Fundraising Detective

Competition: Free #IoFLondon Conference Passes

I'm delighted to be able to offer some free day passes to the IoF London Conference next week, courtesy of the Institute of Fundraising London Region.

To put your name forward simply do one of the following:

• Add a comment to this post saying you'd like a pass
• Tweet “I’d like an #ioflondon pass please!” to @ioflondon
• E-mail me at craig[at]fundraisingdetective.com

All names will be put in a random draw and the winners will be announced on Friday 18 November at noon.

Tickets are for a one day pass to either day of the conference.

VIP Draw - Two Day Pass Prize

To win a two-day pass we want to work you a bit harder, so we’ll award the prize to the person who comes up with the best answer (as judged by myself and IoF London Committee Member Kathy Allen - @kathyallen) to the following question:

Which session would you most like to attend and why? 

Answers can be serious, amusing, in-depth or just downright silly.  You can find a full conference programme here.

Again, you can enter in one of three ways:

• Add your answer to the comments below
• Tweet it to @ioflondon
• E-mail me at craig[at]fundraisingdetective.com

Three reasons to attend

Even if you don’t win then you can still get tickets for the event and here are three reasons it will be worth your while attending:

1. It is a general conference and so there are sessions covering all aspects of fundraising.  Most one day conferences specialise in one area, which can give a narrow focus, but here you can improve your all round fundraising skills.  Great for Heads of Fundraising (or aspiring ones!)
   
   
2. There are some top speakers to learn from including Alan Clayton, Mark Phillips, Damian O’Broin and Howard Lake. There is also a good mix of workshops, presentations and plenaries.
   
   
3. Great value for money.  With day rates from £65, the conference offers an affordable training and development opportunity for charities of all sizes and budgets.

When donating money causes more harm than good: the response

Yesterday's post certainly provoked an interesting reaction with over 100 tweets and five times as many visitors to the site as usual.

I wanted to share some of the great Tweets* and comments I've received and I have split them into a number of categories:

General Comments

I have to say 10 years ago that would have been double the numbers received. Nice to see interaction between you and donor :)  I think charities have done lot to target rather than blanket mail their supporters. Whilst targeted mail is on the increase. I think it is in most charities interest to restrict indiscriminate mailings. Some of those numbers per charity were very low.  What i did like from their (the donors) record keeping was no hiding place for the charities clearly overmailing and wasting funds, but still showing poor cold mailing lists and very poor marketing strategies on ROI and RFV. @Phil_RAs

That's a phenomenal amount of mail. It's the data swapping that's really poor form.  @learnasone

I don’t agree, but an interesting read. Reason I said I didn't agree is because giving begets giving and I don't have prob IF letters were real, authentic, personal & fed back.  I'm not suggesting all packs met that criteria! I'm sure most didn't. :-) Their generosity was their biggest downfall! @jonathongrapsas

Interesting piece - I think phone campaigns can have a similar effect. I stopped one gift after high pressure call to increase! However, it's a difficult balancing act - after all, if you don't ask... @attythatwas

Fundraisers should ask 3 questions before sending a mailing: Why am I sending this pack? To this person? At this time? If can't answer, don't send! @adriansalmon

 Digital is the future. @kuntze

 Depressing... @jon_bedford

Possible solutions

We should all look at the letter - it's awful. But what do you do? A centralised database to reduce over-soliciting?  FRSB + major reciprocals brokers, e.g Occam? Voluntary code on list swaps? DPA should guard against this, in theory, but don't. @adriansalmon

I've been advocating some form of planning function for phone contact for years. Over calling kills response. @pauldegregorio

Other examples

We had a granny who collected her DM for us and would use 1 month's worth in pitches - it landed on the desk with a bang!  Poorly created and targeted DM is junk. We should think of the impact on responders and non-responders. One donation form had comments box on it - 1 donor simply stuck twenty different address labels in the box! @markphillips

I did some analysis for a client once & found one poor bloke had been selected for a telephone direct debit ask 13 times - and carried on giving!  I made sure he didn't get another one! He obviously wanted to give cash, not DD! @pauldegregorio

I spoke to a lady whose aunt had recurring gifts setup by credit card, charities concerned were very hard to contact.  All setup by direct mail and telemarketing. There were so many they had split the work of opting out between family. @medavep

That's bad (letters) did you see my collection of Charity Bags? @AFPaz

@linereed @pongogirl On calling donors to apologise:

Was cringeworthy & highly recommended - if you are in the business of trying to change things for the better.

Yep I've done it too. Awful. Talking to donors stops you doing things that look good on a spreadsheet, but actually aren't.

 

*I've edited tweets to make them easier to read and comprehend. Let me know if you think I have misrepresented what was said.

What Copernicus and Car Advertising has to do with Fundraising (and other revelations!)

I recently had the pleasure of reading Beth Breeze’s research paper on 'How Donors choose charities'.

I decided to send Beth some follow up questions on the research and she has kindly agreed to share her answers.

One of the key findings of the research was for charities to clearly demonstrate that they are ‘in need’.

Do you have any thoughts on how charities can better portray this in their communications and messages?

I think I'd rather that charities were more honest about where need does and doesn't exist, and cease trying to inject a sense of urgency and 'neediness' into their appeals when it doesn't exist.

Not only would that be more honest (for example, do we 'need' another new orchestra or would it just be really nice?), but the evidence is that donors are more likely to respond to how a cause 'clicks' with their personal experience.

The example I used in an article I wrote for Third Sector magazine, is to float the idea that heritage charities could say:

'Do you like trooping round stately homes, having a nice cream tea and browsing the gift shop? Then join us!'

rather than

'We urgently need you to save the fabric of the nation'

I think donors know the difference between meeting needs and pursuing their own tastes, and might appreciate a more honestly framed request.

I noticed that there was decidedly more males than females in the survey. Are you worried about any gender biases?

Also, without being sexist, would it be fair to assume that you spoke to the gent (as the CAF account was in their name for gift aid purposes), but their wife also has an impact on the decision making?

The main concern in my sampling was to reach committed, proactive givers, as opposed to those who describe themselves as donors but in reality just reactively chuck the odd coin in a tin.

This is why I approached CAF account holders, but the down side is they tend to be older, male, live in the South etc - though if these are the backbone of charity funders then they are the right people to speak to!

You're quite right that the named account holder may not be the sole decision maker, and often the wife did chip in in the background, which was endearing and funny to listen to "No dear, we gave up the donkeys years ago"!!

Am I being too harsh in the conclusion that the findings from your study shows that comparison sites, like Intelligent Giving, (which I’m a big fan of), will never greatly influence giving?

That is my current conclusion I'm afraid, much as I can see the logic in providing good information to donors, there just doesn't seem to be the appetite to actually read it or act on it. But I'm open to changing my mind if new evidence emerges, e.g. it may be that people making bigger donations are more likely to do the research. Although recent research from Hope Consulting in the U.S.A. finds this isn't the case.

How do you cut through the marketing clutter? How can you use heuristics/binary distinctions/satisficing etc in your own favour? How can fundraisers get a better understanding of them?

Empathising with donors and understanding that the process by which they make decisions is not only (or even largely) about the charity, but about themselves - their own needs, personal experiences, tastes etc. I wrote about this in a think piece for the NCVO Funding Commission, in which I argue:

“By 2020 the relationship between donors and charities needs to be turned on its head so that givers become the centre of the charity universe.

"As Paul Schervish has suggested, the accepted wisdom that charities need donors in order to help them achieve their organisational mission, ought to be replaced by an understanding that donors choose to support charities in order to achieve their personal missions.

"The nature of this transformation has been compared by Canadian philanthropist Charles Bronfman, to Copernicus’ revelation that displaced the earth from the centre of the universe.

"In this analogy, the donor, not the charity, is the sun around which all else must revolve. This donor-centred universe will be a far cry from the current widely-held attitude that the people with the cash are a necessary evil who must be recruited at minimum expense and kept happy with minimum fuss so they are ready for maximum tapping when required.

"Once the charity sector’s version of the Copernican revolution takes place, the implications will affect all aspects of the fundraising profession.”

Does social media offer opportunities to harness supporters networks to raise money?

Yes, and the reason this works is because people are swayed by being asked by people they know, and by seeing how much others give.

The genius of JustGiving-type sites is the sharing of this information, which prompts others to think "If he gave £x, I'd better give at least £y.

Are you worried that what people say and what they do are different things?

Does the fact that people say they don’t like glossy appeals/flashy communications/free gifts etc, but the reason fundraisers use them is because they work and increase response concern you? The largest and most successful fundraising charities generally have the glossiest comms.

You're right, people are deeply inconsistent and contradictory in this regard. I constantly meet people who berate fundraiser's methods and yet respond to them!

I don't know what the answer to this is - do we carry on pissing people off because it works, or do we change tactics and make people feel more fondly of charities but potentially reduce income?

My interim answer is the former - commercial companies don't worry about annoying customers (think of how irritating many of their ad campaigns are), so long as it boosts their bottom line, and I think charities might have to settle for being less loved but better funded.

On page 37 of the research, you talk about some donors preference for small, local charities. How can small charities tap into the apparent bias towards them?

Small charities should shout about the fact they are small, non-bureaucratic, have a personal touch, rely on volunteers, work hard to keep overheads low etc etc - donors who prefer to support the big boys won't want to support the tiddlers no matter what they say, but those who feel their money is better spent by smaller organisations will respond to these kind of messages.

If donors are so entrenched in their giving choices, then how can charities attract new donors?

As people like Adrian Sargeant have long argued, we should be prioritising the retention of existing donors rather than recruiting new ones.

I once read that most advertising by car companies is aimed at reassuring people who have already bought one of their cars, rather than trying to tempt people to switch from Volvos to Fords.

I think the same is true of cigarette advertising.

My hunch is that charities share something with these sectors, a deep-running customer loyalty that means people will stick with their original decision (be it Volvos, Marlboros or the RNLI) until they're given a reason to leave - so focusing on not pissing off donors is a better investment than trying to win new ones.

Thanks for your time Beth and for providing further insight into how donors choose charities.

Overcoming 'The Curse of Unremarkable Fundraising'

Jeff Brooks rightly laments the amount of boring fundraising that exists in the world today. He highlights the fantastic Donor's Choose as an example of an organisation that you'd talk to your friend about.

To cheer you up Jeff (and everyone else reading) here are a few other examples I've come across recently that show that there are a few non-profits who are giving donors something to talk about.

First up, two examples via the Open Fundraising website.  The first is a fantastic thank you from the Smile Train. Secondly is the launch of LendWithCare.org, which looks like being the UK answer to Kiva and allows people to lend directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Crowdrise is a great site, with huge potential.  It combines a number of things - volunteering, donating, sharing - and gives people the tools to tell compelling stories.  What also makes it stand out is that they offer points to fundraisers, volunteers etc and these can be redeemed for prizes and other goodies. HT to Frogloop - there a couple of other good examples, but this was my favourite.

The next example is the opening of a non-profit restaurant that asks people to pay what they can afford.  Any surplus profits are then used to support people who can't afford food in the local community. HT Freakonomics blog.

Finally, I thought I'd share two 'for profit' sites, that I found interesting.

Kickstarter is similar to Crowdrise and helps people get start up funding for a variety of projects. The idea has been around for a while, but I really like the layout and design of the site and it seems to be attracting some serious money.

Got any design needs? Then 99Designs is a great concept. You set your budget for a design project, upload a design brief, designers around the world pitch to you, you pick your favourite and pay the chosen amount.  The whole thing comes with a 100% money back guarantee and the quality of work looks very good at first glance.

Project losing momentum? Try these simple ideas

I’m starting a new job at the beginning of June and before I leave my current role I want to try and tie up as many loose ends and outstanding projects as possible.

For various reasons, a number of projects have come to a bit of a standstill and I held a meeting yesterday to try and inject some momentum into them, so I can hand over knowing that things are making progress.

I’ve recently read Switch by Chip & Dan Heath and thought I’d try to use some of their ideas to motivate my team to get things done.

The first technique I used was to show the team that many of the projects  were underway and that they were already 20/30% towards their goal.  This was based on the research in the book about loyalty cards (such as at car washes or coffee shops) which shows that people are far more likely to finish and redeem  a card if you give them a head start, such as a couple of free stamps.

For a couple of the projects the issues were that we trying to do too much at once and had been over-ambitious in our goals, which meant that people had got frustrated when progress was slow and abandoned things when they couldn’t see the next steps.  For these projects I ‘shrank the change’ and focused on the small, simple, next tasks that we could do for each project to get things going again and tried to provide clarity over what was needed.

Finally, I reminded the team of past successes, demonstrated how they’d overcome problems in the past (even when things looked tough) and then got all of them to verbally agree to what the next action would be in various areas. 

I followed this up by sending notes with clear, small tasks that each person needs to undertake in the next few days and with a promise that we’ll review these again before I leave.

The next month will tell if these actions will have any impact, but hopefully I’ll be able to report good progress and handover to my successor with a clear conscience.

I can highly recommend the book and there are tons of resources on their website, including this handy one page overview.

Switch on UK Amazon:

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

Congratulations Child's I

Last month I wrote about the Child's I Foundation and how I thought they were a great example of a charity using social media to successfully communicate, engage with, and involve their supporters.

Well it seems I'm not the only one who has been impressed and Child's I have just announced that their founder, Lucy, has been chosen as one of the Vodafone 'World of Difference' winners for 2009.

'World of Difference' connects individuals with charities and gives people the chance to spend a year working for their chosen cause.

Check out the website as there are some really inspiring stories (including Lucy's) and I think the scheme is a fantastic idea.

Never miss a chance to go the extra mile

Received a lovely letter from a donor today.  I promised I'd send her some information and an update on her previous donation and sent it off (with a personal note) last week thinking no more about it. 

She was so touched (I was just doing my job) that she sent me a 3 page handwritten note thanking me and telling me a lovely anecdote about her father's work at a local factory. Also enclosed, much to my amazement - my letter didn't include an ask - was a sizeable donation.

It just emphasised again how important those personal touches are, how you need to inject some of your own personality into communications (and not always follow the standard approach) and that by doing so you can build connections that will reap long term benefits.

This really came home to me when I rang to thank her.  She didn't want any praise or thanks, she actually wanted to thank me for giving her the chance to remember her father, tell her story and to make a difference.  We had a great chat and both got off the phone feeling good about the world.

To me it emphasised the importance of treating everyone as an individual and to give them a chance to share their story and experience.  The key lesson for me was never miss a chance to go the extra mile for someone, you'll reap the rewards in the long run.

Face to Face Fundraising Takes a Battering

Face to Face (F2F) fundraising seems to have taken a battering in the media over the last week or so. 

First up Ben Goldacre (author of the excellent Bad Science book) started a Twitter campaign using the #stopchuggers hashtag to vent about F2F fundraising.  It quickly gained some traction before dying out. 

By the way, for a quite funny rant against the campaign and Ben see the following post  - beware - bad language a plenty!

Second, Professional Fundraising magazine reported on two London councils attacking F2F fundraising and the PFRA.

Finally, the Observer asked the question 'Should we give to street chuggers?' in which Caroline Howe of the Institute of Fundraising argued for it and Richard Marsh of Intelligent Giving argued against it.  The comments make interesting reading and show the frustration some members of the public feel about F2F.  The best comment came from Mark Phillips of Bluefrog (*update* you can read Mark's full comment and some extra insight at his blog), who gives a reasoned and balanced appraisal of the situation, emphasising the need for charities to retain donors and communicate with them in appropriate ways.

I feel some of the backlash is a bit harsh on F2F, as other areas of fundraising are equally guilty of producing low returns and damaging the sectors reputation - cold direct mail for example.  The difference with F2F is that the audience it targets is much more likely to be vocal about it's dislike of the technique and use social media to criticise it.

The other big problem is that it is has become a victim of it's own success and the market is nearly at saturation point.  The PFRA do a good job of trying to regulate the profession, but the agencies and in-house teams are having to work harder for the same money and attrition rates continue to be a huge problem. 

However, in all the debate and criticism no-one seems to have come up with a viable alternative to recruiting new donors on the scale that F2F does.

Fundraising and the Herd

Mark Earls is promoting the new, updated edition of Herd by speaking at the RSA next week.  The talk is free and is highly recommended for fundraisers.

Mark is an excellent speaker (his sessions are usually quite interactive and fun) and he presents a compelling and relevant case for how people are influenced and how we should attempt to change people's behaviour.

Of particular relevance for fundraisers are his thoughts on word of mouth marketing,  co-creation and the importance of finding (and living) your beliefs.

Events such as 'Race for Life', Macmillan's Coffee Morning and the Big Toddle are great examples of the 'Herd' in action and any fundraiser interested in what makes events such as this popular should read the book.

*Update*  The event is now sold out...