Happy birthday to Avalon! We will turn 26 years old this Friday. Many things have changed since we were incorporated on July 14, 1997. (Remember dial up? Clunky cell phones?!) However, our mission and vision have been steady. Avalon remains committed to outstanding experiences for employees, a thriving nonprofit sector, and donor-centric fundraising that empowers our clients and their donors to make their greatest impact. We have always been and will always be an agency with integrity, working on behalf of our clients’ best interests and stewarding their programs for long-term success. I am so grateful to the incredible staff, clients, partners, and friends who make that possible. We love working with you.

Recently, Avalon has been poring over the USPS generational research report. It’s a deep dive on generational mail preferences and engagement, based on data collected from mid-2020 to early 2021. In addition to capturing each generation’s “direct mail fingerprint,” the report tracks the integration of direct mail and digital media through strategies like retargeting, personal URLs, and QR codes. It contains a ton of information and helpful summaries for each generation, from Boomers to Gen Z. Thank you to erin wommack at the National Museum of the American Indian for putting this research on our radar!

In addition, senior VP and director of digital innovation Mary Meredith updated our team on the importance of 10DLC registration. 10DLC stands for “10 digit long code”, a number that confirms the legitimacy of an organization sending SMS or MMS messages. Phone carriers are requiring A2P (application-to-person) senders to register to prevent spamming or scamming by bad actors. This is a good, industry-led regulation that will improve deliverability and donor trust. Your Avalon teams can help you navigate registration with your providers.

In social media news, Threads, Meta‘s new “Twitter-killer” app, has already reached 100 million signups. The new app will enable 500-character posts with links, photos and short videos. Logins and follows will rollover from Instagram, and feeds will be algorithm-based. Threads is ad-free for now, but Digiday speculates that it will compete for digital marketing budgets soon:

The paperwork is there, the payment pipes are there—and I’d imagine [brands will] be getting a good pitch this week from the Meta/Instagram team on why they should convert their Twitter budget into a Threads test budget in Q3…Threads will probably end up being an additional tick box in Meta’s ad manager, as a new placement, in the same way Instagram expanded into the Explore page.

Designers and font lovers should check out The Washington Post’s recent interactive article on font sizes and styles. In it, you can test drive different fonts to see what works well for you visually, and which font is easiest to read. Fonts can have a huge impact on readability and reading speed; however, no single font is best:

Like clothes, fonts are also functional choices. Just as you wouldn’t wear a bathing suit in a snowstorm, fonts have to fit the technology delivering the words (screen or paper), the space they inhabit (phone alert, page or billboard) and the person doing the reading. Picking the right font can increase your reading speed on a screen by 35 percent.

From human resources, senior director of HR Melissa Ferrell shared good advice on staying connected. The Connection Culture Group recommends staying hydrated both physically and relationally, so you can thrive. Being “hydrated” relationally means understanding the kinds of connections that are meaningful to you and proactively quenching your thirst. “Increasing your intake of connection is less about quantity and more about the quality and the positive effect of the connection you have with others.”

Finally, congratulations to communications director Jake Koenigsberg, who amazed us all by deadlifting an incredible 435 pounds in Seattle’s Pride Pull-a-Palooza, a fundraiser for local LGBTQI+ nonprofits. The event was covered in Men’s Health as a model for strength sports and a new, more inclusive way of competing. Way to go, Jake!

Allison Porter, President (she/her/hers) Avalon Consulting Group 202-429-6080 ext. 102 allisonp@avalonconsulting.net