Susan Doner has been a leader in the direct mail marketing industry for over 40 years. She was the Creative Vice President (Issues Division) of The Viguerie Company in the early to mid-80’s, where her creative and strategic talents resulted in the development of exceptionally large grassroots organizations during the ‘renaissance’ of issue-advocacy fundraising.
In 1983 she created and developed the largest direct mail independent expenditure campaign in that era for the 1984 reelection of Ronald Reagan for the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC). Career highlights also include her work on the National Tax Limitation Committee’s campaign to pass a federal balanced budget amendment, drafted by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman. Building a 750,000-name donor file and millions of grassroots activists in just a few short years resulted in the national Direct Marketing Association awarding the agency the Gold Echo Award – the first ever for an issue-advocacy, non-profit organization.
In 1984 she started her own successful direct marketing agency and list subsidiary, Advanced Response Marketing Associates (ARMA). Her marketing efforts for “start-up” organizations built large grassroots donor bases quickly, most notably for: Citizens for a Sound Economy (now Americans for Prosperity), National Republican Senatorial Committee, Americans for Immigration Control, Citizens for a Drug Free America and many other political issue-advocacy, health and welfare organizations.
Her unique ability to write effective copy coupled with her expertise in list selection, marketing strategy, creating new package techniques/formats/designs and mailing analyses resulted in building files of 250,000+ donors for many of her clients, most of which were developed within 12 to 18 months, with little or none of the typical losses associated with donor acquisition. She retired her agency in 2000 to develop and write breakthrough donor acquisition programs for other agencies.
In 2002 she was retained on an exclusive basis by Richard Viguerie as a creative consultant, writer, marketing strategist and to reorganize the agency. She became CEO in early 2003, resigned that position in mid-2005 to return to writing exclusively and provide breakthrough packages and marketing strategies to other agencies and organizations...and continued to do so for ATA.
Other highly successful donor acquisition packages from then until now include a myriad of right-of-center and populist issues: economic, sovereignty, Constitutional preservation, the flat rate tax, term limits, the balanced budget amendment, illegal immigration/border corruption, abuse of executive power, veterans’ welfare, social security, public school indoctrination and a re-elect Trump independent expenditure campaign. Susan works exclusively for ATA.