kevin baughen's blog

In the last week there have been lots of conversations around why branding is potentially pointless for charities and can be a total waste of hard-earned money.

Well, I’m here to (loosely) use maths and logic, the core tools of good fundraisers, to suggest why this need not be the case.

Firstly, here’s a truism I think we can all agree on:

• Unfocused, generic brand advertising ≠ guaranteed success for a charity’s specific activities

Forget Nike and Lance Armstrong; that was and continues to be just about the huge sums of money involved.  What about when ethical or charity brands align themselves with causes for perhaps the best of intentions but circumstances evolve in an undesirable way?

I was inspired to think about this blog by receiving an email from the Harvard Business Review collating several key works on the topics of leadership and management.  They note in weighty tomes that there is a difference between the two which is something most of us already understand, I suspect.

Backed up by no academic research whatsoever but fed by experience, anecdote and the thoughts of several, very experienced, close colleagues and friends, here are my common sense thoughts on leadership and management in the not for profit world:

I didn’t make this term up, honest.  It was shared with me by my cousin as he was describing what it felt like when senior managers just spew forth ideas that those a bit closer to the coal face suspect haven’t really been thought through... Here’s the Wikipedia definition.

We all know the importance of effective marketing in advance of our events; setting objectives, targeting our audiences, raising awareness of the event and whetting potential attendees’ appetites with sneak previews and relevant information.

But what about during the event itself?

A quick follow-up on the Great Charity Shake Off from Kirsty Marrins

The #CharityShakeOff.

Loved the idea behind the campaign and think something interesting has come out of the initial numbers...

This week’s blog is dedicated to a small group of charities who are trying different things to raise awareness and money.  We’ve talked a lot on these pages about the lack of a ‘success guarantee’ when trying something new but I find myself appreciating these three initiatives for the same reasons:

Nell Edgington shared an interesting perspective on how to get Boards better engaged and working more effectively in her blog at Social Velocity.  The premise was around five questions to ask the Board which made them think about what they were doing to actively support the charity.

I agree with her suggestions but want to add some more as I believe we need to be a bit more specific with our Board members and try to align their thinking with what it feels like everyday to try and deliver the strategies they come up with.

Here's the final instalment of the 12 tips of Christmas series we've been doing with Craig Linton the Fundraising Detective - click on the links for part 1, part 2 and part 3. I hope the tips have given you some food for thought. We'd love to hear your feedback...

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Tip 10: Personalise as much as possible – though make sure it’s cost effective!

One of my colleagues asked me the other day why I bothered writing a personal message in each of the Christmas cards I was sending to donors. She wanted to know “Why don’t you just sign them?”

Here’s the third instalment of our 12 tips of Christmas for fundraisers and charity marketing folks.  Lovingly deliberated over and shared by Kevin Baughen of Bottom Line Ideas and the Fundraising Detective, Craig Linton.

7.  Brands don’t belong to the marketing or communications teams!