Diana Keim, Senior Director of Development with City of Hope for the previous five years is our latest Be Our Guest participant. Diana is a University of Southern California alum who also spent ten years working in development for her alma mater. She also happens to be a wonderful person, should you get the opportunity to get to know her!
I thank Diana for taking part in the Be Our Guest series. Enjoy her answers and provide your thoughts in the comments
What is the biggest challenge your fundraising efforts currently face?
Acquiring new donors. 2008 and 2009 were lower fundraising years for everyone, and 2010 has been incredibly good for us, revenue-wise. However, acquiring new donors for the health of our donor file has been increasingly difficult. It's the only area of our annual giving fundraising efforts that hasn't recovered to a level I'm comfortable with. Not being in higher ed fundraising anymore, this is an area that is more difficult to tackle. We don't get new graduates every year. :)
Instead of solely relying on direct mail acquisition, we are going to be entering the "digital media" arena. We will begin these efforts, in test capacities, in Fall 2010.
Current Campaign:
What is the most successful change/program implementation you have made in your current role?
More mailings hitting our donors, believe it or not. My first full year in FY 2006, we went from 11 mailings per year to 17, including the creation of a donor-focused newsletter. We spent the same amount of money to run the direct mail program, but raised another $600,000+, all net revenue.
Where do you see social-media’s best application for fundraising?
I truly don't know. I see it as as an advocacy media, instead of true fundraising. But I'd love to be proved wrong.
City of Hope on: Twitter / Facebook / YouTube / Flickr / MySpace
And check out the great social media landing page:
1 comment:
In today's scenario direct marketing requires more thought and planning than before. With so many new marketing mediums coming out, such as social media, direct marketing needs to have a more defined target group.
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