The Challenge

•  When Volunteers of America reached out to H&J they were struggling with low public awareness.

• A big reason was that the local affiliates determined the primary needs in their own communities.

• As a result, there was great inconsistency as to which programs and services were offered by each affiliate. So it was hard to create a unified national messaging platform.

The Solution

H&J developed a plan to give local affiliates the variable messaging they needed while improving the overall cost-efficiency of the whole program.

With the appeals united under a theme of “Caring has no limits”, we used custom personalization techniques and matrices to localize the mailings, giving the local offices wide latitude to vary lines, paragraphs – even entire pages – of copy to convey their particular needs with urgency and specificity.

We also increased engagement among local affiliates with a multi-level communication program to present, explain, evaluate, invite input, and promote participation in the direct mail program. These efforts used printed materials, web, email, and personal outreach, as well as multi-affiliate conferences.

Under H&J’s guidance, the direct mail program became mores seamless and extended its boundaries to include fundraising across all the organization’s channels. Best of all, these accomplishments did not come at a price. In fact, net income increased each year, reaching, at one point, 30% above the previous year’s budget!