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Annual fund question: is it common for a school to send out different versions of the letter asking for donations? some got a letter asking for 500 dollars (not financial aid family) others 5000. how do they know how much money people have/want to give? does this seem right to you?
41 replies [ Reply | Watch | Options ]Good fundraising mentions a specific amount. A good fundraiser knows what to ask for.
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They know based on previous donations. It's common to have a targeted process and I don't really see a problem with it. I used to to fund raising for my college and it was the same in that we had people whom we called and asked for amounts based on what the giving history was.
[ Reply | Options ]Yep, fundraisers assess a lot of public info to draw conclusions about what a family might give (i.e. property values, what other orgs they give to, employer, etc.).
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I am sure we get googled if they are serious about a family. They do not want any embarrassing pasts.
[ Reply | Options ]Hijack: how much googling takes place? I mean, if my wonderful dh has major criminal conviction in his past (which you would find from some skillful Internet searching) then are we totally out of luck? Should I disclose to the school? (ps it's bad)
[ Reply | Options ]Maybe in the meantime he could become a major donor somewhere instead, to mitigate the bad stuff.
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np And if you're not getting FA, they'll call to see what you'll give. It's not complicated.
[ Reply | Options ]we got FA, and we still got the call. It was expected that everyone give something, and the amounts were not published, just whether you gave.
[ Reply | Options ]op: that's not what happened. they targeted different people for different amounts, without ever talking to us
[ Reply | Options ]the schools all have development offices and this is what they do for a living. they target people based on past giving history and if there is no history, they base it on whatever information they can find - addresses, jobs, publicly listed donations, etc. if you work at Goldman Sachs, they will target you for a different number than someone who is a lawyer at a non-profit.
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Fundraising is a well-researched hard-target industry. Every potential donor is vetted as much as possible before being approached, so the organization can get as much money as possible out of the donor. You are probably on a list of people who live in a certain area and donate at a certain level to certain kinds of orgnaizations, so it's a safe bet that if they ask for $500, they'll get $500, but if they ask for $5000, you'll laugh and chuck the letter. The people who got the $5000 letter have probably donated to the school or other org at that level in the past, and the people who got the $50 letter have never donated to anything and are just being brought into the system and into the habit of donating.
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