Raymond Grace: a look to the future from a leader of the past.

Raymond Grace has spent nearly four decades in the direct mail business, starting in 1968, when he returned from Vietnam. In 1982 he founded Creative Direct Response, to prepare direct mail fundraising programs for charities. Over the years he has worked for "almost a hundred" charities, including such well-known names as Toys for Tots and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Now chairman of CDR Fundraising Group, Grace recently spoke with The NonProfit Times about his predictions for the future of charity fundraising.

The NPT: What changes in the charity fundraising arena do you see in the next five to 10 years?

Ray Grace: Charities will have to continue to polish and refine their mission statements and fundraising plans, to assure that donors know exactly what problems are being addressed, and why each charity is best positioned to solve the problems. Even the largest and best known charities need to continually reassess their relevance to current situations, and make themselves and their programs known to new cohorts of donors.

The fact that a charity might have been in the forefront of serving needs in the past means little to donors who have many more charities, and many more entertainment messages, addressed to them than even a few years ago. As in many other fields, charities will have to tell donors every day: "here's why you should support us"

The NPT: Will direct mail continue to be the prime medium for most charities?

Grace: Yes, but public relations will become a necessary and integral part of fundraising programs. The visibility that public relations programs can provide helps bring in nontraditional donors who are more impulse-oriented, and more likely to visit Web sites, especially during times of major disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. Moreover, public relations can help build positive images at less cost than programs that rely on fundraising alone, whether direct mail or other media.

The NPT: Are you saying that so-called "integrated" fundraising programs are vital?

Grace: Integrated fundraising programs will proliferate, but only as technical "silos" are broken down. While email and Web sites are making news, and occasionally raising or helping to raise funds quickly, these high-tech media are usually self-contained, and the province of techies, not fundraisers.

Some email files have raised significant amounts in a few days, at very low cost, compared to the much longer planning, creation, and execution cycle of direct mail. But to be truly effective, even the techies will have to become part of the fundraising team, not a breed apart. As they do, integrated fundraising programs will become synergistic, with each medium helping to multiply the effectiveness of the others.

The NPT: Are the charity scandals that occasionally pop up affecting the ability to raise funds?

Grace: Yes, and the result is that increased transparency will be demanded by public and regulators. Just as regulators and politicians have built reputations by exposing corporate misdeeds, so will they continue to keep charities under close watch. The overall "white hat" reputation of the nonprofit sector will no longer protect a charity that is less than open with the public.

The Catholic Church has been hammered in the press not only because of priests who have molested boys, but even more so because of the attempts to cover up. The Red Cross has taken as many hits for its dysfunctional board of directors as for shortcomings during Katrina. So charities should be aware that they must be honest and open, and fully cooperative when media, the public, and governments want to look at even the most sensitive records.