Aggregated External News

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After the recent Newsnight item on Face to face Street Fundraising, or ‘Chugging’ as it’s often called, and this article on the Civil Society website, why don’t charities think about the following ways they could reduce the bad feelings:-

1. Use volunteers.  A large part of the ‘shock, horror’ reaction was the amount paid by charities to the agencies doing the chugging.  Why not use existing volunteers and instantly wipe out this argument?
2. Don’t chug in the street.  It’s younger people who sign up most, it’s that demographic that Face-to-Face succeeds with.  So why not go where they are, clubs, pubs, colleges, universities.  Go there, make a proper presentation, get a better sign up rate and whilst doing this avoid upsetting the other percentage of members of the public whom don’t respond anyway, and just get annoyed.
3. Have a proper, stationary display.  Make it interesting, make it bring people to you.  Then talk to them, enthuse them and sign them up.  Use the 80:20 rule and just concentrate on the 20% who actually WANT to talk to you.  Stop chasing the other 80% down the street.
4. If you do use an agency, negotiate a contract that only pays them if the signatory remains with you for more than one year.  Give the charity the money from year one, THEN pay the agency.
5. Don’t do it.  Sit down and think of a new, exciting, engaging way to raise funds that makes the donor feel good about what they do, that makes them want to tell their friends, that makes them proud to be a supporter.

Was this post useful or interesting to you?  Do you have an opinion on chugging?  If so add your voice to the comments

Image by J. Star via Flickr

Take a walk down to your local high street and pop into the newsagents or stationers.

Spend a couple of £’s on some note cards, something tasteful and cheery

Keep the receipt as it is a genuine expense.

Go through your list of volunteers, supporters or donors that have recently done something great for you or your cause.

Take out a pen and write a small thank you note inside the card you have just purchased.  Yep, write a real note, with a real pen.

And use real words that you would normally say, be genuine, authentic, be you.

Just say thank you, do not ask for anything more.

Address the envelope, again using your real pen in your own handwriting.

Do this on a regular basis.

You may not see any difference for a long time, but believe me, there will be one.

Image via Wikipedia

How would you like a free return ticket to many European destinations as recognition of the fundraising work you do for your charity?

It’s actually not that difficult and in the first of a number of posts I will be writing over the upcoming weeks I want to introduce you to the concept of Travel Hacking.

Better minds than me have written in great detail about this idea, but for now I want you to go out and use one specific idea, to get an easy taster for the concept.

As a community fundraiser or volunteer fundraiser you probably spend a lot of the time in your car, visiting fundraising groups, supporters, donors etc.  Now is the time to put that mileage to use.

OK, here’s how to go about this:-

Firstly you need to sign up for the BMI American Express Credit Card.  Upon acceptance (and most people in our type of job should be accepted) you will be enroled in BMI’s rewards programme.

The card brings a bonus upon acceptance in that if you spend £250 in the first 90 days on your account you will be awarded a bonus of 20,000 destination miles, enough for a return flight to Italy, Spain and many other European destinations.

And in this job it really won’t cost you a penny, here’s the maths:-

Lets say you drive an average of 10,000 miles per year – As a mix of work and personal use. I know I easily do this.

10,000 miles equates to 833 per month.

An average car (mine is very average – the Aston Martin will have to wait) gives about 300 miles per tank.

Therefore I fill up about 2.7 tanks per month.

Lets assume an average cost to fill up of £40.  I’ve been deliberately economical here, many cars (mine included) cost a bit more than this.

At £40 per fill up and 2.7 tanks per month you will spend £108 on petrol each month.

After 90 days you’ll have hit £324 spend, easily qualifying for the free flight.

Now after this the rewards drop to 1.5 miles per pound.  If you want to continue using the card that is your choice, although in my opinion I would then be looking to cancel the card in order to cash in on any new bonuses offered.  Cancelling the card will not end your membership of BMI’s reward programme so you can rest assured that your miles will have been safely banked.

All that’s left is to decide where to go.

If this post has been useful to you, please help spread the word by tweeting, or emailing to anyone you think would find it interesting.

• The best credit card rewards (telegraph.co.uk)

Image by Tattooed JJ

What does your audience want to hear?
What do they really not want to hear?
Give them BOTH.

When making presentations to supporters, volunteers or the general public, the most important thing that you want to achieve is a reaction.

You want them to listen to you, to think and to take action, whether that is to give money, time or support.

Your audience knows that you are from a charity.  They expect you to ask them for something.  And they expect you to challenge them in some way.  Believe me, they really do!

So make sure that you give them reasons why they can feel good – the feeling of making a difference, joining your cause, helping others, being useful in some way.

But also make sure to make them uncomfortable.  Whether with part of your message to them, with a call to think about their conscience, or in the manner that you deliver your presentation.  Ideally do all three.

The combination of the good and the bad feelings is massively more powerful than either on their own.  It posseses a magic to inspire action.

And it really works.

Image via Wikipedia

What do you use to keep all of your ideas and notes together?

Email? a spiral bound reporter’s note pad? a word file? Raiser’s Edge? A mixture of these?

You see that has been my problem.  The mixture of areas where your notes and thoughts ‘could’ be.  And as soon as they ‘could’ be somewhere else, other than where you are looking, there is the possiblility you’ll lose them and/or waste time in remembering where they are.

David Allen coined the term “collection buckets” to describe the places where you dump information and ideas.  He pointed out that the fewer of these you had, the easier it was to find things.  I can agree with him here, and recently I have moved over to using one huge bucket for nearly everything, the brilliant Evernote.

This post is intended to introduce you to some of the ways in which Evernote can help you be a better fundraiser, by allowing you to easily file away information, but more importantly access that information when you need to refer back to it.

At it’s heart, Evernote is a web based notebook that you can use to store web pages, text, picture, sound files and so on.  Anything you send to it can be retrieved when required.  OK this doesn’t sound that amazing, lots of other services allow the storage of notes.

But it’s the clever little touches that actually make Evernote work for me (and I hope you)

• Firstly, it’s Free.  You can upgrade to a paid account later to receive some extras, but to begin with you can try it out and get full use out of it for nothing.
• It’s Uniquitous.  You can access your notes through a huge variety of ways. Go to your notes in any web browser.  Download an application for Windows, Mac, Linux and store a mirrored copy on your machine.
• Mobile access is amazing too.  There are apps to allow you to access notes on iPhone, Blackberry, Android.  So where ever you are, your notes can be pulled up at any time.
• Tags.  You can tag notes with labels that are of use to you.  Say, charity, supporters, fundraising etc.  And then a simple search will bring back all relevant notes.
• Search.  It has a very fast search system.  Need the phone number of Mr Smith who you think lived in Coventry?  Within seconds Evernote will have parsed everything and highlighted any notes with these records present.  And here I mention one of the coolest and most useful features…
• Image search. Evernote can also search images and handwritten text.  Yes you read that correctly.  If you took a photograph with text in it, Evernote can read that too, as well as try to work out any handwritten text that you have sent to it as an image.  Been given a business card?  Just take a picture of it with a mobile phone camera or laptop camera and send it to your account.  Evernote will ‘read’ the text and make it fully searcheable.
• Voice notes. If you use a mobile phone app, you can simply dictate a voice note and evernote will store it for you with everything else.
• Web Clipper.  Instead of bookmarking websites and useful information, with one click of the Evernote browser bookmark you can save whole webpages, complete with links as well as highlighted data.  And again, it’s then all there, saved and searcheable.
• Email. Want to keep a reference copy of an email or even a recent twitter post you have read?  On setting up your account you will receive a ‘secret’ email address.  Anything sent, forwarded, or cc’d to this address will automatically be added to your notes.
• Sharing.  Want to share a set of notes with colleagues?  Yep you can do this too.
• Synchronisation. I have left the best till last, and this gets back to my one collection bucket point.  Everytime you add a note to Evernote, via mobile phone, apps or a desktop client, all of your Evernote clients and applications are synchronised to be up to date.  So however your note arrived in your account, it will be available to all of the other places that you access your notes, automatically.  And that, in my opinion is whey it is invaluable.

There are a host of other benefits to using Evernote, which will probably require a further more advanced post in future.  But for now I want you to consider this fabulous tool, which has really helped me worry less about all of the myriad scraps of information that I am required to hold onto in my day-to-day fundraising efforts.

Get over to Evernote and give it a try.  You may be surprised at how it helps you.  And if it does, please share your experiences and thoughts in the comments section of this post.

• 7 things I love about Evernote (ialja.blogspot.com)
• Handy extras in Evernote – Syncing notes in the cloud with Evernote – butterscotch (butterscotch.com)
• Evernote tips, tricks and how to’s (evernote.info)
• Article – How To Use Evernote to Remember Everything – Part 1 of 2 (tucows.com)

Tomorrow you return to the grindstone after the bank holiday weekend.  Are you feeling refreshed, excited, ready to go?  Or maybe you’re dreading tomorrow, feeling worried and waiting for that slight nausea and deflated feeling to arrive as the working week arrives again.

Well listen, it doesn’t have to be like this.  For a start, it’s a 4 day week coming up so you’re already one fifth through it!  But, there are always things that you can do to kick start tomorrow off as well as possible.  So without further ado here are 5 things:-

1. Do not, I repeat do not check your email first thing.  Spend the first 30 minutes of your working day writing a quick plan of what you would like to achieve.  Spend the time thinking for a while about what would pull you further along towards your important goals.
2. Pick up the phone and call your most important or successful volunteer.  Ask them if they had a good bank holiday break and listen to what they say.  Ask them if there is anything that they need from you at the moment. Make a mental note to get to know then just a little bit better.  It may sound trite, but by spending that time to reconnect, you will have built the relationship even more and this will pay dividends.  Think how it would feel to you, if you received a phone call like this, which was not asking you to do anything, just inquiring if all was OK.
3. Find one person who has made a donation to your charity and again, phone them up.  When you speak to them, thank them for their contribution.  And do so sincerely.  Not only will this make them feel special, but it will make you feel good about your day too, and there is nothing better than feeling good to be more effective.
4. Think about one new way that you could raise funds with your team or volunteers.  Something crazy, unusual or never done before.  And then spend some time writing this idea down and finding 10 ways in which it could be done.
5. Now check your email, but make a point of finding one email that you know could lead directly to raising more funds.  Maybe it’s a new possible contact, maybe its and opportunity to increase fundraising from existing sources.  You’ll know when you see it, particularly if you are consciously looking out for this one thing, rather than passively skimming through all of the messages.

Do these things tomorrow (or any other morning you’d like) and I bet that you will succeed and feel better for the rest of the day!

Our 2010 Christmas Challenge will be the biggest ever and today is your last chance to get involved.

We have already recieved lots of applications. However, there is still time for your charity to apply.

The closing date is midnight tonight (21st July 2010).

The six remaining sectors are:

Human Rights
Children
Ethiopia
Health
Small Charities
Environment and Wildlife

Our Challenge will double thousands of donations to raise £20million for hundreds of charities across a number of sectors. Click here to read more.

To apply now, log into your charity area on www.thebiggive.org.uk

Apply by midnight tonight, Wednesday 21st July 2010. Dont miss your chance to be involved!

We have now launched a further SIX sectors for our 2010 Challenge…meaning there are now even more opportunities for your charity to get involved.

The sectors now open for applications are:

The Big Arts Give – 9 July deadline

Human Rights – 21 July deadline

Children – 21 July deadline

Ethiopia – 21 July deadline

Health – 21 July deadline

Small Charities – 21 July deadline

Environment and Wildlife – 21 July deadline

For more information on the Challenge please click here

The deadlines are coming up fast…don’t miss your chance to get involved!

December might seem a long way off…but we are already planning The Big Give Christmas Challenge 2010!

This year we will be running several Challenge Funds, each supporting a different charitable sector and raising a total of £20million.

Last week, in association with Arts & Business, we were proud to announce our very first Challenge Fund…The Big Arts Give.

The Challenge was launched by Ed Vaizey, the new Minister for Culture, and was a great success – congratulations to Arts & Business!

Here are a selection of the press articles about the launch:

http://www.artsandbusiness.org.uk/News/2010/may/the-big-arts-give.aspx

http://www.philanthropyuk.org/NewsandEvents/Latestnews/PhilanthropistsrespondtoHuntscallformoreprivatedonationstotheartswithchallengefund

http://www.culture24.org.uk/sector+info/art79149

For more information on Challenge Funding, please check out our website. Also, have a look at the Arts & Business website which gives a great overview of how the project will run.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next Challenge announcement…

We have already received a number of terrific entries in our Charity Logo Competition and we are keen to see more!

There is now less than 3 weeks to go before we close the competition and tackle the difficult task of choosing the winners. The Big Give is offering a fantastic top prize of £1,000 to the designer, and £10,000 to their school.

The competition offers all students aged 18 and under the chance to design a logo for a charity on theBigGive.org.uk. With three separate age categories and prizes for the winner of each, there is the opportunity for everyone to get involved.

The closing date is Midday on Friday 28th May, so there is still time to get involved. Click here and register to find out more.