Appeal Deadline

Mercedes McCayRead

Good morning,

I'm working on some new dashboards for our org and a question about appeals came up. How long do you keep yours open? For example, we usually have a YE appeal that goes out sometime in November, but inevitably someone will save their appeal card and mail it in with a check in February or later. I am of the opinion that I should have a definite cutoff date for all appeals and if it comes in after that date, even with the appeal card, that it just goes into our unsolicited appeal. Thoughts? Or what is your cutoff date?

Thanks!

JoAnn Strommen

@Mercedes McCayRead
Common problem. We just had one yesterday with reply slip from last fall phonathon where pledge had already been adjusted to $0 for non-payment. Appeal was closed at our FY end.

I understand wanting to close them off.

Questions:

• what difference does it make if appeal remains open?
• how important are appeal analytics?
• how significant is it to future appeals to know that the gift was ‘solicited'

If analytics are completed and it doesn't matter if it is considered as unsolicited then do whichever.
In my case I actually re-activated appeal so we would have the donor history that this was a fall phonathon gift and that is how this donor tends to respond.

Dariel Dixon 2

@JoAnn Strommen:

Questions:

• what difference does it make if appeal remains open?
• how important are appeal analytics?
• how significant is it to future appeals to know that the gift was ‘solicited'

If analytics are completed and it doesn't matter if it is considered as unsolicited then do whichever.
In my case I actually re-activated appeal so we would have the donor history that this was a fall phonathon gift and that is how this donor tends to respond.

This is an important question? How long are you running appeal reports? Is it just for the year, or is it longer? I think that's the most critical part of the question.

Personally, I'm not a terribly big fan of attributing an older appeal to a placeholder appeal unless the reply device is over 3 years old. I don't know if it is worth it having a really short window for appeals, as we know these things happen pretty regularly.

To answer the question, I think having a year long appeal window for mailings is fine, and manually overriding the date if a reply device comes in afterwards. I don't know if it matters much after then, but just for reporting purposes, after 3 years then it goes into a general appeal. But that point, we've finished the analytics and any gift that comes in afterwards is an outlier.

The better question @Mercedes McCayRead is how are you dealing with pledges and recurring gifts when you have payments that come after the appeal window?

Mercedes McCayRead

@Dariel Dixon it's very rare that we actually have a pledge associated with a direct mail appeal and my one and only recurring gift is from a personal ask so that's the appeal.

My director is looking for a “year at a glance” summary and my thinking is that if I allow really late gifts to still be attributed to a specific appeal, then it really doesn't give an accurate picture of how well that appeal did. But I could be wrong with that thought.

Lee Grisham

@Mercedes McCayRead In general, we run most of ours by FY, so it would just hit the current FY's appeal. The exception would be any direct mail as they are tied to packages that won't replicate across FY's.

For those, we'll keep the Appeal open until we have to create and load the one for the following FY and that Campaign is not restricted to certain Appeals. That is because the ROI is important for that Appeal and they are less time sensitive than others. We've had people keep their mail for years and send them back like @Dariel Dixon said above. We track the success over the year period for the Campaign as priority over individual Appeal success.

Sunshine Reinken Watson

@Mercedes McCayRead

We have appeals that go by calendar year (also our fiscal year) and multi-year campaign appeals. The CY appeals close out at the end of the year except for appeals with monthly gifts (open until the gift reaches 12 payments and is moved to the multi-year sustained appeal), the year-end appeal (goes until Tax Day), or appeals with late payments.

Mark Guncheon 2

@JoAnn Strommen This is also one reason why we have kept many open longer than a year. But at some point, you must close them. After all, a database filled will all open appeals long past their usefulness wouldn't be very appealing.? Some might say it was too appealing.

Dariel Dixon 2

@Mercedes McCayRead I just had a conversation about appeals today that I found relevant to this conversation. What is the point of the appeal code? Is it to determine how the donor responded, or to determine why they responded? Is it the catalyst to the gift, or just the method of response? In a case where a donor mails in a reply device from an older appeal after getting the latest appeal, the new mailing is just a reminder. However, the how is the old appeal code, but the why is the new appeal code. I think either can be fine, and it's not worth putting a whole lot of time into because we are only talking about a small percentage of the gifts anyway. The appeal code can measure both, but not necessarily at the same time. There is no right answer, but just make a decision, document it, and be consistent. That's probably the most important part.

Lee Grisham

@Dariel Dixon 100% agree!!! @Mercedes McCayRead just make a policy, have everyone understand what it is and why, then write it down and stick to it! There isn't always a right or wrong way to do things, but there needs to be a WHY we do things.

Barbara Kunkel

@Mark Guncheon - I have never closed an appeal before. Can you tell me why there is a need to close appeals? I am always like to learn from others.