Fundraising Campaigns

Fundraising copywriting, creative and campaigns

McCarthy & King Marketing creates fundraising campaigns to support donor acquisition, donor renewals and donor communications.

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The expanding role of non profit marketers

Marketing professionals who work for non-profit organizations have a full plate.  Today, they are responsible for multiple activities using multiple media channels.  These activities include:

  • Fundraising – Donor Acquisition
  • Fundraising – Donor Renewals
  • Email Campaigns
  • Donor Communications

We can help you in various ways with all these activities:

Fundraising Donor Acquisition

Non-Profits make their money on donor renewals, but acquiring new donors is an essential, and costly, first step in the process.

Unless you are continually bringing in new donors, your donor base will dwindle through attrition.

Direct mail continues to be a major channel for donor acquisition.

Response rates for donor acquisition are considerably lower than what you can expect with donor renewal mailings.   Non-profit organizations should look at donor acquisition mailings as a break-even effort.  Sometimes you make a little, sometimes you lose a little.  Break even is about average.

We can help you with all aspects of a direct mail donor acquisition campaign.  We’ll help with list research, gift/offer planning, format selection, copy and creative, full production supervision and testing.  Our campaign will also include the creation of a dedicated donation landing page to capture new donors.

Fundraising Donor Renewals

Donor renewals are the bread and butter of non-profits.

Campaigns need to maximize both the response rate and the gift amount from each donor.

With direct mail, we’ll develop a campaign that will vary the gift “ask” amounts with the donor history.

We’ll look at premium strategies that include both front-end premiums to encourage higher response, and back-end premiums to encourage larger donations.

As with donor acquisition mailings, we can provide the complete direct mail solution – list research, gift/offer planning, format selection, copy and creative, full production supervision and testing.  Our campaign will also include the creation of a dedicated donation landing page or PURLs to capture donation renewals.

Email Campaigns

Non-Profits are increasingly using email to raise money from existing donors.  Even if the response isn’t as good as direct mail, the low cost of email makes it difficult to ignore.  Still for campaigns that require complete coverage of a donor base, direct mail seems to be the choice.

Email for donor acquisition is not a popular avenue of non-profits.  The relatively high cost of email lists makes it less attractive than direct mail.

Donor Communications

Donors like to hear from you and learn about the organization’s activities – and they especially like hearing from you when you’re not asking for money.  Whether it’s with direct mail, email or social media, stay connected with your donors, volunteers and other friends throughout the year.

Non-Profit Experience

Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

New Hampshire Forest Society

New England Community Health Centers

Kendall Whaling Museum

Children¹s Learning Centers

Multiple Hospitals (unnamed)

Community Awareness and Treatment Services (CATS)

How can we help?

Are you looking for a complete campaign or do you just need some marketing pieces put in place?  We’re flexible enough to work with you both ways.

To learn more, contact Bob McCarthy at 508-473-8643 or bob@mccarthyandking.com.

We also invite you to check out our Creative Portfolio.