There are some organizations who have weathered the storm, some by nature of their mission, others by sheer willpower. Lisa Greene, president and founder of Specialized Fundraising Services, points out that community-based aid programs such as food banks and clothing banks have actually done well through the recession. Of course, they will face the challenge of renewing these new donors next year, but that is for another article.

Greene adds that organizations that stayed the course through the recession are the ones seeing a lift in response and revenue over the past several months. They may have cut back slightly on volumes and decreased testing, but they continued to mail to keep their donor files somewhat in tact. Of course, there was a higher investment in these donors at that time, but they hope to gain more in the long run through additional gift and renewal programs.

So there is hope on the horizon. Results for many national and regional mailers seem to indicate the serious drop off began in late summer of 2008 and with the worst coming from September 2008 through February 2009. For many of these mailers, results began picking up, though not yet back to pre-recession levels, in August 2009.

The important thing to remember is that changes in donor behavior are happening at lightning pace and organizations need to remain flexible to keep pace.

So, here are a few items to consider for 2010:

Develop an annual plan now – don’t wait until a month or two before the mailing to think about a strategy. Create an annual plan that can be adjusted as necessary, but gives you a bigger picture view of what the year will look like

Test lists more aggressively – I recently saw a plan for a regional mailer for March where 21% of the lists were unique as compared to their most recent mailing. Now, that is probably going to the extreme, but this organization is trying to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. They have a history of mailing the same control to many of the same lists, so felt the need to really freshen things up. They are also testing some new mail kits and offers in an attempt to move the needle.

Develop more of a mix of lists – Look to add more exchange lists to your mix and add in some compiled lists as well. You also may want to build up your internal prospect files and mail deeper into your lapsed file. These techniques not only help you find fresher names, they help to reduce costs so you are more efficient as well. One mailer we work with found they could reach 50% more prospects by reducing costs in this way. So, they could afford to have response rates come in slightly lower because they were reaching a wider audience without spending more. Again, this may be an extreme case, but there is a valuable lesson there.

Conduct a zip analysis – We recommend doing this every 18-24 months anyway, but it is more important than ever to review a zip analysis. This tool looks at response rates over the course of several mailings by zip code, allowing you to look for areas that respond very well or very poorly. You may consider increasing penetration into high response zips and decreasing or eliminating mail into low or zero response zips. We have seen mailers lift response rates while trimming 10-15% of their volume (and therefore costs).

Test offers – Offer testing continues to be an important part of any acquisition program. It also affects retention rates, so it is important to think through your array of offers and ask amounts. You can read more about offer strategies in this article from our December 2009 E-newsletter.

Expand your Sustainer program – Our friends abroad in Europe and Canada have long since seen the value of developing a strong Sustainer program. It’s not new to the States, but many organizations still fail to give Sustainer programs the attention they need. More and more donors find this as a convenient way to support your organization and it can certainly help defray costs throughout the year. If you do not have at least 5% of your file giving monthly or quarterly, you should address this immediately. If you find yourself already in that range, re-visit your strategy and look for ways to increase it by another 5-10%. Talk to those who do it well, too. Organizations like ASPCA and Defenders of Wildlife come to mind.

Look to alternative acquisition programs – Direct mail and direct response TV have always been easy ways to reach large audiences. Of everything you do, though, no channel has more reach than your Web site. If you can increase traffic to your site and bolster Web registration and conversion, you may be able to rely less on the other traditional methods of acquiring donors. In next month’s E-newsletter, A Word from Dick will discuss a new service to help make this work through DonorPath™ - Converting Prospects to Donors.