THOMAS K. KELLER, CFRE

Smith Beers Yunker clients get 3½ decades of direct marketing experience with Tom Keller, who has played key roles in campaigns that produced multi-million-dollar results in annual giving, membership development, and planned giving. Direct marketing includes direct mail, e-fundraising, direct response advertising and other media, through which people are asked to respond directly with gifts, pledges, membership dues, or other actions.

After learning direct marketing in a rigorous business environment at NCR Corporation, Tom spent 23 years on the national headquarters staff of the Disabled American Veterans, helping one of America's largest charities push fundraising results past $90 million annually. He led the direct mail drive that carried DAV membership from 34% to 52% of all disabled veterans. His nationally distributed public service announcements regularly clocked more than 100 million viewers. He initiated the DAV’s planned giving program, using direct mail to generate and qualify leads for estate gifts, logging $6.5 million annually in direct revenues and expectancies after five years.

Tom also knows nonprofit life as a volunteer leader. Following retirement from the DAV staff, he was elected to the board of the DAV’s Department of Ohio, and subsequently chaired that board as State Commander.

Tom’s professional career began in the U.S. Air Force in 1968, reporting from Korea for Stars & Stripes and Air Force Times. Honorably discharged in 1970, he did public affairs for the U.S. Environmen¬tal Protection Agency while finishing a bachelor of arts with honors at the University of Cincinnati.

A recognized leader in direct mail fund raising, Tom has published extensively in such journals as Fund Raising Management, NonProfit Times, and Nonprofit World. He has also taught at national and regional conferences hosted by the Direct Marketing Association, Association of Fundraising Professionals, American Society of Association Executives, and others.

A past chapter officer of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Public Relations Society of America, he is also involved with the Nonprofit Federation of the international Direct Marketing Association. Tom holds the DMA’s international Gold and Silver Echo Awards, the most prestigious recognition in the direct marketing industry, as well as four MAXI Awards, two of them bronze. On behalf of President Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady presented Tom with the Media Award of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.