Urgency. Discovery. Scale. Credibility. Context. Empowerment. Heart. The building blocks of a powerful new acquisition control piece.

Opportunity

World Vision, one of the largest nonprofits in the country, has always relied on direct mail as a major source of new donors. For years, they had a winning acquisition control package that owed much of its success to a bulky packet of seeds that people could sign and return to be given to a child in need. Unfortunately, a recent challenge in the field meant that, for this kind of appeal, the marketing team could no longer use any kind of involvement piece to return to children. Nothing. Suddenly there was no control package. Starting over from scratch, and without benefit of any extra “gifts” to return to a child, a new strategy was needed.

Approach

This became an exercise in how many best practices could we bake into one package.

Years of testing had proven the following axioms for World Vision:
• Strong urgency increases response.
• Radically oversized envelopes produce higher response.
• Bright, warm colors get more envelopes opened.
• Requests for lower dollar amounts increase response.
• Multiplying the value of a potential gift increases response.
• Being specific about tangible goods a gift provides helps response.
• Focusing on one child increases response.
• Compelling photos lift response.
• Showing the scope and scale of the issue helps response.

So we did it all. And then some.

A recent trip to Rwanda had produced the story of a 5-year-old little boy whose growth had been so stunted by hunger, that he appeared to be less than 2 years old. Living a life that will forever be compromised by hunger, through stunted growth, brain damage, and ongoing, endless pain, is quite possibly worse than death. This was a dramatic and very authentic new way of defining hunger and positioning our offer as a solution to this atrocious kind of suffering.

Results

Bottom line, this package exceeded projections on all levels, with a notably higher response rate—one that, at rollout to a larger audience, represents a difference of hundreds of thousands of future dollars.

With an average gift 250% larger than the lead ask, “Starving” beat other efforts it was tested against by 12% in this area.

Furthermore, it outperformed in all audience categories including model lists, prospects, lapsed and control lists. So this package has across-the-board workhorse capabilities.

In fact, “Starving” has already been picked up for fundraising in four other areas of the organization—single gift cultivation, sponsorship extra gift appeals, sponsorship monthly billing mailings, and various online approaches. This acquisition approach has become a full-on campaign, reaching new and established donors across multi-media platforms.