by Bill Jacobs | Jan 11, 2019 | Direct Mail
Like many of you, my mailbox is stuffed with nonprofit appeals between October 1st and December 31st. Here is a recap of the direct mail I received this year, and the insights I noted: • I received an even 50 pieces of direct mail. Thirty-five pieces were appeals from...
by Bill Jacobs | Nov 7, 2018 | Direct Mail
Here we are again in the midst of the big fundraising season. As I type, nonprofit organizations’ direct mail packages are landing in our mailboxes – with dances of response rates dancing in their heads. This is always an anxiety filled time. Usually, election cycles...
by Bill Jacobs | Jul 25, 2017 | Direct Mail
Last time, I discussed testing the statistical difference in response rates. In this blog, we will tackle average gift size testing. I’ll start with the problem we always run into: someone will give us the average gift sizes of a test and control, and ask if the...
by Bill Jacobs | Mar 8, 2017 | Direct Mail, nonprofit analytics
Somewhere over the rainbow in fundraising, two metrics were established as the gold standard: gross revenue generated and the number of donors acquired. And that’s a shame. It’s a shame because you can optimize these two metrics into organization ruin....
by Bill Jacobs | Sep 14, 2016 | Agency, Direct Mail, nonprofit analytics
Any of us that have been in the fundraising agency business have had the following meeting a least a dozen times: There are a bunch of somber looking board of director types from the nonprofit organization in the main conference room. They distrust agencies. Unlike...
by Bill Jacobs | May 17, 2016 | Analyst, Direct Mail, Online Fundraising
Google the term “dual channel donors” and you will get a plethora of websites stating the virtues of cultivating donors via multiple channels. Some of this information is all myth. We’ve recently done several analyses on dual channel donors, and here’s what we found:...