Before joining JHL in 2020, I spent just over 15 years in alumni affairs and annual giving, working for both a national music fraternity and a comprehensive public university. In both cases, resources were often tight and we had to figure out how to maximize results with limited means.
I would often sit in on webinars and listen to schools with annual giving staff larger than our entire advancement team to learn how they were engaging their alumni and supporters. There were unbelievable initiatives being taken on…but most were beyond our scope to enact.
My goal was usually to find one or two things that we could mold into our programs to enhance or refresh them. I referred to them as “nuggets.” If I could sit for an hour and find a small piece of “advancement gold,” my time was worth it.
Approaching a new year, I read through all the JHL Blog posts from the last calendar year that were written by my colleagues. Their contributions are primarily aimed at printers and marketers, but they can offer valuable perspectives that nonprofits can leverage.
To save you the time of reading through all of them (if you haven’t already), I’ve compiled some nuggets – or “greatest bits” – that I found to be worth their weight.
Get Ready: The Hyperpersonalized Era of Direct-Mail Marketing Is Here (January 2025)
Smart marketers use unified customer data platforms for physical mail and digital campaigns because they provide consistent personalization across channels and offline/online environments.
That’s great, but you know what’s ever better? It’s efficient. In an ideal world you create copy once and repurpose it for the web, for digital marketing and print marketing. One set of copy ensures consistent messaging – and it saves time and money.
Multichannel marketing is smart … but then there’s smart multichannel marketing. Creating copy once is the key.
Advancement Gold Translation:
For small advancement teams, this is a lifeline. If you are planning a print appeal, a follow-up email, and social media post for the same campaign, stop writing three unique versions. Write one master copy that contains the core message, mission, and ask. Then, simply modify the intro/outro for each channel. This guarantees message consistency and, more importantly, frees up the hours you need for high-value work like personal thank-you calls.
Complete Data (March 2025)
You need to train your people thoroughly – not just on the “hows” but also the “whys.”
If all you do is show them how to enter data but don’t tell them why complete data is so important, it’s a lead-pipe cinch you won’t get complete data.
If, on the other hand, you show them all the great things you can do with the data and how it directly impacts revenue and how much they get paid, they’ll be your biggest boosters.
Because marketing is a companywide thing, train everyone on complete data collection, because you never know when someone might be in a position to add to your organizational knowledge.
Advancement Gold Translation:
This is an absolute must-do for any non-profit struggling with dirty data. Gift processors, event coordinators, and student workers aren’t always aware how their tedious work affects the outcome. Show them how a successful donor segmentation report led to a major gift announcement. Perhaps you demonstrate how consistent data recording helps to easily segment and personalize solicitations. When they understand the “why,” they become powerful advocates for clean data.
Winning the Attention Battle: How Direct Mail Cuts Through the Digital Noise … Now and in the Future (May 2025)
Research from the Royal Mail’s “The Private Life of Mail” study found that physical mail creates 70% higher brand recall compared to digital advertising, and physical materials leave a deeper footprint in the brain.
In direct mail, that can mean:
- Substrate variance: Papers with specific roughness, smoothness, or temperature-reactive properties
- Textural contrasts: Multiple tactile experiences within a single piece
- Weight psychology: Leveraging the correlation between physical weight and perceived importance/value
Want to see these techniques in action? Check out trading cards. They’ve been trying to dazzle people with cutting-edge printing for decades.
Advancement Gold Translation:
Think about your target audience or the significance of an event and put your resources into the feel of the mailing. Is this a major donor, or is it a young alumnus being asked for their first gift? Maybe you are sending an RSVP for a prominent award banquet.
To a major donor, a thick, heavy envelope signals importance before it is even opened. A non-traditional, recycled stock might resonate better with a young graduate. These tactile differences break through the clutter precisely because they make the mailing feel valuable and different from the usual deluge of glossy brochures.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Using AI in Direct Mail (August 2025)
You may ask ChatGPT or Gemini to write you a fundraising solicitation, and you may love what it gives you. There are complete sentences! And paragraphs! And room for personalization and a call-to-action at the bottom, and we’ve never had that before!
Hey, great. But you need to understand: What AI gave you is just a start. The real work starts when you really look at that output and start breaking it apart.
Look at the sentence construction. Every general-purpose AI tool loves tripartite construction. What’s that? This: AI loves sentences that mention three things, all separated by commas, and referencing related things. See that structure, with three items separated by commas? That’s tripartite construction. It’s a dead giveaway that something’s AI-generated, and it’s tiring.
Also, look at how long sentences and paragraphs are. Verbosity is the scourge of direct mail. In a good direct-mail piece, every word earns its keep.
Advancement Gold Translation:
AI is a powerful first-draft tool for a time-strapped staff, but it is not a replacement for heart. Advancement is all about personal connection and authentic voice. Use AI to draft the boring parts (like event logistics or background history), but when it comes to the appeal, your editing time should be spent making the appeal feel warm, human, and directly related to the donor’s values, not just checking grammar.
When Direct Mail Outperforms Digital: 5 Scenarios Where It … Uh, Delivers The Mail (November 2025)
According to the Data & Marketing Association, the direct-mail response rate for 18-21-year-olds is 12.4% compared to just 0.12% for digital ads. And 91% of 18-24-year-olds bought something because they’d received marketing mail in the previous six months.
In case you haven’t noticed, young folks are drowning in digital noise but starved for tangible experiences. According to multiple 2023-2024 studies, 82% of 18-24-year-olds like marketing mail, with 59% finding it personalized to them. More striking: Three-quarters of Gen Zers think real-life experiences are more important than digital ones.
And consider this: Those studies took place before the AI tsunami hit. Right now the desire for things that are real and tangible is even greater among Gen Zers – and the more AI slop they’re exposed to, the stronger those feelings will get.
This is important, so let’s emphasize it. When you print something you make it real.
Advancement Gold Translation:
If your young alumni engagement is failing, stop assuming digital is the default solution. The data is clear: print is the counter-cultural move for Gen Z. Instead of spending money on constantly changing digital ads that are ignored, invest in a simple, highly personalized, and tangible postcard or small gift (a sticker, magnet, or window cling) sent via mail. Sometimes being different is the key to cutting through the noise.
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The common thread through all these takeaways—from maximizing copy efficiency to using physical mail for Gen Z—is strategy over size. We may not have the budget for massive data platforms, but we absolutely have the resources to implement these high-impact “nuggets.” For small advancement offices and nonprofits, it isn’t about being the biggest or flashiest, it’s about being the smartest.
By focusing on clean data, efficiency, and making meaningful, tangible connections, the small team can deliver results that are truly worth their weight in gold.
By Dan Krueger – 1/2/2026