As an 8-year-old boy, Eldra Daniels’ career path was determined after he watched helplessly as his grandmother suffered a heart attack. “Ever since that moment, I dreamed of becoming a doctor, committed to helping others,” recalls Daniels, a 2011 class member of Howard University’s College of Medicine.

Dressed in a lab coat with a stethoscope draped around his collar, Daniels shares his story of inspiration through a virtual message that finds him speaking from a website for UNCF. “UNCF was there to help me when I needed help the most, providing the extra support that I needed to graduate from college,” he continues.

As photos of the Denver native and his family fill the background, he tells site visitors that “more and more students are turning to UNCF for help” and that financial donations “can make a difference.” Then Daniels refers to computer-generated images of a typed letter bearing his photo and UNCF stationery used in recent solicitation efforts by the charity. “You’ll soon receive a letter in the mail that looks like this,” he says. “You can use it to make a gift to UNCF, whatever you can afford. Simply reply using the envelope that’s included.”

Daniels’ appeal is a recent example of how UNCF, one of the nation’s most venerated charitable organizations, has joined a new wave of nonprofit marketers that are blending modern technological advancements with the direct mail campaigns that have always been central in their fundraising efforts.

Using mail as a building block

Leveraging e-mail and the web, as well as traditional broadcast channels, UNCF has continued to expand its marketing platforms. But if the organization’s 66-year history has taught its marketers anything, it’s that mailing messages into individual homes is indispensable to generating aid for Daniels and hundreds of thousands who share his goal to achieve higher education, says a spokesperson.

“Each year, UNCF administers a successful direct mail campaign,” says Denise A. Scott, national director of Direct Response Programs and Individual Giving. “The organization mails nearly 6 million pieces each year.”

A decades-long relationship of outreach is organic to the UNCF message, with mail campaigns remaining vital to the charity’s constant need to fund student scholarships and college support programs, Scott adds.

Recent UNCF appeals have increased by about 20 percent, according to the organization’s figures. “Mail is still one of the most cost-effective ways to keep in touch with our donors,” says Scott. “We have also found that our donors respond best to mail campaigns. This is a significant tool and tactic.”

Scott says that donors to UNCF and other charities still respond far more positively to the groups’ mail efforts than to digital appeals. They are, she says, more comfortable with mail: “The benefit of direct mail is that many people are still more comfortable sending a check in the mail than entering their credit card numbers online. Though the latter trend is growing, it still does not compare to large numbers of gifts that come to our organization in envelopes.”

UNCF has also won over large audiences of donors with a brilliant combination of marketing platforms that includes not only mail but broadcast, digital and other forms of print, such as billboards.

As a result of years of continued multimedia outreach, the UNCF’s best-known motto — “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” — not only continues to resonate with donors but has become an American pop cultural fixture since it first appeared in print in 1972.

Meanwhile, the organization has earned international recognition for another branding mainstay, its long-running special “UNCF An Evening of Stars,” hosted for 24 consecutive years by legendary singer Lou Rawls until his death in 2006. “UNCF An Evening of Stars” continues to reach millions of viewers through commercial and cable broadcasts (and is heavily promoted through mail and digital).

The making of the brand

UNCF was founded in New York on April 25, 1944, by college president Frederick D. Patterson, head of what was then Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of what is now Bethune-Cookman University and an educational advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The goal was to help impoverished black students gain access to higher education at a time when America was fewer than two generations removed from slavery. Patterson and Bethune saw a need to create a consistent revenue source to fund 27 of what became known as historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), many of which were formed in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery and continue to operate today.

Today, the organization aids students of all backgrounds who enroll at UNCF’s 39 member colleges and universities or who receive one of thousands of scholarships administered through its 400 scholarship programs. UNCF assists students at almost 1,000 colleges, including Ivy League schools as well as HBCUs.

“All Americans understand the importance of a well-educated populace to the success of our communities and our nation,” Scott says.

Still growing

To help spread that message, UNCF relies heavily on direct marketing. Direct mail marketing and distribution costs are part of the approximately $22 million UNCF spent on fundraising and administrative costs during its fiscal year ending March 31, 2009, according to the Better Business Bureau (BBB). UNCF received more than $154.2 million in donations that resulted from capacity-building efforts, according to the BBB. Along with direct mail, primary tools used to support UNCF are special events, print advertising, TV, radio, Internet, “planned giving,” cause-related promo and grant proposals.

Its combination of direct mail and web communication contributed to a reported 103-percent increase in online giving, from about $681,000 in December 2007 to approximately $1.38 million in 2009.

A “Giving” section of UNCF’s website describes ways to contribute personally or through work or church, and includes initiatives such as matching gift programs. In a matching gift program, companies will double or sometimes triple the charitable gifts of donors who are their employees, employees’ family members or retirees. The site also provides UNCF’s Virginia mailing address and a downloadable form that can be returned with checks by mail.

“UNCF donors are generous and very loyal to the organization,” Scott says. “From our smallest donors who send $1 in an envelope to our large individual, corporate, foundation, church and union donors who send much more, they are all willing to support talented students who really want a college education.”

And, as beneficiaries like Eldra Daniels gladly can attest, so is UNCF.