opt out will get a non-solicitation ‘Thank you’. And guess what, an appreciable percentage will respond with a second gift! Plus, the remainder who have explicitly opted out are likely to represent the lion’s share of those initial givers who would not have responded to further solicitation anyway … Smile Train has saved the expense of re-soliciting them fruitlessly.

Smile Train didn’t share any of those opt in/opt out or ‘Thank you’ response figures in the article. But I’ll bet a month’s pay … this prospecting approach is working for them because of repeat gifts! Permission granted.

I’m OK. I’ve calmed down now.

Tom