The Walnut Tree

“It’s happening at Harvard too”

A few weeks ago, I listened to an excellent webinar by Anne Melvin, Planned Giving Director at Harvard, with some great insights into planned giving marketing and the trends they’re seeing at Harvard. I (as I am sure you do too) figure that as one of the most prestigious colleges in the country, they probably know a thing or two about planned giving!

Here are the highlights I took home:

• DIRECT MAIL STILL HAS THE BEST RESULTS FOR PG–Melvin looked at all of her gifts for the year and listed the top motivations for each gift–#1 is Direct Mail; #2 is Income; #3 Reunion (only pertains to schools); #4 Mission; #5 Timing; #6 One offs; #7 Repeat Offenders & #8 Shoe Leather

• DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS–Throughout your PG campaign, you need to vary your message/motivations for the various promo efforts because everybody has a different “button” to push!

• CREATIVE IS ONLY A SMALL PART OF THE SUCCESS–She talked about how although the creative is the fun part, it only accounts for 20% of the success of the promo—don’t get too caught up in it!

• AUDIENCE IS STILL KEY–She explained that about 40% of the success of your promo efforts rely on targeting the right audience. She looked at the PG scores for her donors and found that Blackbaud’s PG ratings missed 61% of them.

• PG DONOR AGE IS NOT YOUNGER–Despite studies indicating to lower the age for planned giving prospects, she analyzed her donors/gifts and the “sweet spot” is still age 60-89! Only 7% of her new donors were age 30-50.

•  NEWSLETTERS ARE NOT DEAD–Just don’t overdo them.

•  EMAIL PROMOS ARE NOT EFFECTIVE–But we still need to do them.

•  PRINT ADS ARE NOT EFFECTIVE–And should be the first thing to cut.

• # OF PG DONORS ARE DOWN–She showed a bar chart displaying Harvard’s total PG donors #’s are down over the past 10 years.

• TYPICAL PG RESPONSE RATE IS 0.5%–She listed the response rates for 2 years worth of PG promos—most of her promos generated only 0.5% response with the BEST response being to her “BatchCalc” letter that was the pre-made illustrations.

My favorite line during the session was when discussing the # of donors being down, she said, “So when you boss points out that your PG donor #’s are down, just tell him ‘It’s happening at Harvard too.’” I thought that about summed it all up!

 

Author: Renee Durnin, CFRE

One Day Without Shoes, April 5, 2011: No Shirt, No Shoes, No Education

Well it’s been a very exciting yet tiring day. I just got done cleaning my absolutely filthy feet after my “One Day Without Shoes” to support the TOMS Shoes' One for One movement, today April 5, 2011.

I went the entire day without wearing shoes, starting with getting into my car this morning by walking across my grimy garage floor in the 36 degree coldness. As we piled into my Mini Cooper, my nine and eleven year old couldn’t believe that I was REALLY going to work without shoes. But as I drove them barefoot to school, they started getting into it and asking if they could go to school without shoes today too. Unfortunately, I had to tell them that they could not participate because they were going to school, and schools REQUIRE you to wear shoes to them...

...Actually, that’s the source of motivation behind Blake Mycoskie’s ideas for TOMS Shoes and the “One Day Without Shoes” movement. It is an injustice that millions of children all around the world in poverty stricken countries are not allowed to go to school because they don’t have shoes to wear.

At the AFP International Conference in Chicago, Blake talked about how his defining moment when he went on a church “shoe drop” in Argentina. A mother started sobbing with joy because her three sons now each had their own pair of shoes, and they no longer had to “share” the one pair that the family owned—you see, her sons had been taking turns going to school using the one pair of shoes…the oldest would go on Monday; the middle on Tuesday; the youngest on Wednesday and so on…trading off with that one pair of shoes.

Blake discussed that when he thought about all of the kids that were missing out on the opportunity to learn simply because they didn’t own a pair of shoes, it floored him. And then he thought, what happens when those three boys grow out of the shoes he’d given them?

It’s truly amazing that Blake combined his compassion and his entrepreneurial spirit to develop and, most importantly, IMPLEMENT the concept of “One for One”—for every one pair of shoes he sells, he gives another pair of shoes to a child in need. It’s especially incredible that he didn’t know one thing about shoes--how to make them or sell them or anything--when he came up with this idea.

My company, Gabriel Group, joined in the movement for “One Day Without Shoes” today—about 40 of us had fun running around our office without shoes on (Elsie even brought in TOMS' baby blue colored nail polish for us to paint our toenails)! We combined the day with our own shoe drive. We were able to dress down if we donated shoes a pair of shoes—we accumulated about 100 pairs today!

I have to say, I feel blessed to work for a company as compassionate and understanding as Gabriel Group that not only allowed us to participate in today’s “Day Without Shoes” movement, but also displays the same philanthropic spirit that TOMS Shoes does every day in the fundraising we do through our Pay It Forward activities. We’re a company of only 100 people, but we’ve worked together to raise money to build houses in Haiti and water wells in Las Yayitas!

Giving feels good! :)

 

Author: Renee Durnin, CFRE