How the Brady Campaign Uses the Internet to Raise Funds

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Maximizing ROI in an Integrated Context

In the fall of 2003, the Brady Campaign grew its email list from an original 38,000 to 175,000 via an innovative micro-site that was followed by petition campaigns that focused on urgent federal legislation. A vast majority of these constituents were non-donors. Throughout two legislative battles in 2004, the Brady Campaign sent a series of appeals that included:
- A link to contacting Congress,
- A “tell-a-friend” option, and
- A strong ask for funds that often included examples of specific print or TV ads.

Typical responses ranged from 0.19 - 0.37 percent and average gifts ranged from $24 to $46. This compares to typical email acquisition response rates of 0.1 percent [2-4x better. -Ed.].

New donors via the Internet grew from 311 in 2002 to 3,244 [10.4x better. -Ed.] in 2004. The Brady Campaign acquired these new donors at a very positive ROI since sending an email appeal does not have any marginal costs once the software is in place.

The organization decided to test other channels to drive incremental conversion of these online sourced constituents to donors. Having collected postal mailing addresses for about 23 percent of its email list, the Brady Campaign sent a direct mail solicitation to online non-donors asking them to join.

The result was a 1.26 percent response rate. This response rate was 11 percent higher than the overall mailing response rate of 1.11 percent to the group’s standard direct mail rental lists.

The average gift from email constituents in response to the direct mail appeal was 19 percent higher ($24.22), compared to their overall mailing average gift of $20.52.

The key acquisition metric, the net cost per acquired donor for the email list, was $6.22 compared with $15.71 for the overall mailing.

The Brady Campaign also contacted non-donors on the email list via phone. It matched about 20,000 records of e-constituents who had taken at least one advocacy action.

Telemarketing drove a 21 percent pledge rate with an average gift of $27.38.

About the Author: Vinay Bhagat founded and heads strategy for Convio, Inc., a provider of on-demand software and services to help nonprofit organizations use the Internet to become more effective at fundraising, mobilizing support and managing constituent relationships. For more information, please visit www.convio.com. This article first appeared in the the March edition of FundRaising Success magazine.