November 25, 2004 | Read Time: 2 minutes
In a survey of college and private-school fund raisers, conducted by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, in Washington, about half of the 510 respondents said their institutions had started making annual-fund appeals via e-mail.
The study found that e-mail solicitations still make up a very small part of educational institutions’ overall fund raising. Of the 177 respondents who specified how much money their institutions raised through the appeals, 62 said they brought in $1,000 to $9,999 per year, and 34 said the figure was less than $1,000. But one reported that such appeals brought in more than $1-million. The remaining 80 institutions raised between $10,000 and $500,000.
Of respondents who have started using e-mail solicitations, 111 said they send them to everyone for whom they have an e-mail address, 117 said they send them to alumni, 71 said they send them to donors who gave in the previous year but have yet to give in the current year, and 64 said they send them to donors who gave more than a year ago but have not given this year.
Fund raisers also reported sending e-mail appeals to online donors, parents, faculty members, and students.
Asked how their institutions have integrated e-mail appeals into their solicitation schedule, 33 respondents said that their institutions use e-mail appeals as a second solicitation, 48 said their institutions send e-mail appeals on the same schedule as other solicitations, and 58 said they send year-end appeals to donors who had yet to give that year.
Of the respondents whose institutions do not currently use e-mail in their annual fund raising, 106 said that they plan to do so in the future.
The report also includes comments and advice about e-mail fund raising from survey respondents.
“Test your assumptions,” one respondent advised. “We learned that our youngest alumni (1 to 10 years out) made gifts in greatest numbers when solicited by a combination of both e-mail and snail mail, as opposed to one or the other exclusively.”
To get there: Go to http://www.case.org/Content/Miscellaneous/Display.cfm?CONTENTITEMID=4532.
