At the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), Suzanne Hilser-Wiles has found that necessity can truly be the mother of invention.

Chief Advancement Officer at UNCSA, Hilser-Wiles joined the staff in the summer of 2007, with just four of the advancement office’s 15 positions filled. Tasked with rebuilding the School’s development program, Hilser-Wiles zeroed in on the Annual Fund and alumni communications, turning to Excalibur for its fundraising and marketing expertise.

“Initially, our working with Excalibur was out of necessity,” acknowledged Hilser-Wiles. “Excalibur brought a lot of expertise in strategic fundraising: whom we should reach, how we should reach them, the message, approach, design, etc., which added more value than just hiring one person to handle the Annual Fund, and gave me the time I needed to recruit and hire staff.”

Without any recent data on the Annual Fund program nor a staff person dedicated to the Annual Fund, UNCSA has looked to Excalibur to manage the program turnkey, that is, to provide ideas for appeal letters, write the copy, take the photographs, create the artwork, design a plan for segmenting the lists, and handle the mailings.

Working with Excalibur to segment and code their audiences, UNCSA is now able to track donor responses and analyze the results. The metrics have verified what UNCSA has long known anecdotally to be true.
“Our personalized educational program and intimate campus experience is very special to our students, and something that our parents really appreciate. The data we now have from our recent Annual Fund and end-of-year appeals show this, and that has been really helpful in building out our development program,” said Hilser-Wiles.

While former students are one of the School’s primary audiences, giving rates among alumni have been historically low. Expanding the School’s communications with alumni has been a priority.

“We needed to communicate more with alumni and engage them in what was going on with the School,” said Hilser-Wiles, who asked Excalibur to create a new look and feel for Callboard, the School’s primary newsletter for alumni, previously written by alumni relations staff. “Today, Callboard looks and reads like a different publication. It’s so fresh that alumni think it’s a new publication!”

More than saving staff time, Excalibur has helped the School reinforce key messages across fundraising channels. Recently, the School sent an appeal for scholarship donations, which was followed up with a story in Callboard about scholarship recipients.

“Excalibur provides us a valuable means of coordinating alumni and fundraising efforts. And that means a lot – especially in these times of lean marketing and fundraising budgets,” said Hilser-Wiles.

Since working with Excalibur, UNCSA has increased alumni participation in giving and the number of annual fund donors. From fiscal year 2008 to 2009, unrestricted and temporarily restricted gifts to the School increased by $300,000.

“Excalibur is an important part of this success, which represents progress on several fronts – our Annual Fund appeals, better tracking of gifts, and an ability to look closer at who’s responding and how they’re responding.”

In the last year, UNCSA has discovered a new “audience” that the School had not previously thought of as prospective donors: ticket buyers. “Excalibur encouraged us to look at these individuals as a potential donor segment,” said Hilser-Wiles. “They helped us get our message out to this audience, and in fact, this list has performed really well in our appeals.”

UNCSA’s partnership with Excalibur has evolved into discovering new opportunities for donor engagement. “By taking the data the School has recently accumulated, Excalibur provides us a continuing analysis of the metrics of our development program and a strategy for engaging alumni and other audiences,” said Hilser-Wiles. “Excalibur is a great partner for us.”

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“The natural inclination when times are tough is to reign in your spending and trim your communications budget in an effort to cut overall operating expenses,” Edminson says, “but this is the time that your current and prospective donors need to hear from you the most! Your ability to clearly communicate the effect challenging economies will have on your organization only increases the probability that your donors will support you. For the end of the year, we’ve analyzed our database and chosen to personalize our message to specific donor groups in hopes of increasing participation.”

Since its inception in 1885 in Thomasville, NC, Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina has worked to fulfill its mission statement of “helping hurting children…healing broken families” throughout 16 communities across the state of North Carolina. As a nonprofit agency, Baptist Children’s Homes depends on the generosity of North Carolina Baptist churches, as well as businesses and individuals, for the majority of its funding. One of the biggest projects for Baptist Children’s Homes each year is their Thanksgiving Offering, an annual outreach program that involves fulfilling and tracking orders of fundraising materials from Baptist churches across the state of North Carolina.

“Prior to working with Excalibur, we managed the process in-house, which presented a variety of logistical challenges,” Edminson says. “Excalibur developed a custom software program specific to our needs that enabled us to streamline our ordering, tracking and reporting for the project and thus become more efficient and cost-effective in our inventory management.”

One of the primary means Baptist Children’s Homes relies on to achieve its fundraising goals is through direct mail, but over the course of the last several months, Edminson has diversified the agency’s outreach to include e-communications.

“Our donors represent a diverse group of people that communicate in a variety of ways,” Edminson says. “While some of our long-time donors prefer to be contacted through the mail, we recognize that donors comfortable with being online are more inclined to communicate online, which is why we’ve initiated our e-newsletter and online giving program through our website, www.bchfamily.org. It’s important to utilize all means of communications when fundraising during challenging economies.”

“Excalibur has proven to be an ideal partner for us,” Edminson adds. “Beyond their postal and direct mail
expertise, Excalibur has partnered with our printing resources, advised us on how we manage and analyze our database, written copy for our annual appeals and served as a creative consultant on our website and e-newsletter. They believe in our core mission and their counsel has been important to our growth. We no longer view Excalibur simply as a vendor, but as a strategic partner who is invested in our future success.”

Jim’s Tips for Fundraising in Challenging Economies
- Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!
- Take a Multi-Channel Approach (Direct Mail, Email, Online Giving)
- Segment Your Database and Personalize
- Your Message to Your Audience!

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