Growing the approach for a growing NPO audience
Since its founding in 1998, Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) had grown to over 160 campuses around the world, reaching more than 50,000 current students and alumni. Now they want to reach 75,000 students on twice as many campuses.
As a nonprofit that has been operating for more than 20 years, FOCUS had created a robust outreach program with a large house file, communicating with benefactors through separate direct mail and online appeals throughout the year.
While receiving consistent returns on appeals, a growing nationwide donor base had made it both difficult to finely target their audience and continually more expensive to reach patrons with each mailing.
FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN
FOCUS hit 106% of FY17 goal
Omni-channel marketing and a repeated “test-and-learn” approach let us continually reach the most receptive audience with the most effective message, while minimizing the potential to “overask” already consistent supporters.
- Fundraising Strategy
- Campaign Planning
- Audience Segmentation
- Direct Mail
- Graphic & Web Design
- Copywriting
- Paid Social Media
- Reporting & Analytics
We implemented a multi-year, omni-channel approach, integrating direct mail, digital outreach and stewardship communications to provide supporters with a consistent message across all channels and to avoid “overasking” FOCUS’ already consistent benefactors.
Continually using a “test-and-learn” approach, we segmented FOCUS’ large house file and tracked mailings to 1) determine data-driven strategies to best approach their different audiences and 2) spend their direct mail budget most efficiently against their ever-growing donor base.
We segmented FOCUS’ audience, tracked appeal performance by each segment and increased frequency of communications to those segments that met target Key Performance Indicators. We also used the information we gathered about frequent supporters to personalize future appeals.