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 Young America’s Foundation (YAF) to manage direct mail donation processing for the organization’s Ronald Reagan Ranch campaigns.

Based in Herndon, VA, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization introduces American youth to the principles of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise and traditional values, by providing conferences, seminars, educational materials, internships and speaking engagements aimed toward young people across the country. The foundation is preserving the Ronald Reagan Ranch to pass on to America’s youth the ideals and lasting accomplishments of the 40^th president.

RMG is managing the caging, check deposits and digital data capture for all direct mail donations to the Reagan Ranch fund, which is the organization’s largest campaign with the heaviest response volume. In addition, RMG provides barcode scanning, document imaging, donor acknowledgement services and exception handling. Data and document images are made available to YAF for daily database loads, allowing service representatives to easily search the database and respond to donor inquiries more quickly and efficiently. RMG also provides YAF with daily reporting services that help drive valuable analytic insights to more effectively craft and execute strategy.

“Due to Merkle’s reputation among our nonprofit colleagues, we had been interested in working with them for quite some time,” said Ron Robinson, president of YAF. “So when we decided to make a change and began vetting donation processing providers, we were pleased to see Merkle rise to the top. And they have not disappointed. The volume, accuracy, speed and efficiency with which Merkle processes payments and transfers data have exceeded our expectations. We receive outstanding service from the team and anticipate expanding our relationship into other campaigns.”

“Merkle Response is committed to serving our nonprofit clients with the most accurate, timely and cost-effective payment processing services available today,” said Bill Sayre, president of RMG. “Even in the nonprofit arena, it is important to maintain a healthy relationship with customers, or constituents. Timely payment acknowledgements, responsiveness to donor inquiries, resolution of issues – these all lead to happy constituents and more sustained giving relationships. We are honored to be selected by such a respected organization as YAF and look forward to growing our relationship in the future.”