Sometimes in the nonprofit world, a picture really is worth a thousand words. And fundraisers often bank on that picture – or pictures – to yield much more in the form of acquisition dollars.

At least that’s what the creative team at Huntsinger & Jeffer was hoping for when it crafted a “photo essay” package for the national office of the American Red Cross for its first Chapter Donor Acquisition Program.

The creative team at Huntsinger & Jeffer employed the use of field photographs to tell American Red Cross' story quickly and compellingly.

The plain, No. 10 carrier-envelope appeal contains a donor card, yellow CRE, an “I Support the American Red Cross” decal and an 8 1/2-inch-by-11-inch, four-page photo essay detailing the Red Cross’ recent work around the world. The front page features a black-and-white field photograph of an aid worker cradling a young girl who looks like she’s been pulled out of a burning building. The headline reads: “Help Us Save a Life.” Just below, in blue ink, H&J employs a celebrity testimonial, “The Red Cross is a light in the darkness. And it is up to all of us to make sure that it doesn’t go out.” – Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate ...

“Typically we’ll do several brand-new concepts a year, sometimes many more, as well as tweaks to the current packages,” says Victoria Lester, president of H&J. “But we had previously never used as many photos. The Red Cross’ [packages] had been much more traditional.”

Since Lester and her team were commissioned in 1997 to execute an acquisition program on behalf of participating Red Cross chapters (now totalling 200 to 300 for each mailing), more than 100 unique mail packs have been tested, as well as 400 different prospect lists – the photo-essay appeal being the strongest overall performer with the largest number of lists. Preliminary January 2005 results indicated a 1.88 percent response rate, $29.08 average gift and net profit per donor of $1.57.

According to Lester, because acquired donors are turned over to chapters for ongoing cultivation and do not produce future revenues for the national office, it’s particularly important that the Chapter Donor Acquisition Program convert donors at the lowest possible cost.

To avoid added production fees, for example H&J prints it’s photo essay on both sides of an 11-inch-by-17-inch form and then folds it in half and into thirds to create a brochure feel. The images are presented in black-and-white around blocks of copy, which saves money on four-color process but also gives the piece a timeless, early 20th-century newspaper look. A convenient byproduct, that.

“Since March 2000, we’ve tested a double (poly) window, teasers on the carrier, a red-and-black insert, blue handwriting on the insert, even tilting the photos on the inside,” notes Cheryl Martin, vice-president of H&J. “Every time we test something, we ask ourselves, ‘Will this beat the control?”

Recently, switching the ask array from “$25, $35, $50” to “$35, $25, $50” has proved worthy of testing – despite the long-time success of the more common, linear string.

A Shift in Strategy

But while the program has grown from dropping a million pieces to more than 6 million annually, Lester says that beginning with the August 1999 Chapter Donor Acquisition Program mailing, the performance of each control package was analyzed by list to determine if individual files consistently responded better to different creative, copy, design, etc.

At H&J they call it the “best list/best package” strategy: Each prospect universe receives the direct-mail package that produces the best response from that list.

Initially, Lester and her team came up with two additional package concepts to mail in conjunction with its photo-essay appeal – both of which have seen myriad tweaks and tests.

The American Red Cross' "annual fund" package is the second-strongest overall performer with a 1.88 percent response rate and $28.20 average gift.

The first, simply referred to as the “annual fund” package, consists of a plain, No. 10 outer, yellow CRE and 8 1/2-inch-by-11-inch donor form with a short letter featured on the front and a black-and-white photo array presented on the back (interestingly, the same photos are used for the flagship mailing).

The crux of the appeal is to raise unrestricted funds of the 2005 Red Cross Annual Drive: “During the winter, our local resources are stretched to the limit. When a disaster strikes, funding that would generally provide other vital Red Cross services in our community must be diverted to meet the most immediate needs.”

According to Lester, the annual-fund package is the second-strongest overall performer and the “best package” of the second-largest number of lists. Preliminary January 2005 results revealed a 1.88 percent response rate, $28.20 average gift and net profit per donor of $5.12.

Small But Serviceable

The second package, another twist on the photo concept but on a much smaller scale, contains a donor card, CRE, an “I Support the American Red Cross” decal and a 5 1/2-inch-by-7-inch insert – folded horizontally to create the look of a miniature greeting card. The front employs the exact image used for the cover of Red Cross’ photo-essay insert, for reasons of obvious consistency. Inside, Senior Vice President J. Logan Seitz provides a brief note to tie together a theme: “ ... You've read the headlines and seen the pictures on television ... Fire destroys a home forcing a family onto the streets with nothing but the clothes on their backs ...”

The 4-inch-by-6-inch outer-envelope appeal, or “MiniCard,” trails the other two but has unearthed a significant base of mailing lists that perform much more strongly than the other two. January 2005 results revealed a 1.86 percent response rate, $22.25 average gift and cost to acquire a donor of $4.23.

“The program is very complex,” Lester says, noting that Red Cross has tested the donor files of everyone from the March of Dimes to America’s Second Harvest, even the Wall Street Journal subscribers.

“We’re localizing our appeals by ZIP code, so all our tests have to be straight down the middle within those ZIP codes and [prospect] lists. It ends up being 300 different variations of the same appeal.”

©Copyright 2005, North American Publishing Co., Philadelphia, PA 13130