Conor's Fundraising Blog

Fundraising UK  posted about this…… The British Heart Foundation have added a virtual collection to their Help a Heart Campaign.

Is the success of the campaign not based on pin/badge sales? Will this work? Essentially its a justgiving page that someone would normally use to set up for sponsorship…hmmmm Would be interested in the seeing what is raised from this. Will the Irish Heart Foundation follow suit (read my post about Happy Heart Weekend here)

They have a BHF blog and Help a Heart Blog so clearly they are knowledgable in terms of web 2.0

I attended the launch yesterday (May 14th) and will post about it as soon as the Ministers speech is made available (what is taking them so long..its not like it was hand written).

Anyway I think the release of the FRSB stats in the UK has come at a good time as we start to set up the Implementation Body in Ireland. This post by Ian MacQuillin “Do we actually need the FRSB? No…..and yes” makes for interesting reading.

It seems its all about water these days.

Ariel are doing a new campaign linking to water (will talk about that in a few days) and then after my Volvic 1 for 10 postI got a mail from Matt Guttridge, who works for Hyperlaunch and is helping to raise awareness for the Co-operatives Ethical Water Pledge.

The Co-operative are working with The One Foundation  (who were mentioned in the comments of my post) to help provide clean water to communities who really need it. The One Foundation, a registered charity who work with PlayPumps® International. 

PlayPump® is a great system. It doubles as a water pump and a roundabout for children, saving many hours of walking to reach water. The principle is simple; the PlayPump® fills a 2,500 litre tank above ground, which can be accessed through a simple tap.

The Co-operative are donating 5p from each bottle of Fairbourne water sold and it seems that sales of  One Water will also, naturally, go to the project.  The aim is in two years to help 1 million people over 2 years, that means providing 400 new pumps.

They have a nice element to the site and that is making a pledge. Im not sure if the word Pledge was the best to use, how about a Commitment, that is really what they are asking people to do, commit to buying ethical water. I think that would have been good. I wonder would there have been other ways to allowing people to then display their commitment, perhaps a badge for their websites/social networking pages (there is a facebook fan page)….the logo with a tag line?

I know one of the topics that came up when talking about the Volvic campaign was whether or not a corporation was just jumping on the band-wagon (and thats a brief summary!) but I always felt that they were doing the right thing, just because they may not have (like One Water) have been founded with a mission to provide water to those in need, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. I still feel that way. And let’s face it the One Foundation wouldn’t really be able to do what they are doing without the support of companies, so in a way they two campaigns aren’t all that dissimilar?

I like ths one, it is well thought out, nice website to support it and the PlayPumps are great, I had seen them before and was a fan.

Here is a video to tell you a bit more

I met a colleague from Canada yesterday who had just flown into Dublin and, as we tend to do when we arrive in hotels (not sure why?) he stuck on the TV in his room and was impressed by this ad Oxfam are showing. I wasn’t 100% sure on the ad when Aidan Stacey (IHF) sent it to me and I watched it on You Tube, and while Im not normally a big fan of animation ads when I saw it on the TV I liked it. Oxfam are another organisation that do some great ads, they are pretty slick (and I mean that in a good way) in terms of what they do and clearly understand the value of their brand.

Next weekend May 15th-17th is Happy Heart Weekend and this year the Irish Heart Foundation is trying to raise 750,00 Euro from the campaign. I imagine pins (costing 2 euro) will be available in shops across Ireland all this week. We should be hearing a lot from the Irish Heart Foundation this week, they typically do a great job in blending this annual fundraiser with their healthy heart message.

You can find out more about the campaign on their really nice website

Christain Aid isn’t sitting on the fence this morning. They have accused the government of facilitating tax-dodging multinationals to the detriment of developing countries, as reported on RTE.ie.

The charity has released its report ‘Death and taxes: the true toll of tax dodging’, in which it names a list of countries, it says, are guilty of facilitating tax dodging. And Ireland is apparently one of the big culprits. The report states that tax dodging will be responsible for the deaths of some 5.6m children under the age of five between 2000 and 2015

What will the Government response to this will be? Christain Aid have taken the wind out of the sails of the standard response we could expect, ie Ireland gives X more per capita than any other country in Aid…etc..etc.. by stating that the tax breaks Ireland offers are inconsistent with the recent stepping up of its development contribution through aid. ………Over to you Mr. Cowen.

You can read the report here

The European Association for Planned giving are hosting a session called The Nuts and Bolts of Strategic Corporate Fundraising on May 21st from 9.30am to midday. The session is being held in the Charmichael Centre, North Brunswick Street. Click here for more details

I thought this was funny, after my earlier Fr. Dom post I found this where a local news station talks to Fr. Dom about his uncanny resemblance to Steve Carrell

I read this on the AFP Blog. Apparently 100 players across the two tours are going to be wearing Pink Spikes on their golf shoes to help promote Pink on the Links a programme intended to raise money for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

I think the way Breast Cancer Charities have embraced Pink and in so many ways they have made the colour Pink a brand (I honestly can’t help seeing Pink things and thinking about Breast Cancer) is fantastic. What I admire too is that, whilst there are 100’s of charities in the field, they are all working together to make the Pink brand as strong as it can be. Lessons to be learned there I think.

Read the full story here in USA Today

Fundraising Ireland have announced a Legacy Fundraising Seminar entitled: Legacy Fundraising - and everything you ever needed to know about it.

Its a three and a half hour session, with a price tag of 115 euro.  The speaker is Richard Radcliffe

With the title and the price tag….it has a lot to live up to! It is great to see Fundraising Ireland starting to bring these seminars to them so I hope it is well attended. I cant help wondering if the fee charged would be cheaper if it wasnt being held in the Four Seasons Hotel (maybe they are sponsoring it?)

I can’t attend so would be interested to hear any feedback from it.

More information is available here

taken from the Irish Charities Tax Research site

The final feasibility report Regulation of Fundraising by charities through legislation and codes of practice prepared by Peter Cassells and the General Statement of Guiding Principles for Fundraising compiled by the special Working Group established in July 2007 will be formally launched by Minister Pat Carey TD (Dept. CRaGA) at the first of a series of regional seminars to be held in Dublin on the 14th May 2008 in the Davenport Hotel. This will be followed by similar seminars in Dundalk, Sligo, Galway, Cork and Kilkenny.

The purpose of the seminars is to report back on the final outcomes and recommendations of the research project and to indicate what the next steps are likely to be in terms of implementation.

More details aswell as Registration are available here

This is great. First of all I know Fr. Dom and the man is amazing. And his idea is amazing. Here is a company that started ethically if ever there was one. 

Fr. Dominic Roscioli, a retired archdiocesan priest, developed Father Dom’s Duck’s Doo Compost, “food for the soil, in 1987. After Fr. Dom had returned to his Columbus Park area neighborhood in Kenosha, recuperating from chemotherapy he received while fighting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he noticed his neighborhood had deteriorated, and crime had set in.

So Fr. Dom set up a grassroots community improvement group that worked with police to shut down drug houses and a centre of prostitution. It also helped obtain playground equipment, flowers, trees and other items for the  neighbourhood.Funding it all is Father Dom’s Duck’s Doo Compost, the compost is cooked at the Pheasant Run Landfill and Recycling facility in Paris for four months and when its ready it heads to the Kenosha Achievement Center for bagging.

Not only does Fr. Dom do this amazing work he also volunteers at The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. There Fr. Dom met Paul Newman (founder) and the two became friends (Fr. Dom is just that kind of person, you just want to hang out with him and be his friend, he oozes goodness!). As you know Paul Newman has his own range of good stuff Newmans Own and so he offered Fr. Dom help with the marketing.

Originally Fr. Dom wanted to see if they could bring it under the Newmans Own brand, but the marketing people said…we dont want to mix food and compost. Fr. Dom thought that was the end of that until he got a call from the Manager of Newman’s Own who had received a fax from Paul Newman.  He warned Fr. Dom that it was bit rude…..Fr. Dom told him that he had probably heard it all before and to go ahead - it said, ‘Dear Tom, Help Fr. Dom with his shit, Paul’. Classic.

So the similarity between Fr. Dom’s packaging and Newmans Own…no coincidence.

Today Fr. Dom’s Duck’s Doo Compost profits benefit God’s Good Earth Foundation which distributes funds to charities throughout the country that meet basic human needs. The product can be purchased commercially and also is available for organisations to sell as a fundraiser. I am having a little trouble getting onto the website at the moment, but keep trying if you are too.

I posted earlier in the week about how eyes looking out from the page increase response rates, with one pair of eyes working better than two.

Well I wanted to show you some examples that came in my post over the past few days. The first two I think work really well and the last one just left me cold. Let me know what you think:

The one above is from Plan Ireland and I think its a fantastic piece, I would love to know their response, the picture is fantastic.

This is from the Children’s Medical Research Foundation (who I was critical of in my previous post). But you can see why, they have done a great job here (I think I would have lost the word only in the heading though)

This is from Concern, and ok the picture is horrific as is the situation (its really hard to fathom isnt it) but it really doesn’t work, its not engaging and out of all three mailings I got, its the one I paid least attention to.

These mailings were all unsolicited drops into my post within days of each other. We need to remember when we are planning our mailings that that we could potentially be up against 3 or 5 or more charity mailings (and that’s after taking into consideration all the other post that people get…mostly bills!)

I liked this flier from Action Cancer UK recruiting for the New York City Marathon. Changing the shape from a traditional flier to a Big Apple made it stand out straight away and prompted me to take a closer look (I really wasn’t sure what it was for, so I wasn’t just being a curious fundraiser)

The flier was a little bit too big, so that would the only thing I think they could change. But good job. We all know that we need to stand out and this worked

I always think of the Little Britain sketch above when I think of the well known fact that a picture of someone looking directly at you from the page is known to increase response rates, as Paul Dervan comments on his recent post “the real power of one”.  It’s all about the eyes

The example above is, in my opinion, one where they have succeeded in getting it wrong. The principle is there, but the picture just isn’t a good one and I believe that this is a poorly designed poster (on display in Peter Mark hairdressers). I have to say I am a little surprised at the Children’s Medical Research Foundation for putting this out there, they  do great work and some of their DM pieces are so powerful, using this same principle. Perhaps the artwork was driven by the sponsor?

In Paul’s post he remarks that the research shows one set of eyes has a higher response rate than more than one set of eyes (he also makes his point by using a great picture!). The research was carried out by Paul Slovic, of ‘Decision Research’. You can read Pauls post here and Paul Slovic report here

This is a great post on  Understanding Charitable Lead Trusts from the onPhilanthropy Blog. Click here to read the article

I really wish we had a better system for this kind of thing over here.

I wrote earlier about the Sunday Times Rich list which is being printed this Sunday. Last weekend, they published an article called Out of the City, into Africa as rich list at last start giving, .

Similar to the ITV show it was very interesting, especially their commentary on the approach the rich are taking to giving.  It stated that they are bypassing established charities and in some cases are giving directly to the governments in the countries they want to operate in.

These are very successful (understatement) business people so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they look on their giving as investments and they want to make sure they get the best return on their investments, (does it bring you back to my bad language post? maybe this is the place for that new language?)

I was fascinated to read about Christopher Hohn:

a City hedge fund manager, who has given £235.8m in humanitarian aid. The figure is more than twice his remaining fortune of £110m, giving him the highest ever Giving List score of 214%. (Source. The Sunday Times)

There was a quote that I really liked in the article from Andrew Carnegie, a 19th-century steel magnate, which states that a “man who dies rich dies disgraced”. It seems like this years Rich List are living by that motto.

So buy the Rich List this Sunday, but be warned if you think you can write your major gift hit list from it…perhaps you are picking it up for the wrong reason!

You can read the entire article here

Here is a link to the Sunday Times Rich List 2008

The Sunday Times Rich List is being published this weekend and in the past week, for the first time that I can recall, there has been a lot of talk about how the Rich List are giving.

During the week there was a show on ITV, hosted by Duncan Bannatyne, called Giving it Away, Britain’s Rich List, you can (until the end of May) watch the show here. In the show Bannatyne asks Britain’s super-rich (you need to be worth 80 million pounds to make the list, that’s 10million more than last year) if they are giving away as much as they could, or should. He explores not just what they give but also how they give.

“I believe that giving the money you make away is the best reason for making it in the first place and that we rich in Britain don’t do enough yet,” Duncan Bannatyne

During the show he meets a who’s who of Britain’s richest business people (they answer the phone to him!) and talks to them about their giving habits, is even brave enough to challenge them and tries to persuade them to give more.  I found it interesting in the interview with John Madejski when he (Madejski) stated that he got 15-20 asks a day in the post.

Who is sending those letters!? Do they really expect a response or a massive cheque? I hope not, and not because I think Madejski is unlikely to give, but who is going to donate at this level from an unsolicited letter?

By the end of the show (don’t read this bit if you plan on watching it) Bannatyne declares that he intends to set up a foundation to give away his money. He states that

you know that means I’m not going to die the richest man in the graveyard

I disagree, I think it will make him the richest.

Sandra Sims wrote about Reuseable Bags in a post on the Step-by-step fundraising blog on Friday.

In March 2002 the Irish Government introduced a levy on plastic bags, they placed a charge of 15 cent, now 22 cent, for every single plastic bag used. Retailers were obliged to pass the charge on and collect the levy. Retailers then brought in a wide selection of re-usable bags at a range of prices. Tesco Ireland report that the number of regular plastic bags have been reduced by 93% since the levy has been introduced.

Its funny I actually take it for granted that you buy re-usable bags, and its great to see them forming part of retailers environmental policies.

I know Tesco put their charity of the year logo on their re-usable bags (in Ireland), but as far as I know the profit doesn’t go to the charity (I’m happy to be corrected if Im wrong here though)

 I do wonder what the mark-up is on these for retailers. And if it’s significant then should they not be donating some of these proceeds to good causes.

Is this a case of retailers using the environment and environmental issues to look good and at the same time make money for themselves?

Read Sandras post here

P.S. why do they call them Bags for Life…when they really aren’t

I was reading an interesting post on the Whitewater blog from the start of April where the they were announcing that their client, the NSPCC, have decided to move away from asking for Legacy pledges from donors.

The new strategy will

 no longer measure success by the number of legacy pledges but by the number and quality of legacy conversations across all media – both face to face and direct marketing.

According to Whitewaters Chairman Steve Andrews:

“The tail has been wagging the dog. Our need to measure has driven the whole sector’s obsession with pledging. But donors told us that our desire for a pledge put them off. We have come up with a new approach and way forward.”

Interesting approach. The NSPCC clearly do their research and the results show, and with Whitewater they seem to have a great agency (I’ve never worked with them but they seem to be pretty cutting edge). I wonder as Legacy Promotion Ireland are planning to launch their campaign My Legacy, have they taken this into consideration or what their research has told them?