Sanky Blog

Each June, DMFA Members show off their best direct mail and email fundraising efforts at the Package of the Year contest. This year, SankyNet submitted a donor cultivation e-newsletter rather than a traditional e-appeal to help demonstrate the effectiveness of “information-based” fundraising communications. The move paid off — we were awarded Runner-Up in the email category!

Our submission was an issue of the Covenant House Beacon, a monthly online newsletter designed and written by SankyNet to optimize giving with multiple fundraising emphases. Each story helps build awareness of Covenant House’s vital programs while gradually, yet methodically, building to an “ask” that links directly to the online donation form.

The issue submitted for the DMFA Package of the Year was part of a multi-faceted Matching Gift Campaign and “dropped” on the very last day that donors could take advantage of the match. By combining compelling stories about homeless kids with a reminder about the well-publicized campaign, Covenant House achieved a remarkable spike in online donations.

View the full screenshot of Covenant House Beacon.

Covenant House is the largest privately-funded agency in the Americas providing shelter and other services to homeless, runaway and throwaway youth. SankyNet is proud of our long and successful partnership with this truly amazing organization.

By Judy Maneval

In the last few years, we have seen a remarkable – in some cases a huge – increase in the volume of contributions that arrive as “white mail” – or gifts that cannot be attributed to specific appeals. For some organizations, this increase has not affected giving coded to individual appeals. For others, there appears to be a decline in coded gifts as the white mail line has increased.

A number of possible explanations for this interesting phenomenon occur to us, including one suggestion that donors think they will not be re-solicited if they use their own envelope.

We believe that the most likely explanation, however, is the increasing donor traffic between off-line mailings and online reading. Some are direct mail donors receiving appeals and then going online for more information. We speculate that they don’t retain the mailing pieces, but simply respond in their own envelopes. And, at the same time, there are people not on our donor or prospect lists who are finding our organizations online. Then those who are not comfortable giving credit card information online are sending checks in plain envelopes.

Let us know if you are seeing this same trend and if you can suggest other reasons.

By Harry Lynch
Published on AFP site on April 14, 2008

Back in ancient times—say around 1998—we all knew that the Internet was going to take over the world. Remember that? How obsolete and uncool was everything else, including every other fundraising medium and method, about to become?

It wasn’t to be, of course. Not even close, in fact. Yet even the naysayers, who have a decade’s worth of history and hindsight on their side, would do well to stop and take note of just how far we have come in just 10 short years.

The approximately 50-fold increase in the amount of money being raised online over the last decade is eye-popping. While the Internet may still represent less than 4 percent of the nearly $300 billion being donated annually in the United States, if the rates of growth hold up, well, you do the math.

Of course, there’s also the often-overlooked fact of who is now online. Fully one-third of people over 65 (READ: those most philanthropically inclined) are now active on the Internet. Plus, nearly three-quarters of those in the 50–64 age group (i.e. the folks making the most money) are going online regularly. That degree of Internet penetration among older adults is wildly ahead of what was projected just a few years ago.

There’s just no doubt about it: The future of online fundraising is clearly very bright—and very, very complicated.

Rapid shifts in what people do online and how they do it, as well as the growing tendency for older users to jump back and forth between new and traditional media, make best practices for online fundraising a rapidly moving target.

When it comes to new media, there’s simply no such thing as timeless lessons. The best anyone can claim to do is offer a few observations that might serve as guideposts in these extraordinary—and extraordinarily challenging—times. Here are a few:

• Keep up with, and invest in if you can, the newest thing. Pay close attention to trends and shifts. However, don’t bet the house—at least not yet—on social networking or text messaging campaigns. These are vital and exciting ways to engage mostly younger audiences. There are a few important exceptions, but the majority of nonprofit organizations have yet to raise truly significant funds through these channels.
• Pay more than lip service to synchronizing online and offline fundraising and communication channels. “Integration” should be more than just a buzzword. More and more online donors—and in all likelihood your most important ones—are likely to move offline at some point and mail you a check, or vice versa. Keep track of them and engage them in the right way, in the best medium, at the right time.
• Listen (of course!) when the 40-year-old chair of your board tells you to post a video to your website or insists that you add some Flash animation. At the same time, don’t have the entire strength of your online appeal depend on any feature that might be a barrier for anyone who might have a slow Internet connection or an older computer, or who simply may be less comfortable with downloads and new software. (Fact: 53 percent of Americans used dialup Internet at home in 2007!)
• Don’t skip the basics: building a great website, getting people to your great website and using email to engage and ultimately solicit your constituency. The vast majority of donations online are still generated by websites that make a compelling case, in both words and photographs, and succeed in getting people to visit them. (Another fact: a recent survey found that 62 percent of Americans visit an organization’s website before donating!)
• Don’t pay too much attention to how America’s kids communicate. While our text-message-happy youngsters may tell us that email is not cool (“so my parents” was the last quote I heard), that’s exactly the point. Email is now the preferred means of communication by many parents, along with aunts, uncles and grandparents. The last time I checked, those are still the very people who give money to nonprofit organizations.

Perhaps the next generation of donors will want to send their donations via text message, be motivated by clips on Google’s YouTube channels or respond to some unimagined method that we’ll be talking about in future articles.

We need to be ready. We need to keep our eyes open and be sure not to blink. The future is flying at us a whole lot faster than it used to.

We also need to be excruciatingly careful not to take our eyes off what we do know in the present: who gives online, why they give and what we know we can do today to raise more money online.

Over the past few months, five distinguished nonprofits have joined the Sanky Communications list of clients. We are proud to welcome The Animal Medical Center, the National Stroke Association, Maimonides Medical Center, The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and The Scripps Research Institute.

Sanky Communications is pleased to announce that five incredible nonprofit organizations have recently joined our client list. Each is dedicated to improving lives through direct compassionate care, critical research or vital funding that advances knowledge and treatments. We invite you to learn more about these organizations and their partnership with Sanky Communications.

National Stroke Association

SankyDirect welcomes the National Stroke Association to its list of clients. Established in 1984, National Stroke Association is the only organization in the United States that focuses 100% of its efforts on stroke. Their mission is to lower the incidence and impact of stroke by developing compelling community outreach programs, calling for continued improvement in the quality of stroke patient care and educating both healthcare professionals and the general public about stroke.
SankyDirect is proud to be joining forces with the National Stroke Association in its vision to reach as many individuals as possible and be a beacon of hope for stroke survivors.

The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary

Founded in 1820, The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary is the oldest specialty hospital in the Western Hemisphere. With a rich heritage and a mission of providing high-quality patient care, community outreach, graduate and continuing medical education and scientific research, The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary has built upon its strengths to emerge as a recognized leader in the fields of eye, ear, nose and throat care.

And when The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary needed direct marketing services and expertise, they turned to SankyDirect. We are looking forward to engaging their existing constituency while cultivating the next generation of donors who will help sustain this world-renowned hospital.

The Scripps Research Institute

The Scripps Research Institute, one of the country’s largest, private, nonprofit research organizations, has always stood at the forefront of basic biomedical science, a vital segment of medical research that seeks to comprehend the most fundamental processes of life. In just three decades the Institute has made major developments in the treatments and cures of hundreds of degenerative diseases.

With a renewed commitment to increasing revenue, raising awareness of their research, cultivating new donors and better engaging their existing constituency, Scripps Research turned to SankyNet to help them create a modern, effective online program.

See samples of our work with The Scripps Research Institute

The Animal Medical Center

The Animal Medical Center is a nonprofit veterinary hospital that has provided the highest-quality medical care for animals since 1910. Although veterinarians at The AMC see thousands of animals every year, their underlying belief is that each pet is a member of the family and should be treated with the utmost personal attention.
SankyDirect is proud to partner with The AMC and help fund compassionate treatment that reflects the latest breakthroughs in veterinary science.

Maimonides Medical Center

For nearly 100 years, Maimonides Medical Center has been a vital and thriving nonprofit hospital. It is the pre-eminent treatment facility and academic medical center in Brooklyn, New York — and among the best in the country.
With help from an improved direct marketing program, Maimonides will continue providing high-quality compassionate patient care and community services to people of all faiths and backgrounds from the incredibly diverse population of Brooklyn.

How do you get people from all over the world to attend Freedom from Hunger Day in Davis, California? You use the power of the Internet to bring the festivities to them! This year, SankyNet helped turn this official day of awareness into a worldwide interactive virtual event.

SankyNet’s team of designers, writers, coders and developers came together to create Freedom from Hunger Day — a truly imaginative virtual event which the San Francisco Chronicle called a “first” in the non-profit world.

On September 28th, people from around the world took part by joining a series of interactive events that connected them with everyday heroes — women who have helped end hunger and poverty for their families.

Participants watched video clips taken by staff in the field…downloaded sound bites of women sharing dreams for themselves and their families…participated in a live conversation with Freedom from Hunger’s President, Chris Dunford, and received answers to their most pressing questions about solutions that will end global hunger and poverty.

SankyNet also developed an interactive “World Traveler” game for children, an online petition, a flash e-card and a Hunger Blog to further engage visitors. Furthermore, SankyNet’s team of marketing and communication specialists created a fully-integrated promotional campaign to help raise awareness of Freedom from Hunger Day. Take a look at a few of the features now.

By the end of the day, thousands around the world had joined this special event and learned for themselves why there’s good reason for hope in the fight against world hunger.

SankyNet is constantly striving for new and innovative ways to bring the success of offline fundraising events to the online medium. And with the support of our client, Covenant House, we were given the opportunity to stretch the limits of our creative and technological imagination.Each year, Covenant House’s annual candlelight vigils gather thousands of supporters from around the world and we saw a unique opportunity to help recreate this energy through a virtual event.

SankyNet’s team went to work and created a fully interactive venue where people could gather online in support of homeless kids. The virtual candlelight vigil site included a vibrant and compelling look that was creatively branded to Covenant House’s offline marketing materials.

Another facet of this year’s campaign called on our marketing experts to expand Covenant House’s online audience for the event. New target audiences included hundreds of colleges, churches, civil groups and other caring communities around the World.

The outcome? This year’s event was even more successful than last year and continues to attract new visitors every day! Visit the vigil site today and see what kind of possibilities a virtual event can offer your organization.