40 years of giant slaying

Charlie Fraga started Direct Development for a simple reason: to help faith-based charities raise funds to support their missions. Even then, our core values were taking shape, particularly “Treating People Like Family.” That was the business model.

2 Clients
2 Employees
Services: Direct Mail Marketing

At this time, Direct Development was a small-but-nimble project manager, coordinating all the printing and mailing production to execute personalized fundraising campaigns that would help nonprofits acquire and develop their donors.

As we entered the internet age, home computers transformed the business world and how people engaged with content. So, Direct Development transformed, too. We got into technology in a big way.

We trained organizations on how to build and customize their contact databases (before CRM was even invented!) using various software tools. This included setting up donor databases on Raiser’s Edge and custom database work in Microsoft Access for both nonprofits and government agencies.

We call this decade “The Experimental Years,” because they’re marked by our efforts to adapt and improve upon our traditional direct mail services to expand and meet the needs of our growing client base.

20 Clients
6-10 Employees
Services:

• Direct Mail Marketing
• Database Administration
• Consulting Services

During this decade, we also landed our first higher education clients.

Our first institutional client was Marymount University, and our partnership came from an urgent call (through an ad in the Yellow Pages!) to perform a production miracle and save an urgent financial aid mailing that was botched by another vendor. The Direct Development team jumped on this opportunity, and although we didn’t know it at the time, that first higher-ed marketing campaign would change the trajectory of the company in a way we never could have predicted.

Marketing and technology are always changing; things come and go. So when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, we adapted yet again, dropped our database consulting division, and leaned into direct marketing services with a new focus on market expansion.

And although the company had always been based in Fairfax, Virginia, Direct Development widened its reach when we opened a West Coast office in Portland, Oregon. With offices on both coasts, we were able to attract new nonprofit and education clients who needed better-performing direct marketing campaigns.

These are what we call “The Grinding Years” because of our intense efforts to augment traditional, single-channel direct mail and discover the best multi-channel, integrated marketing campaigns for schools and nonprofits alike.

By this point, although Direct Development had served a variety of clients — from nonprofit and for-profit businesses to government agencies and schools — it was our biggest nonprofit and higher education clients who invited us to attend industry conferences to co-present their best case studies.  

We soon found ourselves participating in many presentations with our client partners — and in doing so, we realized how much we love providing educational content. It fueled us and made us better marketers.

We owe much of our success to partnerships — partnerships with associations and especially with clients. Year after year we presented more workshops on what was “new and next”, and we quickly built a reputation as thought leaders willing to teach best practices to higher ed and nonprofit professionals. 

2 Offices
25-50 Clients
10-15 Employees
Services:

• Direct Mail Marketing
• Package Design and Graphics
• List Acquisition and Data
• Management
• Email Marketing
• Personalized URLs
• Multi-Channel Marketing
  
  

We never stopped adapting, improving, and learning. We attended major industry and association events, where we sat in every session that fit into our schedules, analyzed which marketing tactics were working most effectively, and soaked up as much information as we possibly could.

We brought our findings back to the team and began experimenting. Our clients trusted us enough to test out various integrated marketing approaches: we quickly discovered what really worked, and let the data drive our strategic recommendations.

We expanded upon direct mail and became experts in multi-channel marketing, and accordingly, we had to rebrand to match our new identity. We adopted a new tagline — Create. Reach. Grow. — a new logo, and a new website to help emphasize the importance of targeting the right audience.

Despite everything we had learned in the direct marketing world, we realized that the marketing and communications industry was being drastically disrupted, and people were engaging with content in ways that required new thinking, new technology, and an entirely new approach to marketing. The old strategies and tactics weren’t working like they used to, and we were not interested in being a company that just delivered the status quo.

In 2014, we made the biggest and boldest decision in the history of our company and decided to completely reinvent ourselves, becoming a full-service marketing agency with a major focus on inbound marketing. Whether we knew it or not, inbound marketing was the direction we’d always been headed in — a focus on value first and the opportunity to create educational, helpful content that effectively attracted right-fit audiences. It was a methodology we agreed with, and inbound also made the most sense for our clients in the education and nonprofit spaces.

We became a certified HubSpot Solutions Partner, giving us the ability to provide a new level of in-depth reporting to our clients, bringing together all of the marketing assets and campaigns and proving ROI through full-funnel attribution.

It was also during this time that we made the decision to launch separate Divisions of our services, evolving Direct Development to be a parent company of a family of brands that serve schools and nonprofits.

We understood that the two verticals we serve have very different needs, and rather than being a single brand that could “do everything,” we launched two specialized agency Divisions: DD Agency, serving educational institutions, and Novus, serving nonprofit organizations. 

Soon after, we founded Enrollify, an educational resource hub and community for higher ed professionals (which was sold in 2023), particularly those working in enrollment marketing. Lastly, we formed DD Studio, our professional video production arm.

After COVID-19, Direct Development embraced the benefits of a remote workforce and invested heavily in acquiring top talent across the country. Today, our team of 40+ employees covers 20 states across the country. 

200+ clients
40-45 employees
3 Divisions
Services:

• Strategic Consulting
• Enrollment Marketing
• Content Marketing and Creation
• Digital Marketing and Advertising
• Brand Strategy
• Website Development and Design
• Fundraising
• HubSpot Onboarding and Setup
• Video Production
• Search Engine Optimization
• Event Marketing

Most recently, the DD team has developed the only native API integration between HubSpot and Slate — DD Sync — as well as launched Strategic Consulting services for schools and nonprofits that are looking for trusted advisors to guide them through critical transitions.

And as Direct Development prepares to enter the next decade, equipped with our core values, big ideas, and client partnerships, we continue to be guided by one overarching mission: to help Davids beat Goliaths.

What will the next decade look like for Direct Development and its Divisions? Stick around to find out.