Cost to Raise a Dollar Decreases while Fundraising Revenue Increases for Belle Isle Conservancy in Detroit

CHALLENGE:

The Belle Isle Conservancy is a relatively young organization relying heavily on fundraising events for revenue. With several years of attendee data, they desired to grow the level of support from these relationships thru their year-end appeal campaign.
 

SOLUTION: 

Phoenix Innovate sought to create a deeper engagement with all the audiences in their database through the development of personalized direct mail, segmented by affinity level: event attendees, current members and lapsed members. We used available data insights to create unique ask ladders for each segment and implemented tracking methods in the design of all communications materials to make performance reporting more reliable and insightful.
 

RESULTS:

• Increased response rate by 38% over the prior year-end appeal
• Increased revenue from event attendees by 83%, demonstrating the long-term donor potential for this segment
• Reduced the cost to raise a dollar by 15% the first year and another 35% the second year, putting it at almost half the national average
• Increased revenue from existing members by 52%, providing direction for cadence of appeals to members