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Tin Can Sailors:
New Achievements in Membership Philanthropy As part of their mission, Tin Can Sailors, Inc. (TCS) has, since 1992, quietly supported US Navy destroyer museum ships, donating about $100,000 per year from their operating revenue. But with declining ranks of older veterans and rising production costs for their robust quarterly newspaper, TCS’s grant capability had evaporated. Recently, TCS asked S&W for help in introducing philanthropy into their veterans’ membership group. While TCS had never asked members for charitable gifts since its founding in 1976, the Board decided to ask their 20,000-member group to step up and support museum ships, over and above their average annual membership payment of $28. S&W Strategy The original concept was a major gifts All Hands! campaign to secure large gifts from a few donors. But S&W’s pre-campaign study pointed the way to something different. An investigation of TCS’s loose, nationwide network did not identify a critical mass of people who were ready or able to make major gifts. It did, however, yield important feedback about the organization. S&W found that TCS has an exceptionally strong brand; members describe the organization as well-led, trustworthy, a source of reliable information, and responsive to members’ wishes regarding support and activities. Members also value TCS’s quarterly newspaper. These strengths, earned by 34 years of focusing on members and mission, indicated that the greatest philanthropic opportunity lay in a broad-based appeal to TCS’s highly mail-responsive membership group. To make the most of the enduring relationship with its members, TCS enlisted its most famous Tin Can Sailor – long-time member Ernest Borgnine – to be the face of a broad appeal. Reviving an earlier TCS logo and modifying it for the campaign, S&W created an engaging mail package that included a letter signed by Mr. Borgnine, a premium ladder with widely spaced offers at $15, $100 and $1,000, and a front-end certificate of recognition that used TCS’s detailed member database to show each member’s service rank or rating, name, and up to four ships on which he served. The patriotic theme, personal touch and focus on the urgent needs of the remaining American destroyers built in the 1940s and 1950s ignited members’ sentiment. These museum ships stand as representatives of the hundreds of vessels that were a critical part of the United States Navy’s wartime success. We reinforced the call to action by using a significant existing resource: the organization’s newspaper. The front page of the winter issue, which featured a three-page, detailed article on the challenges these museum ships face, effectively made the case for support. A display ad inviting early support introduced the idea of charitable giving. Two weeks after the Borgnine letter was mailed, the next issue of the TCS newspaper was released with a thank-you message to Ernest Borgnine and a request for members to respond to the mailing. Results
The All Hands! campaign succeeded in securing a generous portion of the desired annual funding for grants. Just as important, it also built an extremely broad foundation of donors who can be renewed – and some even upgraded – far more economically as the organization develops an independent fundraising operation.
Schultz & Williams is a national consulting firm based in Philadelphia; providing management, fundraising and marketing consulting for nonprofit organizations, along with full-service direct marketing, database and creative/production services. |
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