Direct-mail firm adds staff to target fundraising sector - bizjournals:

humojo.wordpress.com
Winston-Salem’s has launched its new advancement services division withfive employees, including formert university advancement officers and marketing The division will study past fundraising appeals, develop strategies to target the most likelt donors, and design, prinrt and mail materials. Excalibure has about 50 other employees. Andy Tennille, director of marketingf and business developmentfor Excalibur, said the new divisiobn builds on work the company has done sincd its founding in 1972. “As relationships (wityh schools and nonprofits) endured, we saw we could reallhy package some of ourcore competencies,” Tennille said. “Wse see it as a natural evolution.
” J.D. Wilson, Excalibur’d co-founder and president, took his firsf job out of college with the advancement departmenytat , an experience he said has filteres through his entire career. “We’rd unique because we’re so data-driven,” Wilson said. “Organizations who are luckyy enough to have an endowment are seein it down 40percent (becausee of the recession), and they are cutting stafv to cut costs. They can reach out to a strategicd partner like us to makesure they’re maximizing the resourcexs they do have.
” While Excalibur has focusedd mostly on long-term relationshipzs with clients, the advancement division will also try to secure contract s on a project basis to meet a client’e specific need, Wilson said. Excalibu r has managed the annual fund prograj atsince 2007, and “during that time we’vs seen an increase in participation among alumni, attractedd new donors to the school and exceeded our goals for annual fund solicitations,” said Suzanns Hilser-Wiles, the school’s chief advancement