Fundraising Detective

Notes from #media140 - Using Real-Time Social Media in the Third Sector

Attended Media140's event today, which featured a number of panels and guest speakers on social media.

It was an interesting event and as well as seeing a few old faces, it was good to chat to new people and to hear what they're doing with social media in their own organisations.

Below are some quickly typed thoughts and observations from each of the sessions.

Keynote 1: 'Staying relevant in a wired world' by Steve Bridger

I've had a few conversations with Steve on Twitter, so it was nice to see and hear him in the flesh (although I had to dash before getting a chance to say hello!) and I was impressed with what he had to say.

His talk was a personal plea for charities not to make social media a silo and that 'legitimate voices' were a bad idea.

He said we should encourage workers to become better storytellers and professional conversationalists about their cause and to trust them to do it properly.

I particularly found this slide about the changing giving environment useful:

Rewiring Charities

View more presentations from Steve Bridger.

Panel 1: Finding a voice - maintaining personality cross platform, across different campaigns.

The panel relayed how they used social media in their own organisations and the importance of engaging in conversation and not just 'shouting' your messages at people.

Simon Collister of We are Social got a bit of a backlash on Twitter when he suggested that charities outsource their social media. Personally I think the actual Tweets/messages/engagement should be by a charity staff member or volunteer, but I don't have a problem with an agency providing training, advice, strategy etc. As Rob Dyson of WhizzKidz pointed out we don't kick up the same sort of fuss when charities outsource things like face to face or telephone fundraising.

The other quote that I liked from the panel was: 'People are multi-faceted, you only find out their depth and diversity when you engage with them.'

Keynote 2: Building a community from nothing by John Carnell of Bullying UK

I've heard a lot about Bullying UK and social media, but hadn't heard John speak before. I thought he did an excellent job.

He made a number of pertinent points, as well as sharing some great stats on how Bullying UK engage with people. You can see his presentation on Slideshare.

He encouraged people to put their message across as a person and not as a brand as that builds the best connections.

Share, share and share content, be honest, be open and people will love you.

He predicted that the mobile web is untapped. He's getting in early as he think it is about to explode and that this explosion will be driven by the social web.

Panel 2: The future of fundraising with 'real-time' social media?

Some of the ideas and trends that the panel discussed were:

• The increasing need for NGO's to collaborate to raise fund. No NGO is unique - even if they think they are.
• The importance of storytelling and fitting your ask around this.
• Making things relevant at the point of sale and the increase of micro-donations.
• Mobile barcodes (QR-codes) becoming increasingly popular and will give fundraisers new opportunities to capture data and raise funds.

Panel 3: How to enthuse and co-ordinate volunteers

Jamie Thomas of iVolunteer gave an impassioned defence of slacktivism and said it was better that people did something than do nothing. He said this micro-volunteering (such as signing an online petition) often led to further involvement and engagement in the future.

The panel also thought that volunteering was lagging behind other functions of charities (such as fundraising) in their adoption of social media to manage and involve volunteers. Someone quoted a study that found that less than 20% of small, local charities had any social media presence.

Demo: Media140 Labs

The final part of the day was a presentation from Liam of Louder.org, which is an online tool to help charities campaign better (well worth checking out if you are a campaigning charity) and from iVolunteer, a Facebook style community for volunteers and volunteer managers. One of the interesting things about this is that they are producing a white label version for large charities to use for their own staff and volunteers.

More information:

Itchynotscratchy's thoughts

The Flickr pool from the day - including this one of me not being able to keep my mouth shut!

The organisers: Media140

Notes from the Fundraising Research Thinktank Meeting

Yesterday I attended a forum organised by the Institute of Fundraising to discuss fundraising research and the setting up of a research body to improve the dissemination and quality of fundraising research.

The main aim was to gather feedback on what the priorities for such a group would be and to learn more about the areas that people thought needed greater research.

There was a good mix of fundraising practitioners, agencies, suppliers and academics and it made for an interesting and lively discussion.

One of the first points that was more or less unanimously agreed on was that there was a need for this body to try and bring together all the existing fundraising research into one place and to act as a sign post for fundraisers to find useful research. However, a lot of work needs to be done on deciding on how to judge what constitutes good or bad research.

Ahead of the meeting people were asked to submit their thoughts on possible areas of research and below is my thoughts on the types of research I would like to see:

My suggested research:

• Research on increasing total philanthropic giving (not just to individual charities) as studies showing that the number of people donating to charities is falling.
• Long term impact on giving of various ‘stewardship’ tools e.g. how do various good/bad practices impact on giving in the long term. Would want to do this across a range of charities and over a 5/10 year period and measure various things like repeat gifts, average donations and legacies.
• Measuring ‘negative’ impacts. What doesn’t happen because of various activities? We are very good at measuring the positives, but what doesn’t happen because someone receives numerous phone calls / lots of direct mail / has a bad experience with a F2F fundraiser i.e. do people give less/stop giving because of these experiences?
• How fundraisers can (ethically) use behavioural economics to encourage people to give. Similar to Adrian Sargeant’s recent research on donations to a public radio station in the U.S.

It was pleasing to hear Martin Brookes of New Philanthropy Capital say how important the ‘negative’ impacts research was and he emphasised how many people have stopped giving to charity over the last decade.

Of the other research suggested, I would group it into the following categories:

• How do you improve loyalty, engagement and connection with an individual charity. (Though personally I think there is already a lot of good work in this area)
• The importance and impact of transparency.
• How to…guides e.g. upgrades. Lot’s of calls for social media/digital marketing research.
• How/why do donors switch charities?
• Donor incentives and motivations. Attitudinal data to giving.
• Trend spotting / monitoring innovation etc
• Best practice in various areas (Beth Breeze of the University of Kent rightly pointed out that Sofii is already doing some of this signposting work)
• Combining data across charities to get a better understanding of sector.
• Benchmarking data across fundraising disciplines and sectors.

Observations:

I’m a big believer in using research to help make decisions, formulate strategies and using it as the foundation of a successful fundraising programme.  However, I was surprised at how many people want hand holding and how they expect research to somehow provide an answer to all fundraising problems. It’s important but it’s no magic wand!

I was also surprised at what seemed to be the lack of awareness of much of the research and academic writing that is already available.  It really highlighted to me how important the signposting function is.

Overall a really interesting meeting and credit to the Iof for organising the discussion. I look forward to hearing what happens next.

Peer to Peer Fundraising: A Great Example from Charity Water & Chris Guillebeau

 

 

I'm a big fan of Chris Guillebeau and have subscribed to his newsletter for the last year. He's a great example of someone who has grown a business by giving (see Hugh for a detailed description of what this means) and built a tribe of like minded people who he inspires through his writing and ideas.

So I was really interested to receive this e-mail, which outlines his plans to raise $500,000 for water wells in Ethiopia.

It is one of the best examples I've seen of 'peer to peer' fundraising and there are a number of reasons why I believe Chris will achieve his target.

• Chris tells a compelling story about the need for clean water in Ethiopia. By concentrating on two villages he is setting a clear and realistic goal and can make people feel part of something tangible.

• There is complete transparency about where the money is going and what Chris is specifically going to do himself. From the trust he has built through his e-mails you know that his pledge is genuine and honest.

• By assisting Chris achieve his goal you know you will be part of something and that it will be a lot of fun helping along the way. Chris will make it interesting and will provide regular feedback on how he is doing.

• He encourages his own fans to use their own contacts: "Many of you have your own circle of influence or your own small army. When you speak, they listen to you because they trust you." This ripple effect will attract other donors.

I believe that this type of appeal will become increasingly popular with people taking on specific projects and focusing their energies on encouraging their networks to raise money. It's a powerful combination as the compelling story and the trust/respect of the person asking makes you want to give.

Now what Chris is doing is nothing particularly new or revelationary. In fact, his approach isn't all that different from this great fundraising letter from Sofii from Bruce Barton in 1925 (registration required) that produced a 100% response rate.

What is different is that social media makes it so much easier to run this sort of appeal and gives you the ability to provide instant feedback and gratification. As a fundraiser you need to be looking for the people like Chris on your database and then giving them the tools and freedom to go off and do something similar.

Direct Mail takes another round of kicking

Direct mail is in the news again this week, with Third Sector reporting that a fundraiser has quit the profession after being reduced to tears by the number of complaints that a cold mailing produced.

Now, my first instinct was that this was a bit of an over reaction and the person in question might be over sensitive and in the wrong job to begin with. However, I've thought of some of the distressed calls and letters I've received in response to direct mail over the years and wondered whether the money direct mail raises justifies the upset that it does cause to some people.

My conclusion is yes it does, but we need to continue to evolve our fundraising methods to reduce this to a minimum, whilst increasing the overall joy of giving.

Cancer Research UK seem to be having similar issues and I was surprised to read the first page of their latest door drop.  It talks candidly about how fewer people are responding to their appeals and explains why they send the letter. Here is the first page of the letter (let me know if you'd like a copy of the full appeal):

 

Then, over at Fundraising magazine (registration required) there is a debate about the use of enclosures in direct mail, with Stephen Pidgeon (Chair of the Institute of Fundraising standards  committee) giving the following warning:

"Last year, Fundraising Standards Board received 26,349 complaints from the general public about fundraising. 19,068 of them (practically 75%) were about direct mail. That's a staggering figure, and probably the tip of the iceberg. It frightens me rigid and it should frighten you. If charities lose the right to mail widely and without constraints, the loss in income will be catastrophic.

"And don't kid yourself it's not on the cards. A few months ago, I sat in the office of the then minister, Kevin Brennan, a bright and well briefed guy. He simply said he was being plagued by complaints about junk mail from charities. He had called us in to hear what was being done about it. This kind of action from government is new."

Stephen goes on to warn that constraints on the use of direct mail are a distinct possibility if we don't regulate ourself.

The final piece of bad news came from the U.S. where the Agitator reported on a 'slump' in direct mail use.

So should we all be worried and be abandoning direct mail?

Not quite yet...

As the Agitator goes on to say in a follow up article:

"Sadly, at a time when many nonprofits are clearly hurting and facing still further declines, I’m seeing many of the same, old, tired appeals, messages and techniques in my mailbox, clearly driven by plans that might as well be dated 1991 instead of 2010."

They then give some excellent thoughts and ideas on what needs to change and how you can do it.

I'll leave the final word to Jeff Brooks, who concludes in his article "Yet again is direct mail dead?", that:

"Fundraising is about connecting with people. You find the medium that connects you to the right people. If it works, it's not dead. Asking if direct mail is dead without first knowing a lot of other information is getting it backwards."

Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun

Public speaking is often listed as one of people's worst fears, but Scott Berkun's new book is packed full of advice that would help even the most nervous of public speakers overcome their anxiety.

Quite simply this is the best book on public speaking I have ever read.

Written in a friendly, confident and funny way the book combines practical advice, anecdotes and photographs that cover every aspect of speaking in public. From preparation and planning to setting up the room and dealing with hecklers the book covers everything you need to know on planning and delivering presentations.

Whenever I read a book I mark interesting pages/passages and by the time I'd finished this book the book was full of turned pages that I will go back to!

One of my favourite chapters goes through preparing a fictional talk on cheese. It is great to follow Scott's thinking of how he approaches a talk, plans what he is going to say and how to come up with a winning title.

I think the key lesson is one that I've learnt the hard way (I'll save the story of my first ever public talk for another time) - the only way you'll give an interesting and well received talk is to prepare, plan and practice, practice, practice. That may not sound like rocket science, but it is amazing how many presenters don't do this. 

The book also contains a great section on research and recommended further reading and I've already downloaded a number of articles from Scott's blog.

I appreciate that this seems a bit of a gushing review. I usually like to include some constructive criticism, but the only thing I can think of is that it would have been good for them to include colour photos rather than black and white.

Whether you are seasoned presenter or have to do a presentation for the first time then I'm confident that this book contains something for everyone.

Book Review: We - The Ideal Customer Relationship by Steve Yastrow

In the latest Mal Warwick newsletter, Adrian Sargeant writes an in-depth article called 'Building Donor Loyalty', which emphasises the problem fundraisers have in retaining donors and offers some reasons why we aren't better at it.

Steve Yastrow's book offers ideas and tactics to help overcome this problem.  It makes an articulate and powerful case to treat customers (in our case donors) better and, in turn, improve business.

Through a series of case studies, anecdotes and research Yastrow provides a framework for moving from transaction based interactions with customers to creating memorable encounters that help build sustainable relationships.

The 'We' in the title is a plea to see your relationship with your donors in a different light:

"A We relationship is substantially different from an Us & Them relationship. A We customer sees the relationship as collaborative and mutual; he thinks "We" when thinking about himself and your company. This customer sees your company as unique and, therefore, not interchangeable with the competition.  And you see the needs of each We customer as distinct from the needs of all customers. You go beyond using each other to accomplish things and actually see your relationship as one in which you do things together."

I particularly like Yastrow's emphasis on creating memorable encounters.  It is a theme I have taken up in my own organisation.  Every time you have an interaction with a donor then you need to ensure that interaction enhances the relationship (or at worst doesn't make it worse).  This simple but powerful statement is a good starting point for all your donor care and marketing efforts.

Some of the case studies and examples in the books are a little cheesy and lack the detail I would like to see, but overall I'd recommend the book for anyone who is in a customer facing role and looking for a framework to build their retention round.

Book Review: Superfreakonomics by Levitt & Dubner

At first glance you might ask what a book on economics has to do with fundraising.

However, as well as being a fascinating and sometimes controversial read, there are a number of useful lessons for fundraisers in Superfreaknomics.

Like the first book, the authors use economic and data analysis to challenge conventional thinking on a wide range of subjects.

Of particular interest will be the chapter on altruism, which looks at lab and real world studies on altruism.  Sadly (for charities) they conclude that people may not be quite as altruistic as we are led to believe.

The other key lesson is not to rely too much on hunches and to try and back up your thinking and reasoning with clear data analysis.  Don't make the mistake many people do and manipulate your data to fit your theories.

I see and hear this often when people undertake new plans without any clear plan on how they are going to measure results and collect data, which often gives people an easy out if things don't go as well as they hope.

The book will help you understand the importance of data and it's interpretation and help avoid these traps.

It is an insanely addictive and thoroughly entertaining book.  It really makes a dry subject like economics interesting.  It deliberately takes a controversial view on topics like global warming, prostitution and suicide bombers and has attracted criticism for over simplifying arguments and ignoring alternative views. 

However, although the authors may occasionally go for the cheap laugh and make slightly tenuous/tongue in cheek conclusions I don't think the book is any the worse for it.

Overall I'd highly recommend Superfreakonomics.  If only my economics classes at uni had been half as interesting, then I might not have dropped it after a year!

Book Review Week

This week as I catch up on some reading after my holiday and start writing up some posts, I thought I'd share a few book reviews of books I've read recently that may be of interest.

I'd love to hear if you've read anything recently that would be useful for fundraising.

I'm going to stick to business/marketing/fundraising books, but don't worry, I do read the occasional fiction book as well!

Seth Godin's latest book: Linchpin: Are you indispensable?

Seth Godin's latest book Linchpin is out at the end of the month and in return for a donation to the Acumen Fund (great idea Seth) I've got hold of a 60 page summary of it.

I'm a huge fan of Seth and books like Permission Marketing and Tribes have completely changed my thoughts on how good fundraising should be done. I strongly believe any fundraiser would be inspired to do their job better after reading these books.

However, Linchpin appears to be a different sort of book. 

It is more personal and raw.

It is a call to arms and a plea to the individual to rage war on mediocrity.

As Seth says:

"Stop settling for what’s good enough and start creating art that matters. Stop asking what’s in it for you and start giving gifts that change people."

Therefore from a fundraising point of view it might not offer as much in the way of new ideas or insight as his other books. There doesn't appear to be much talk about what's wrong with marketing and ideas for fixing it, rather it is a manifesto and a passionate call for people to be remarkable in themselves.

To begin with the book talks about why individuals need to take more responsibility for their work and how the current economic climate is:

"An opportunity to actually enjoy what you do, to make a difference to your colleagues and your customers, and to unlock the genius you’ve been hiding all these years."

Seth talks about the importance of emotional labor and making connections both at work and in your personal life.

He then goes on to talk about becoming a linchpin and being indispensable.  His argument is as follows:

"You have no right to that job or that career. After years of being taught that you have to be an average worker for an average organization, that society would support you for sticking it out, you discover that the rules have changed.

The only way to succeed is to be remarkable, to be talked about. But when it comes to a person, what do we talk about? People are not products with features, benefits, and viral marketing campaigns; they are individuals. If we’re going to talk about them, we’re going to discuss what they do, not who they are.

You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to be indispensable is to be different. That’s because if you’re the same, so are plenty of other people.

The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about."

The rest of the book talks about how to achieve this.

I think the book will be particularly useful if you are frustrated at work, want to get more done or need inspiring to achieve great things in 2010. It will challenge your thinking on what it means to be an employee and how you can create 'art' in any form.

It doesn't appear to be a 'how to' book, but I'm looking forward to reading the full version and have got it on pre-order.

Finally, you can read what other people think about the book at Seth's Squidoo lens.

Happy New Year: I'll be back in a few weeks...

Just a quick note to say happy New Year.

I hope 2010 is a great year for you both personally and professionally.

I'm away on holiday for a couple of weeks now (hopefully I'll be on a beach somewhere in Cuba when you read this!), so the blog will go a bit quiet for a while, but don't worry, I'll be back in the middle of January.

I was hoping to write a few posts and schedule them for whilst I was away, but over-indulging on food and drink over Christmas has gotten in the way... :)