The post implies that Care2 (my employer, which publishes the Frogloop.com blog) must totally swallow the conclusions of the Borrell Associates study about an alleged 40 percent decline in direct mail fundraising over the next few years. Actually, there was a lot about the Borrell conclusions that we at Care2 have trouble believing, and that’s why we took great pains not to just “breathlessly” (to use Chuck’s phrase) report these conclusions to Frogloop’s readers, without providing opposing viewpoints and scrutiny.

First, we wrote a headline in the form of a question (“Is Direct Mail Really Headed for the Exit?”), to signal some overall skepticism about Borrell’s main assertion. Next, our chief blogger Allyson Kapin, who wrote the Frogloop piece, made sure to include interviews with two top nonprofit fundraising experts — from Defenders of Wildlife and NARAL — both of whom completely disagreed with the Borrell conclusions.

Next, less than 24 hours after Allyson had published her Frogloop piece, we were contacted by fundraising legend Mal Warwick, who asked if we would be willing to post on Frogloop his forceful (“Hogwash”) rebuttal to the Borrell study. We not only said yes, we posted Mal’s piece immediately on Frogloop — which I might add was well before Mal’s similar piece was published on the Chronicle of Philanthropy website.

The bottom line is that Frogloop’s readers were well served by our coverage of the Borrell study, because we provided a lot of context and opposing viewpoints both for and against the study’s conclusions.

For the record: Care2’s work to help hundreds of leading nonprofits over the years indicates to us that the most successful organizations today are the ones pursuing integrated multi-channel strategies that include tried and true direct mail AND robust online fundraising. We recognize the challenging outlook for Direct Mail in the future, but we also think rumors of its (imminent) death are greatly exaggerated.

We are quite accustomed to potshots from messenger-shooters — even in the online industry, which as you accurately point out we cover so deeply. You might find it interesting to know that two-thirds of our clients are legacy media companies, not “online” companies. You might find it even more shocking to know that last year we forecast the decline of banner advertising, and last month we filed a report on the extremely high churn rates for search advertising. I hardly think you can accuse a researcher of bias given that record.

Direct mail, like all other legacy media, WILL decline as a result of the shift to digital. I am certain of it. It will be a likely be a steep decline, on the order of 38% over the next five years, and it will cause a corresponding shift to other media, e-mail included. It won’t die — just as radio didn’t die as everyone predicted when television took hold in the 1950s.

I don’t think vehement defense serves the direct-response industry well. An intelligent discourse on the research — and more importantly, how direct marketers might prepare themselves if these predictions indeed come true — would be a much better use of time.