Worchester Envelope Company in Auburn, Mass., has been acquired by Moore, a direct response marketing and fundraising firm which had made numerous deals the past few months, many to build capacity, redundancy and location diversification of various operations.
The acquisition comes less than 12 months since a $31 million investment Moore made in envelope manufacturing with the opening of Richmond Print Group in Virginia. Terms of this deal were not disclosed.
“Worcester Envelope Company is a 125-year-old company that has been a trusted and highly respected vendor of Moore for many years. We know the talented leadership and the superior quality of the work they produce for the industry,” said Gretchen Littlefield, chief executive officer of Moore, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., and Tulsa, Okla.
The acquisition gives Moore more than 347,000 square feet of envelope manufacturing in Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri and Virginia. Moore officials said that the COVID-19 pandemic was among the reasons to diversify locations.
Moore has made significant investments in envelope manufacturing equipment. “Our investment in flexographic printing has made us more efficient, which translates to higher quality and lower costs for our clients. Flexographic printing uses solvent-free inks on a large variety of substances, which results in reduced volatile organic chemical (VOC) emissions,” said Littlefield.
Worcester Envelope’s leadership team will remain, including Derek Waterhouse as president, who will report to Jeff Pelcher, manufacturing chief operating officer of Moore. The organization will continue to brand and market itself as Worcester Envelope Company, a Moore company.
Moore has more than 3,000 employees in 36 locations. The firm has been busy making acquisitions the past two quarters. “The marketing and fundraising landscape has been changed by two significant trends, technology and response to COVID-19,” Littlefield said. “The marketing supply chain has become increasingly integrated and automated. Data and technology are paving the paths between supply chain steps. This promises real true nonprofit one-on-one marketing where each message can be customized for each donor and potential donor based on what the data show about who they are and what they want,” she said.
Location diversity was one of the reasons Moore last month acquired Washington Intelligence Bureau (WIB), one of the oldest donation processing service providers in the Washington, D.C. Headquartered in Chantilly, Va., WIB is now part of Aegis Premier Solutions, a Moore company with processing facilities in Kansas, Oklahoma and now Virginia. Terms of that deal were not disclosed.
Aegis Processing Solutions handles caging and lockbox operations, among other financial procedures. The organization’s processing center is warehoused in a 600,000-square-foot facility.
Moore acquired fundraising agency Amergent in Peabody, Mass., a few weeks earlier. The 40-year-old Amergent is a direct response fundraising firm with an emphasis on food banks, healthcare institutions, faith-based organizations, advocacy and conservation groups. It also has a constituent relationship management tool, Amergent Portfolio™ Software.
Most of the management at acquired firms has been kept intact. Moore has also been stockpiling known names in the fundraising industry. The most recent hire was of Greg Fox as senior vice president and chief strategy officer. Fox had been senior vice president of the nonprofit group vertical market strategy for Merkle.
This past September, Andrew Olsen, CFRE, was appointed president of Moore’s ResourceOne Fundraising Group. Prior to joining ResourceOne, Olsen held senior-level positions at fundraising firms Newport ONE, Russ Reid and Strategic Fundraising.
