Fundraising Detective

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to everyone who has read and contributed to the blog this year.  I hope you have a very merry Christmas and look forward to sharing more ideas and thoughts in 2010.

I'm currently feeling very festive in a snowy Teesside and about to go and wrap the last of my Christmas presents.

Wherever in the world you are and whatever you are doing this holiday season have a great time.

All the best,

Craig

Not much innovation in Christmas direct mail, but some interesting stuff happening elsewhere!

A couple of weeks ago I picked out a couple of interesting items of direct mail from my mum's post.  I've just received the latest batch of Christmas appeals (plus items other colleagues have given me) and unfortunately there's nothing interesting to report.

It's not that the Christmas appeals are bad, it's just they are fairly formulaic and pretty much follow this format:

• Cover letter with urgent Christmas headline.
• Plenty of underlining, bold and subheads.
• A p.s.
• An accompanying leaflet.
• Some sort of Christmas wish list.
• Another lift item, such as stickers or a Christmas card.
• Response form with lasered in gift amounts.

There is nothing wrong with this per se (indeed the Christmas appeal I signed off for work contains many of the above elements) and I'm sure they will be successful, but from this blog's point of view there was nothing new and interesting happening.

It may just be the appeals that my mum received, but I'd love to see some examples of Christmas appeals that don't follow the formula set out above.

However, all is not lost and there have been a couple of other fundraisnig campaigns and projects that have caught my eye as being a bit different.

First up is this interactive poster from Barnado's that thanks people when they make a donation. 

Connor Byrne has also found three or four Christmas campaign's that are a bit different.

Aline highlights her favourite fundraising communication of the year.

A great way to use graphics to help get your point across.

Donor magic in action: charity:water getting volunteers and staff to handwrite 4,500 thank you / Christmas cards to supporters.  How great is that? 

Mark on an I-Phone app that is being used to engage Salvation Army volunteers at Christmas

Finally, this month has seen the launch of Ploink!, a great new way to give small, regular amounts to charity.

The Importance of Donor Empowerment

Check out this interesting article from Alan Mitchell at Marketing magazine on why customer empowerment will be the next key marketing tool.

It raises some important points that I think are particularly relevant for fundraising.

First of all it quotes a number of studies that show the importance of giving people choices and making them feel listened to.

Secondly, it lists four levels in which customer empowerment manifests itself in reality.

These are:

1. Choice: Consumers have gained much greater choice over the sources of information they pay attention to.
2. Voice: It is much easier to voice an opinion, make a critical comment and express upset with an interaction these days. Voice also gives consumers the ability to volunteer info about themselves that would not normally be available.
3. Control: Increasingly consumers have/want the ability to specify what they want and when. This has profound implications on your fundraising direct marketing.
4. 'Choice architectures': The ways you give consumers control in the process in which choices are constructed, framed and presented in the first place.

Mitchell's conclusion is particularly important for fundraisers who want to differentiate from the competition:

"Choice as an instrument of empowerment is a great thing. What's significant about emerging levels of consumer empowerment is that they transform the nature and the dynamics of the marketer-consumer relationship and open up opportunities for marketers to add value along the way.

Far from being a threat, 'consumer empowerment' presents innovative marketers with a real chance to upset the applecart and gain genuine competitive advantage."

I couldn't have put it better myself...

Latest Fundraising Round-Up: 14 things worth reading...

It was good to read in Third Sector about Lindsay Boswell from the Institute of Fundraising resigning from the advisory panel of the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy and looking to set up a new think tank to discuss ideas for practical fundraising research. 

The Institute is asking for ideas for research and has convened a meeting for early 2010. I've submitted some ideas with a colleague of mine and look forward to hearing more.

Meanwhile, here are a few other things that have caught my eye recently:

What does a double espresso in Ukraine have to do with donors?

Excellent, in-depth article from Kev Baughen on whether we ask our donors too often.

Another in-depth article all about measuring outcomes and impact of your fundraising programme.

Beth Breeze on million pound donors.

Sean Stannard-Stockton on using your head and heart in philanthropy.

No more impulse giving?

Is this the future for direct mail? An automatic spam filter?

5 things not to do in a digital campaign.

Read this employee love letter to customer service favourite, Southwest Airlines.

Tom Peters on the importance of appreciation.

Lessons in blogging from Confucius.

Seth on leading with your glass jaw and on how to be a good client.

Predicted trends in social media for 2010.

Should you spend your money shouting or enhancing the user experience?

The Good Experience blog reports on the failure of Yahoo’s recent $100 million ad campaign to promote it's homepage and websites.

It’s a trap many organisations fall into.

Rather than spending time perfecting the product and the user experience, they pump money into a shiny ad campaign that they think will overcome the inferior product at the end of it. 

Newsflash: it won’t.

This has some clear implications for fundraising as well.  If, like me, you’re currently deep in preparing your budgets for the next financial year, then take a look at the expenditure you’ve got planned to ‘shout’ at people.

Could some of that money be better spent building relationships, trying to reduce the number of people who stop giving to you or making people feel better about donating to your cause?

I’d wager a tidy sum that it could…

Mum's Mailbox: A Deliberate Mistake? Plus an Unusual Gift Aid Form...

My mum is a kind hearted soul and gives to a number of charities.  In her mid 50's, she is the sort of lady who is a sucker for a sob story and, much to my dad's annoyance, can't say no if someone rings her up asking her to sell raffle tickets, take a home box etc.

As such she gets lots of charity direct mail. This comes from charities she has previously supported and also unsolicited as she must be on just about every cold charity mailing list out there.  Last Christmas she received nearly 40 appeals in November and December!

Anyway, I thought I would take advantage of this and have been asking her to save the appeals and send them on to me to look at and add to my direct mail library.  I've been sitting on the last bunch for over a month, but have finally got round to having a look through and picking out a couple of interesting bits.

The Camphill Trust

I always take a close look at the Camphill Trust mailings as they do direct mail wonderfully well.  They have a warm, friendly feel and tell great stories about the work they do.  This newsletter mailing was no different, but what really caught my eye was the mistake at the bottom of the first page.

As you can see, the bottom of the first page has a line or two missing.  Now most people would put this down to a genuine mistake, but I'd be surprised if this got through all the relevant proof stages without being spotted and it got me wondering whether it was a deliberate mistake?

Why would anyone make a deliberate mistake you ask? Well, I remember reading somewhere (and for the life of me I can't locate the article - can anyone help?) that when there was an obvious mistake in a letter then the response rate increased.  The theory being that people like to be helpful and point out the mistake and at the same time make a gift. 

Now it's not a strategy you can use often, but I did wonder if the missing line was some sort of elaborate test to try and boost response? What do you reckon? Am I being overly cynical?

Plan

The only other thing that caught my eye was this response form for Plan.

There was no gift aid declaration to tick, which I've never seen before.  Instead they asked you to call up to make an oral gift aid declaration.

Thinking it through I came up with three possible reasons for this:

1. My mum has already made a gift aid declaration to Plan and so they saved some space by not including it.
2. It was an emergency appeal and so the form may have been designed quickly and the lack of a gift aid declaration is an oversight.
3. Plan are encouraging people to call so they can have a conversation with supporters, tell them more about the appeal and maybe secure a larger gift than they would through the post.

Again, would be interested if anyone has any thoughts.

My mum has a big pile of Christmas appeals that she is going to send down to me (after she has chosen which ones to donate to) and I'll pick out any interesting observations from these in the next few weeks.

Why I'll be making a donation to SOFII today...

Today sees the public launch of the Big Give in the UK and hundreds of charities will be mobilising their support to take advantage of the matched funding that will be released every day this week.

One of the charities that has raised money in the private phase is the SOFII Foundation, who run the wonderful SOFII website - the web's number one online fundraising resource.

The site has become an indispensable resource for me and, amongst other things, I have used it for articles for this blog, presentations, inspiration when facing problems and to highlight best practice to colleagues.

That's why I'll be making a donation to SOFII today to say thank you for providing such a fantastic service to fundraisers.

If you're a fundraiser/agency/charity that has benefited from the site then I'd also urge you to double your donation and say thanks to SOFII today.

You can donate here and help ensure the site continues to grow and prosper.

As an aside, fingers crossed the Big Give doesn't experience the same problems as last year when the site crashed and the matched funding disappeared in 45 minutes - if it does then make sure you visit later in the week to donate!

Out of Office Update

Following up from my post on 'out of office' replies, I received this fantastic example from Sean Triner at Pareto Fundraising.

It does all the things I suggested: it is sincere, engaging, interesting, good humoured and I'm sure Sean must get some great comments off the back of it.  I certainly want to know if he got any e-mails from Bhutan! ;)

Here is the one he used whilst he was on his latest trip - what do you reckon?

"Hi

Thanks for emailing me.  I'm back on 7 December, though I am working whilst travelling. 

My destinations are at the bottom of this email.

If you are a client, thank you for being a client.  All at Pareto are dedicated to help you guys make the world a better place.  But you will get more of a response out of one of your Pareto account staff who just can't wait to help with your queries, and are more likely to be in the correct country.

If you are from a charity, but not a client, and based in any country in the world then we may well be able to help you.  In New Zealand or Australia please contact Vincent.  Other countries - especially Bhutan - please contact Jan.

Anything else please contact Justine - she may be able to help by either spending my prize or contacting me.

Thanks again.

Still reading?  Well I guess you have time to spare - so if you haven't already, take this time to order and read "The Life You Can Save" By Peter Singer - you can get it from www.amazon.com.

 

Take care.

  

Sean

 

Travel plans:

26-31 October Hong Kong. They have booked 17 (!) meetings for me in 4 days so not a lot of chance of getting to email then, sorry!

2-8 November Berlin.  Busy, but more opportunities to get to email.

9-15 November Yorkshire. Holiday & TOIL - leave me alone :)

16-20 November London, innit. Busy with Jan and others.

24-27 November Toronto office. I think there will be no time to breathe there, Jono is working me hard.  And it will be bloody freezing.

30 Nov-2 Dec AFP Toronto conference. It won't be easy to get me.

 

Back to Australia after that, and working at home from 7 December."

Thanks for sharing it Sean.  You've set a high standard and I'd be interested to hear of any other good examples...

Does Your Marketing Reflect the Shift from 'Me' to 'We'?

That's the question that Roy H. Williams asks in his latest thought provoking Monday Morning Memo.  Although he is writing about selling watches, I think the point he makes is important for fundraisers too.

He argues that the last few years has seen a shift from the idealist 'Me' mindset to our current, civic 'We' one and that you need to change your marketing messages accordingly.

In particular he says that ads to the 'selfless servant as modern hero' need to address two things:

1. "Do you want to make the world a better place?"
2. "Are you the kind of person who gets things done?"

Read the two adverts he talks about in the memo (and don't forget to sign up for the excellent newsletter whilst you are there) and see what you think. 

Which one do you think most reflects your organisation?  If your key messages are more 'Me' than 'We', then Roy thinks you'll be missing out...