To the wallet or to the bin?

Professional Fundraising

January 2008

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With direct mail high on the political and sector agenda, the Fundraising Standards Board commissioned two pieces of research to find out what the public really thinks about charity direct mail. Kate Higgins explores the results

Charities have become accustomed to testing, re-testing and testing again when it comes to their direct mail. Yet while most fundraisers know what responses they’re getting from their mailings, little research has been done about what the public who receive it is thinking. As the Institute of Fundraising draws together the consultation responses to its first ever code of practice on direct mail, the Fundraising Standards Board (frsb) decided to ask some pertinent questions about how charities use direct mail as a fundraising tool. The research, Signed, Sealed and Delivered, was split into two parts to find out both what the general public, and existing charity donors felt about receiving mail through the post. Questions inserted into nfpSynergy’s online charity awareness monitor (cam) sampled the views of 1,000 adults aged 18 or over; while eight frsb charity members, including ActionAid, Hope and Homes for Children, Sense Scotland and The Donkey Sanctuary, each sent a questionnaire to 600 people from their databases.

The results show how widespread the reach of charity direct mail is. In the cam survey of the general public, over half of the respondents said they had received between one to four pieces of unaddressed or addressed mail in the last three months. Existing donors were just as likely to get mailed – with nearly half of those responding to the frsb’s member survey reporting they had been contacted by letter between two to four times by the charity they supported during the last year.

How much mail is too much?

Both surveys asked people how they responded to these letters. Over half felt strongly that unaddressed mail was junk mail and the results showed addressed mail resulted in more people reading the contents, with nearly two thirds opening some or all of the letters addressed to them compared to less than a third opening unaddressed letters. Surprisingly, this had little affect on decisions, with only marginally more people saying they gave to an addressed mailing.

The findings from the frsb survey of existing donors were analysed to determine whether there is a balance to be struck when determining the number of times a year to contact donors. We found that three or four letters appears to be less likely to result in no donations at all, most likely to elicit the largest total number of donations, and also provide a reasonable number of donors who will respond to every letter received. If five or more letters a year are sent, these trends flatten or reverse. Thus, while a quarter of donors receiving four letters a year will respond four times with a donation, less than 10 per cent of donors receiving five letters will give five donations. Moreover, the rate of return on sending three letters a year is nearly double the rate for sending six. Sending five or more letters to the same group of donors would appear to constitute too much direct mail. As one respondent commented: “For a long time now I have been concerned about the volume of appeals etc that come through the mail and now by email.” In deciding how many letters to send, organisations clearly have to consider the resources involved and how much they might raise: they might also want to consider the relationship from the donor’s point of view.

Public perceptions

Our findings also show a clear sense that privacy matters and that people want to be engaged in a mutually productive relationship with charities. People expect charities to, at the very least, play by the rules. Two thirds of both the public and existing donors said they would like to be asked by the charity about the frequency of contact they share with them. Over 80 per cent of both groups said they expected to be respected and would stop giving if contacted after asking not to be. Moreover, a further 80 per cent of both said that charities which sent lots of direct mail were not being environmentally friendly.

The stakes are high for charities that ignore donors’ wishes or that fail to engage their donors in some form of contact other than one that asks for money. Yet, our research shows that when charities get it right, donors are much more receptive to what they do in fundraising terms and why they do it.

While only 30 per cent of the general public agreed they were happy to be mailed by charities that had their name and address, 74 per cent of established givers were happy to be. Yet donors value their privacy and over three quarters considered it rarely or never acceptable for charities to swap names and addresses to find potential donors.

Finally, just over half of existing donors surveyed by frsb members agreed that direct mail was a good way for charities to raise money for their work compared to less than a third of the respondents from the general public. This suggests that when people know why they are being contacted they have a much more favourable attitude towards the use of direct mail.

Do gifts work?

Yet where incentives are involved, existing donors get hotter under the collar. While 70 per cent of existing donors thought sending gifts in the post was unacceptable, only 48 per cent of the general public though the same. The inclusion of a gift also appeared to have little impact on whether or not people gave in response to that direct mail appeal. Only 5 per cent of established givers made a donation as a result of receiving a gift, with 44 per cent making a donation but saying they would have done so even if there had been no gift. A further two thirds of existing donors said charities put gifts in to make people feel guilty and thought that using gifts as incentives was unacceptable.

Honesty is the best policy

The results also showed honesty is the key when it comes to what is acceptable within the design of a direct mail pack. Nearly three quarters of both the public and established givers thought it was unacceptable for charities to exaggerate when trying to get a gift. However, despite the headlines that shocking images in direct mail packs can cause, just half of respondents to both surveys thought that the use of shocking or distressing images in a pack was sometimes or always acceptable.

Overall, three key messages come across from our findings. One, the public doesn’t like gifts or incentives nor does it think this isa good use of charity money; two, supporters would like to have more of a say in the frequency of mailings and the relationship between them and the charity; and three, whereas they do not mind the use of shocking images in mailing, what they don’t like is charities exaggerating when trying to encourage them to give.



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