kevin baughen's blog

A charity copywriter, editor and communicator that I respect and admire, Gideon Burrows, is starting a new adventure away from his business, ngo.media.  I think his ideas and approach will be missed and I wanted to share one of the things he shared about how to find inspiration for great copy, that has stuck with me for several years.

We’ve said it and read plenty of times about how a great story can help to ‘sell’ your charity to a supporter or donor. But just having the great story is only half the job; it’s (obviously) about how we use the story to underpin a fundraising ask that makes it valuable.

I thought I’d share with you a ‘test’ campaign run by Make-A-Wish UK which is simple in its approach, didn’t cost very much and, in my opinion at least, ticks several of the boxes needed to make a ‘story’ really useful for fundraising.

In that small special mini-sink in between the kitchen sink and the draining board in our kitchen lives a simple chrome cutlery drainer.  You know the sort, all silvery with partitions in it to help your knives and forks stay upright and drain properly.  Nothing flash, just functional and in-keeping with the rest of the sink furniture.

But it's getting rusty.

It wasn't expensive but nor was it bargain-basement, discount-shop cheap.  It's also less than 18 months old.  I don't suppose it has the world's greatest chrome plating but as a mid-price product I doubt it has the world's worst either.

But it's getting rusty.

A product that is intended from the outset to spend much of it's working life getting wet and holding implements that go into people's mouths and that should have therefore been made to be fit for purpose is getting rusty.

Yes this is a blog about Cancer Research UK’s re-brand... but it’s not a typical analysis.  Others have done this already and there’s not much I can add to what’s already been shared (a quick Google search will show you what I mean).

Instead I want to focus on the absence of outrage which I find hugely interesting.  Previous high profile charity rebranding exercises have come under criticism from the sector and donors alike as being at best a vanity exercise and at worst a waste of donors’ funds. 

Possibly every reader of this blog works for, supports or is involved with an incredible cause doing exceptional things. But all of us at one time or another have struggled to the get the media onside to help us tell what we know are truly powerful and engaging stories.

There are lots of resources dedicated to helping us write better press releases and leveraging social networks but I’d like to share a slightly different view; one that accepts the media machine has an agenda, objectives and targets to meet just like the rest of us. Therefore, isn’t it prudent to perhaps accept that this is the case and try to leverage the situation to ensure our stories are the ones that get shared? 

We all receive lots of marketing and fundraising messages I'm sure and it's a tried and tested approach to look at our doormats and inboxes to learn what we can from other organisations. But now I need to engage your help because I don't know why I'm not inspired to give by this campaign from Save the Children.  I will start by saying that I do support Save The Children so I expect this is a 'warm' campaign rather than targeting cold prospects.  But it just isn't inspiring me...

After a little break for holidays and delivering some groovy client projects we’re off on a bit of a tangent with this blog.  Sort of. I’ve had occasion to think about what we do at Bottom Line Ideas and why we do it.  The magic ingredients of fundraising people features made me think about why we still ‘bother’ when things don’t always go our way.

Following my recent blog on the 'magic ingredient' qualities that make great charity people great, plenty of other people have added to the list via twitter, email and – would you believe it – the good old-fashioned phone.

I promised that we would share the collective in another blog so here goes.  By the way, several folks suggested the same qualities so clearly they are important to us but I’ve aggregated here to keep this short and sweet.

To recap, the original idea was that the passion charity people inherently have could be more than just raw ‘passion’... that it probably had constituent elements or at least slightly different ‘slants’ to make it useful as well as motivating.  Consequently, I suggested that energy and empathy were key and this is what other folks added:

Marketing Directors, Trustees and others who sometimes feel the need to make a significant change to how an organisation presents itself to the world will ask this question.  A lot.

The result of senior people raising this question can be a lot of creative workshops for teams who are busy already, potentially an ensive redesign, internal, subjective arguments over what folks like and don’t like and lastly a bad taste in the mouths of regional teams or outposts who feel ‘done to’ by head office again. The next time a senior type asks whether it isn’t about time you refreshed or changed your brand try answering the following before you act:

Several charity folks whose opinions I respect (including @lucyinnovation, @rachelbeer, @stevebridger) contributed to a twitter conversation last month about the importance of passion to fundraisers and more broadly to folks who work with charities.

The argument goes that folks who are impassioned by the causes they work with are generally better fundraisers and advocats for that charity than those for whom working there is ‘just a job’.

Any good leader of people and certainly every great sales person I’ve ever come across would share that view outside of the charity sector too… it’s much easier to sell or promote a product that you believe in.

But why?