gordonmichie's blog

We all know that communication is at the very heart of every relationship.

There is a mind-boggling array of requirements for telephone fundraising as summarised in this week’s telephone fundraising feature by Kaye Wiggins in Third Sector magazine: http://www.thirdsector.c

Yesterday, somebody asked me what was so special about the IFC – was it really worth a week out of the office?

In the build up to this year’s IFC (www.resource-alliance.org/ifc), one of the stories that has leapt out at me is the emergence of ‘Felicity’ donor – the 38½ year old female donor that is re

There are probably some fundraisers who will be a bit annoyed with my colleague Hugh McCaw today.

Hugh – ceo of my company Relationship Marketing – has just published a white paper that re-examines how telephone fundraising is regulated by the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

The news that the Gift Aid reclaim period is dropping from six to four years should be a huge ‘fit up yir @rses’ for a lot of people (excuse the Scots but I’m sure you can work out what it means).

The serious stuff about Alan Clayton’s session on events fundraising was in my previous post. This is the lighter stuff.

Speaking at the event we hosted, Al’s colleague Alex Brooks-Johnson, suggest a couple of new event ideas.

First was the ‘Real Three Peaks’ challenge, because Scotland has the three largest mountains in the UK so what currently passes for the three peaks challenges – taking in Snowdon and whatever that hill in the Pennines is called – is a bit of a poor substitute.

You’re almost guaranteed to discover something new when you attend one of Alan Clayton’s presentations.

Alan’s speciality is donor motivations and at a seminar tis week hosted by Relationship Marketing, he presented for the first time his thoughts on what drives people to take part in challenge events. He detailed a psychographic segmentation of challenge eventers, listed into eight categories – including ‘life changers’, ‘fun seekers’ and ‘excuse needers’ – and spoke about how to communicate with each type of eventer.

Shouldn’t really use the blog for a plug, but when you’ve got Alan Clayton delivering a seminar in your offices to Scottish fundraisers it’s hard to resist the temptation.

Alan has just launched a new events company and will presenting his new ideas on how to read the motivations of challenge events to Scottish fundraisers at a seminar next week (Tuesday 20 April).

If you were about to start a fundraising campaign to your supporters, would it be a good idea to mention the recession to them?

What do you reckon? Tell them or don’t tell them?