Charity mail-outs effective claims Institute

Charities are one of the major winners in the world of direct marketing, new research has discovered.

The findings come as the Institute of Fundraising is preparing to draw up the first direct mail code of fundraising practice, aimed at setting best practice and legal standards for direct mail fundraising.

The research found that charities were one of the most effective organisations in using direct mail, along with travel and holiday companies and banks. The retail sector came out on top, judged to be making the best use of direct mail.

”There is a need to fully address best practice standards for charity fundraising by direct mail. The development of this direct mail code offers working party members a unique opportunity to start with a blank sheet of paper and develop a brand new code for fundraising in the 21st century,” said policy and standards manager Laura Thomas.

Whether or not the new tariff of charges just introduced by Royal Mail will have a big impact on the use of direct mail by charities remains to be seen, but the cost of mailing the charitytraining.com Course Guide (pictured) has now increased substantially as a result of the new postal charges, and so inevitably we will be reviewing our use of print to be mailed out in the months ahead: inevitably this means that we may rely more on the use of our (new) web site and email for the distribution of information. Will other organisations in the voluntary sector follow suit?