Robbins - Washington National Cathedral

Washington National Cathedral is a National House of Prayer for All People. Its ministry welcomes all from every faith tradition and offers opportunities to those who seek spiritual meaning. The Cathedral is a magnificent, true Gothic building filled with sculpture, carvings, metalwork, paintings, and many other fabulous objects díart, and offers a vast array of activities for educational and spiritual development to people of all ages.

Project
2002 Christmas Card Campaign, September 2002 Donor Renewal Package

Situation Analysis
Washington National Cathedral had built a base of support through a premium fundraising program. While this program was successful at generating gross revenue, net revenue and renewal rate had been declining. The 2001 appeal mailed very deeply into the file - as a result, several segments lost money. Part of this was the timing of the appeal - returns were coming in just as the Anthrax related problems caused the Brentwood PO to be temporarily shut down.

Objectives

Generate more net revenue for this campaign than had been generated in prior years.
Upgrade the quality of the cards in terms of image and paper stock.
Change from a mix of Cathedral related images and generic images to all Cathedral related images to strengthen donor loyalty and ideally, improve future response.

Strategy
In order to maximize net revenue, the following strategy was developed:

Mail the "box" of cards to the top performing donors, rather than to the entire file. Move the lower performing donors into an "envelope" package to improve net revenue.
Compress the time frame between the original and the follow up mailing from two months to 3 weeks.
Mail the follow-up to the top performing donors, rather than to all donors who received the original mailing.

Results

Original
Quantity 60,265
Response 21.4%
Average Gift $17.34

Follow-Up
Quantity 43,488
Response 9.83%
Average Gift $18.50

Overall, this campaign achieved a $.30 cost of fundraising and an ROI of 334%. Last yearís campaign achieved $.66 cost of fundraising and an ROI of 285%. Mailing more strategically resulted in a 50% decrease in cost of fundraising and a 17% improvement in ROI!!