Fundraising Case Study: Cancer Research Society

CLIENT:

For more than 60 years, the Cancer Research Society (CRS) has funded basic cancer research in Canada with the goal of improving prevention and treatment, and eventually discovering a cure.

CHALLENGE:

For many years, CRS relied on using direct mail for fundraising appeals, trading donor lists with other charities when deciding where to mail the pieces. But as response rates steadily declined, CRS decided it needed a more strategic approach to raising money from existing and future donors. The group wanted to better understand its current supporters in order to customize its marketing and messaging to those most likely to respond to the group’s appeals.

SOLUTION:

To expand its donor base, CRS first analyzed its transactional database of 180,000 donors in order to identify its most valuable contributors. Using the PRIZM lifestyle segmentation system, EA classified the donors into the 66 lifestyle types and discovered three distinct types of contributors, including an affluent group, dubbed Educated Urbanites, whose donors are middle aged, have children, own their homes and report six-figure incomes—a lofty amount compared to CRS’s prior donor profiles. “They were unlike anyone we’d normally mailed,” recalls Gilles Roy, CRS Senior Advisor of Direct Marketing. Based on the PRIZM analysis, CRS launched a direct marketing campaign using three different letters tailored to its three target groups.

RESULTS:

The results of CRS’s targeted direct marketing campaign were nothing less than impressive. A mail drop of over 600,000 pieces yielded a 19.2 percent increase in revenue per English-speaking prospects and generated 13.5 percent more donors. Among French prospects, revenue per name jumped by 68.6 percent and the number of donors increased by nearly 59 percent. “The very first thing I found was an improvement in our ability to raise money by selecting better lists and geographic areas for our donor prospecting,” says Roy. “The improvement was tremendous.”