Fundraising Detective

Friday Fundraising Reading Round-Up

I've been off work this week and (football aside) have had an enjoyable week relaxing and not rushing around.  It's been good.  However, I've still found time to pick out some of my favourite fundraising articles this week.  Enjoy.

Agents of Good surprise and delight.

Mark on value v cost.

Damian puts your donors in the picture.

Ken on the emotional brain.

Howard Lake on the two most important things about fundraising.

Some really good stuff over at 101 Fundraising recently. I liked reading why Kimberley thinks we are all awesome, this stolen recipe for a successful legacy event and Brock with three tips for radical fundraising communications

Passionate Giving on the importance of good admin support.  Relevant for me currently, as it is a discussion I'm having at work.  They also have a good article on influence.

Kivi with some tips on supporter surveys.

Grant Garden with some tips on selling.

Jeff shares six ways your bosses are wrong.

Aline looks at some letters of note.

Ifundraiser on the use of crowd thinking.

Jonathon on why tepid is better than cold.

The Agitator on the demise of Brittania Encyclopedia and donor retention.

Pamela shares a killer annual appeal letter.

Katya on how to improve your online call to action.

Nancy with a case study on how Oxfam America used International Women's Day for campaigning.

Andy with some good thanking customer examples.

Seth on customer service.

Three takes on the Kony video that seems to have been everywhere from Beth, Seth and Jeff! All make some good points.

Finally, here is a selection of some of the best fun stuff on the web in 2011 - excellent if you've got five minutes to kill! (via the Good Experience blog)

Five Fundraising Lessons from the Muppet Movie

I recently went to see the new Muppets Movie and absolutely loved it. 

The basic premise is that Walter (the Muppets' biggest fan) wants to try and get the Muppets back together to save their original studio from being taken over by an evil oil tycoon.

As well as laughing throughout, I also thought there were a few fundraising lessons from the film...

1. You've got to have a dream and passion

It is Walter's undying enthusiasm and passion for the Muppets that brings them back together.  In fundraising, if you're not able to sell your ambitions and dreams and be enthusiastic about your cause then you aren't going to get far.

2. You've got to work hard and use teamwork

The Muppets have to work round the clock to get their old theatre back into shape.  They allocate tasks and everyone pulls together to make sure the work gets done on time. I've yet to have a successful fundraising project, that hasn't required hard work and excellent teamwork.

3. You've got to overcome setbacks and failures

The Muppets have to overcome a number of obstacles and setbacks before finally achieving success.  It is very rare that success is linear. There are usually bumps and problems along the way and you need to have the stamina and fortitude to overcome them.

4. Use emotional intelligence to get what you want

When Walter and Kermit are out recruiting the Muppets to reform they have to use a range of tactics and arguments to persuade people to sign up.  Similarly, fundraisers need to have the emotional intelligence to understand what makes a donor tick and what will inspire them to give.

5. You've got to celebrate success

The film ends on a high and the Muppets celebrate their comeback with a huge street party and sing-a-long.  Similarly, when you have success as a fundraiser you need to take the time to appreciate it and enjoy the moment, before moving on to the next thing.

If you haven't seen the film yet, then here is the trailer:

 

Finally, I thought I'd share the part of the film that had me laughing out loud.  To be fair, I was the only one in the cinema and was getting some strange looks, but I couldn't help myself!

 

Fundraising Reading Round-Up

Hola! Here's another reading round-up to take you into the weekend.  Whatever you are up to, have a good one...

The Non-Profit Coach hosts this month's non-profit blog carnival on self care for fundraisers and non-profit staff.  I need to read this, as I didn't find time to write a post myself!!

Paul reports back from Greenpeace's Digital Mobilisation skillshare with a couple of posts.  This one features his favourite mobile ad ever and this looks at Amnesty and gaming.

The Agitator has a series of posts on working with consultants and share the results of a recent survey.  Some funny, frightening and fascinating insights.

Katya with eight ways to become the most enchanting cause on the block.

Passionate Giving on involving your service staff.

On a related theme, Jonathon looks at how beneficaries can help you understand why you're unique.

Rachel Beer at 101 Fundraising discusses whether online fundraising income needs to be restricted.

Also, at 101, Brock Warner un-defines fundraising.

Jeff on what fundraisers should give up for Lent.

Conor shares an interesting concept with a video from Everyone Gives.

Kev writes over at the Guardian about why online donation platforms should promote a charity's brand.

Alison on the importance of your fundraising database.

Aline on how to frame questions (the post isn't about politics - honest!)

Advice for Good go scouting for major donors.

Beth with some useful tips on upcoming changes to Facebook pages.  She also has this great post on content creation.

Eaon on the relationship between culture and strategy.

Freakonomics on the social pressure of charitable giving.

Using Personalised Videos in Fundraising

I loved this personalised video that London Marathon and Virgin Giving Money sent to all Gold and Silver bond holders recently.

As the technology for this type of personalised video becomes cheaper and more widely available, then I can see it becoming an essential donor care tool.

Here are just three ideas of how you could use them in your fundraising:

1. A welcome video: send donors a link straight after making their first donation with a personalised video thanking them for their support and urging them to give again in the future.  With this kind of video it would be easy to make the donor feel special and a hero for giving.
2. Appeal updates: Send a video after every appeal with a personalised update on how their donation has made a difference and the change that they have helped to make happen.
3. Fundraising events: Like the video above, personalised videos could take event participants on a journey with stories like 'x weeks to go' to the event or 'Sue Smith passes £xx.xx fundraising milestone' or even flag when people haven't yet started to gather sponsorship (a bit more controversial this one).

The possibilities are endless and the only limitations are your data (the personalisation is done by inserting a html coded database field) and your imagination.

Why do personalised videos work?

There are good neurological reasons why videos like this appeal.  The basic one is we are all vain - humans like hearing/seeing their own name!

That's why so many fundraising appeals repeat the donor's name in the copy and why personalised appeals outpull non-personalised ones.

The Neuromarketing blog have lots of examples of this working and some interesting research findings about personalising images and brand perception.

Interestingly, even though people knew the marketing was a gimmick, it didn't make a difference.  People still remembered brands that had used personalised videos and messaging than those that didn't.

Here are three articles worth looking at:

Social Personalization and the Doppelganger Effect

Put your customer in the ad

Put your customer on the product

If you've any examples of charities already using this technology in their fundraising, then I would love to hear about it.

Do we need a street fundraising cap?

The news that Gift Fundraising has gone into voluntary administration took a lot of people by surprise.

As they were one of the largest and longest established street fundraising suppliers in the country, then alarm bells must be ringing across charities and agencies who do face to face fundraising, both on the street and door to door*.

I'm a big fan of street fundraising and want to see it survive and flourish for the foreseeable future. 

However, with more and more site access agreements being struck between councils and the PFRA - which inevitably restrict the days that charities can fundraise on their streets - and with evidence that it is becoming more expensive to recruit donors, then what can we do to try and rescue this method that has recruited so many new donors over the last 10-15 years?

Well, to begin with I'd like to see charities take up more of the 50 ideas suggested to improve face to face fundraising in this article by Ken Burnett.

More controversially, I think there is a natural plateau for face to face and we are either close to, or have already, exceeded it.

Over the years the costs of recruiting people via face to face have steadily increased (direct mail faces a similar problem) and there comes a point where the marginal cost of recruiting the next donor is so high that it becomes uneconomical.

However, to try and reduce the cost and to make it economically viable again, then we would need to introduce a cap on the number of recruits.  If no charity was allowed to recruit more than a certain number of donors a year (be it 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000) and the sector as a whole committed to only recruit 700,000 donors via face to face (around 730,000 were recruited in 2010/11 according to the PFRA), then perhaps we can make face to face fundraising more cost effective and less subject to aggressive hate pieces, like this one that was in the Daily Mail recently.

The big challenge would be convincing charities (especially the larger ones) to sacrifice their short term gain for the long term benefit of the sector as a whole, but the danger is that if we don't act as a sector then face to face might just get regulated, and/or ignored by the public, to extinction, and that would be a shame.

 * Although Gift were a street fundraising agency, I fear the street fundraising 'backlash' will shortly spread to door to door fundraising.

 

Weekend Reading Round Up

I attended another excellent NFPtweetUp this week and enjoyed the presentations on the Beatbullying's 'Big March' and BHF's 'Hard and Fast' campaign.  A big thanks to everyone at Beautiful World for organising it.

Back in the real world, here are some links for you to read this weekend.

Advice for Good comment on some interesting research on predictors of charitable giving.

i-fundraiser on nurturing donors

The introduction article of a six part series on why non profits fail - from the guys at Passionate Giving.

A post my dad would like! Aline with lessons about fundraising from Hancock's half hour.

Tom Ahern on keeping your message and story consistent across communications.

Steve suggests you go ask your mother...

Kivi with a thanking donors case study.

Jeff on why you shouldn't skimp your donors.

Katya on making your audience part of the story.

Margaux on getting away from your desk and connecting with your cause.

Simon George on creating a legacy culture.

Alison on managing selflessly.

Kevin on cutting red tape.

Scott Berkun with two articles on brainstorming and group think.

Successful fundraising needs excellent leadership

There's been a lot of buzz on Twitter this week about the Fundraising magazine story on Christian Aid deciding to dump the Head of Fundraising role.

It's an interesting and brave decision, with the consensus being that it is a bold plan, but one fraught with danger and a high risk of failure.

From my point of view, the best (and most successful) fundraising teams I have worked with and observed have all had a strong leader, who imparts their vision and fundraising philosophy on the team. 

They drive through the necessary changes, make tough decisions and enable people to do their job.  They inspire, cajole and lead the team to success.

For me the big danger in Christian Aid's decision is that no fundraising leadership will lead to no fundraising culture in the organisation.

At the crudest level (and with only limited information), it sounds like they have a fundraising and management team who don't actually like fundraising and asking for money!

I wish them well and would love to be proved wrong, but I can't help thinking that this tweet from Adrian Salmon sums up the situation perfectly:

"Ship dispenses with rudder - says crew can steer 'perfectly well with hands'"

I'd love to know your thoughts on Christian Aid's plan...

Fundraising Reading Round-Up

Time for another reading round up.  I've included a couple of excellent round-ups about the Komen controversy in the US this week.  Whilst it's not strictly fundraising related, I think it makes for a fascinating story (regardless of your views) and a case study in how not to react to a negative story about your charity.

Kivi has a great summary, which Nancy then follows up and again here.  This one is going to rumble on for a while I think!

In the fundraising world, there are some good follow up articles to the relationship Fundraising debate on the SOFII Linked In Group.

Ken Burnett responds with his thoughts.

Kimberley shares her thoughts on thanking and shares a lovely story.

Pamela's 10 essentials of an ideal thank you letter.

Why quality is more important than quantity in major donor fundraising.

Mark shares a case study that raised $65,000 in a day.

101 Fundrasing lose and regain a donor.

Alyson on the myth of fundraising panaceas.

The Agitator on beating your control pack.

Paul shares a great Amnesty campaign from Sweden involving interactive billboards and i-pads.

I was delighted to take part in Q&A about fundraising ROI on the Guardian website this week.  You can read the highlights here.

Di Flatt with some thoughts on communication.

Nancy hosts the January non-profit carnival on dreams.

Advice for Good on who gives to charity.

Finally, a couple of articles on customer service.

Seth on caring.

Kev asks if your left hand knows what your right hand is doing and Copyblogger has a case study from customer service favs Zappo's.

Data Insight + Relationship Building = Fundraising Gold

There's been an intense and fiery debate raging over on the SOFII group on Linked In over whether you should send an ask with your thank you letters.

The initial debate widened to a discussion on the merits of relationship fundraising and the need for data analysis - to me the two aren't mutually exclusive, though some people seemed to think so...

Fortunately the rhetoric and mudslinging has died down a bit and some insightful and thoughtful analysis has come out of the discussion.

The consensus seems to be that the best fundraising is a combination of relationship building and data insight. 

Anyway, the discussion has got me thinking how you can represent this graphically and I've come up with the following:

I've put intuition and data insight on one axis and taking a relational or transactional approach to donor care on the other.  By charting how you go about fundraising, you will fit into one of four categories.

I'll give you a quick overview of each one, starting with the worst:

 Bad Fundraising:  Unsurprisingly the worst type of fundraising.  I'd hope there weren't many charities operating here.  This organisation is likely to have an underutilised database, appalling attrition rates and a high turnover of fundraising staff.  Amazingly, some donors will still give to these organisations!

Amateur Fundraising:  I've seen a lot of charities in this space.  They are filled with good intentions and do create meaningful relationships with some donors and are generally well liked.  However, they let mailing dates move, don't have proper processes in place for capturing information and many opportunities slip through the net.  The worst extreme of this is when you get fundraisers who are scared to ask for money.

Churn and Burn Fundraising:  Treating donors as ATM's, constantly asking, using data insight to maximise short term income and the optimum number of 'asks' can be surprisingly effective (especially in the short term).  You 'churn' through your donors as quickly as possible and are constantly looking for new donors.  However, as response rates to cold mailings have decreased and the costs of recruiting donors has increased, this is increasingly hard to pull off.

Relationship Fundraising:  The best of both worlds.  You treat people with respect, listen to them and try to engage them for the long term.  However, you also use data insight to target donors appropriately, have a rigorous approach to testing to maximise your returns and monitor things like lifetime value.  This is the space I want to be and it is the combination that I believe will raise the most money. 

If anyone has any feedback on this or some better names for the segments then I would love to hear from you!

 

If you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?

This post is my submission to the January edition of the Non-Profit Blog carnival. This month’s carnival is being hosted by Nancy Schwartz of the Getting Attention blog.

Most non-profits were built on a dream. An aspiration. A vision for the future.

Just take a second to think of the non-profits you support. What is the dream that you are buying into that makes you give?

Winning the fight against cancer.

Eradicating poverty.

Ending child abuse.

Whatever it is, it is likely to be aspirational and motivated by a desire to do good and help change the world for the better.

It’s all too easy to forget your dreams and get tied up in small details, endless meetings and trivia that distract from your effectiveness.

Have a think about the last time you visited a project, spoke to a beneficiary or went and chatted to your programme staff.

If it has been too long, why not make it a commitment in 2012 to take time to re-connect yourself to the dream that made you want to be a fundraiser in the first place…