Merkle (www.merkle.com), a leading customer relationship marketing firm and the nation’s largest privately-held agency, announced that its Response Management Group (RMG) subsidiary has been selected by The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) (http://www.jhu.edu/) to manage the organization’s direct mail donation processing.

 The Baltimore-based university is a not-for-profit entity that encourages gifts which will further its mission: to educate students and cultivate their capacity for lifelong learning; to foster independent and original research; and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.

 For JHU’s growing volume of donations across a large collection of different funds, RMG cost-effectively manages the opening of mail, depositing of checks, and capturing of response data.  In addition to these services, which were previously managed in-house by JHU, RMG also provides document imaging and donor acknowledgment services. Upon the completion of processing, images of the documents are available to authorized employees at JHU through RMG’s proprietary web-based image viewer (Arch-e), allowing JHU to respond to donor inquiries more quickly and efficiently. RMG provides JHU daily reporting which helps drive valuable analytic insights that allow the organization to more effectively craft and execute strategy. Johns Hopkins has also utilized RMG’s contact center to support an end of the year special project.

 “We are proud to be associated with Johns Hopkins University,” said Bill Sayre, president of Merkle Response Management Group. “It is an honor to be selected for our capabilities, flexibility, service levels and attention to detail, developed through 29 years of service to nonprofits. In the four months since RMG began working with JHU, we have already seen a noticeable reduction in processing and reporting times. We look forward to growing our relationship with Johns Hopkins, providing services that help them focus on the great work they are doing in education and research.”