Where do you find people who want to include your organization in their will? In your own database. We made a selection of appropriate donors for St. Josefs Indianer Hilfswerk e.V. in Germany. These donors received an eye-catching mail pack: a video with testimonials from 3 donors who have already included St. Josefs Indianer Hilfswerk e.V. in their will. The video calls on the recipient to do the same.
Which donors were willing to feature in the video? You have to be able to tell a story properly and come across well on camera. Together with the client, we visited 6 donors who showed an interest and made a selection afterwards. Together with a filmmaker, we wrote the script and filmed at the people’s homes. The result was a beautiful video about 3 minutes long.
The potential legacy donors received a mail pack containing the video.
We placed the video on a video card and packaged it in a little box with an accompanying letter. The donor also received a return label. Those who did not want to keep the card after watching could send it back at their convenience, so that the card could be reused.
This mailing is part of a legacy campaign that includes 8 steps in total.
One of the steps is a letter to the donor with success stories by the children from St. Joseph’s Indian School to show them the impact of the donations on the children.
Telemarketing is also part of the donor journey. The donors receive a phone call and the option of a legacy gift is discussed.
A mailing with a video card is a pricey package. This is why we don’t normally use it. But we had estimated that it would be very effective for this target audience and the results agreed.
• 1,043 donors received the mailing with the video card.
• After this, we managed to reach 260 donors by phone
• 8 donors wanted to speak to an employee about a legacy
This is a whopping 3% response rate.
Around 100 donors returned the video card to the association.
“The video is perfect and creates a great connection to the horse therapy of SJIS and Walter Dolp expresses several times how important the work of St. Joseph’s Indian School and St. Josefs Indianer Hilfswerk e.V. is and asks people to support us. What more could you ask for? Therefore for this video both thumbs up!!” – Nancy Behne, Stellvertretende Vorstandsvorsitzende St. Josefs Indianer Hilfswerk e.V.
St. Josefs Indianer Hilfswerk e.V. and Mindwize have been working together for 20 years. In this time, the donor database has grown to 508,000 donors, of which 188,548 are active donors. The association raises funds for the St. Joseph’s Indian School in South Dakota, USA.
Poverty and child abuse are serious problems in Native American reservations. The St. Joseph’s Indian School has helped children and families in need since 1927. Every year, more than 200 Lakota (Sioux) children receive education and accommodation – all at no cost to their families. The children learn to regain pride in their culture by learning the Lakota language, studying the Native American culture, and reconnecting with their families.
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