From Dozens of Hours to Two Minutes: How LiveBeyond Automated Its Direct Mail Fundraising with Mimeo

CHALLENGE

Jacklyn Vanderpool, Chief of Staff at LiveBeyond, handled the nonprofit’s donor mailings the way a lot of nonprofits do: piecemeal. Her team worked with a local print shop for smaller jobs, but scaling up to a full donor mailing meant printing address labels by hand and figuring out mailing regulations with no background in postage or fulfillment. When LiveBeyond needed to mail 12-page booklets to nearly 900 donors, Jacklyn didn’t know where to start.

“I didn’t even have the knowledge of what is okay to send in postage,” Jacklyn says. “It would have been dozens and dozens of man-hours.”

HOW MIMEO HELPED

Jacklyn found Mimeo during a search for a printer that could handle her mailing at scale, and she connected with Ethan Cohen, a Mimeo Account Executive, for a demo. She came to him with a specific vision for what she needed, and he didn't hesitate. "I told him what I was asked to do, and he said, 'I got you, don't worry, we can make that happen,'" Jacklyn says. "He made whatever was in my brain work."

From there, the process moved quickly. Ethan got back to her right away with mockups to review before anything went to production, and when she considered a different paper stock, he mailed her physical samples so she could see and feel the options herself. Jacklyn describes the whole experience as seamless, at a better price than she expected.

For her second mailing, sent to over 1,000 donors, Jacklyn used Mimeo's self-service direct mail ordering tool, with Ethan walking her through it. Now she can place an entire order herself using Mimeo's direct mail platform: upload a PDF, upload a CSV of donor addresses, and click order. Printing, address labels, postage, and mailing are handled from there. The whole process takes about two minutes, and she still receives a mockup to confirm everything is right before it goes to production.

"I knew it wasn't going to be sent to production unless everything was perfect," Jacklyn says. "That's been such a weight off my mind."

THE RESULT

The time savings have been the biggest shift. What used to take dozens of hours between printing, address labels, and postage now takes about two minutes per mailing with Mimeo's self-service ordering. Jacklyn estimates the switch has also saved LiveBeyond hundreds of dollars per mailing.

That time has gone straight back into the parts of her job only she can do: designing each quarterly mailing and building out donor communications. And the more consistent mailing schedule has paid off directly. Since increasing the frequency of its donor mailings, Jacklyn estimates LiveBeyond has seen several thousand dollars in additional donations, a direct return on the time she used to spend on manual mail prep.

THE BOTTOM LINE

LiveBeyond went from spending dozens of hours on manual mailing prep to placing a direct mail order herself in about two minutes, and redirected that time straight back into its mission. For a nonprofit working in global maternal and child health, that means more capacity to open clinics, reach donors, and expand access to safe pregnancies and deliveries for women around the world.

"This isn't just a minor change," Jacklyn says. "This is making all the difference for women around the world who don't have access to medical care."

Key Takeaways

Jacklyn places entire mailings herself in about two minutes through Mimeo's direct mail self-service ordering platform.
Mailing prep dropped from dozens of hours to about two minutes per order.
LiveBeyond estimates hundreds of dollars saved per mailing compared to its previous process.
Jacklyn estimates several thousand dollars in additional donations since increasing mailing frequency.
Freed-up time and stronger donor response now support LiveBeyond's work expanding access to maternal and child health care worldwide.

LiveBeyond is a nonprofit dedicated to providing maternal and child healthcare, nutrition, and education in underserved communities around the world. For 20 years, the organization has worked in places like Haiti and India to help mothers have safer pregnancies and give children healthier starts in life.

Visit LiveBeyond.org