Opportunities to reduce your postal spend in 2020 by Dave Johannes, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives This year, the U.S. Postal Service is again creating opportunities for you to reduce you postage costs while enhancing the way you use direct mail to speak to your donors and potential donors. Their goal is to reinforce the...

It’s not you. It’s the USPS. by Carolyn Angelini, Director of Resource and Supplier Relations, Production Solutions Have you noticed a longer tail on the time it takes for mail to deliver?  Are there some areas of the country where your results have slowed and you’re wondering if the mail is arriving in home as...

An opportunity in direct response television by Janet Tonner, President, Direct Donor TV Three weeks ago, Nick talked about how digital advertising is having a moment: nonprofits are seeing increased effectiveness at lower cost.  The data is on fundraising DRTV and we’re seeing the same thing.  There’s a positive perfect storm right now: increased viewership,...

You look like a thing and I love you “You look like a thing and I love you” was one of many results when AI researcher Janelle Shane gave a neural network a list of pickup lines from the Internet and asked it to generate its own.  From this, you might think that artificial intelligence...

When social distancing is social isolation So far, caging reports are showing that individual giving through direct mail and online giving has been generally stable so far into COVID-19 challenges.  This is likely because older folks who predominate as donors, especially in channels like mail, tend not to be as impacted by economic woes, as...

The essential role of the U.S. Postal Service by Dave Johannes, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives A decade after H1N1 and the financial crisis of 2009, we again find ourselves in crisis – this time from COVID-19. In a period of 90 days, we watched as the US economy and the stock market were devasted...

How to thank your donors Hopefully by now we know that it is good to thank donors, but there’s a phrasing that works and a phrasing that does not. By “works,” I don’t just mean that it warms the donor’s heart and fills them with joy.  That is a part of thanking a person; you...

Three potential digital activities in the time of COVID-19 Based on caging results so far from Aegis, a Moore company, caging results from around the sector, and historic impacts of economic downturns, we are cautiously optimistic that direct marketing fundraising through mail, digital, TV, and phone is holding steady so far in the current challenges...

An opportunity in digital advertising There’s an interesting ripple effect of the current environment.*  As many of us are homebound right now, we’re consuming more media.  Newspaper paper subscriptions are up.  People are watching the evening news again.  Facebook traffic is up 50%, mostly in messaging and video chats.  Google had to reassure users it...