kevin baughen's blog

Right at the outset I will state I'm not asking anyone to vote for anyone in particular in the 2011 Fundraising Magazine's "Most Influential" poll.  In fact, I usually steer clear of the survey as the results don't always seem valuable to people actually having to do the job of fundraising (see Mark Phillips' blog on this subject - I share his well-articulated views).

This year, I'm still not going to encourage anyone to vote for anyone else but I do want to talk about how I believe we all need to think a little differently in terms of how we define fundraising and therefore who is really influencing us and perhaps should be influential in the future.  Here's my case:

Amongst the ongoing debates around business and charity branding, I’ve not seen much discussion around the concept of brand equity. As defined by Wikipedia, this is:

"The commercial value that derives from consumer perception of the brand name of a particular product, rather than from the product or service itself."

For non-profit organisations, this will effectively translate to the sum total of the reasons people support, trust or work with you when they have a choice not to.

Basically, what you do, how you do it and how you represent yourself to the outside world which underpins your attraction to various audiences. So when an organisation has successfully spent years building these reasons for its target audience to trust and engage with it, there can be a significant risk that any change in their brand might undermine these reasons and put future success in jeopardy.

On returning from a lovely holiday in France this week, I’ve spent time catching up on news, emails and generally chasing down what I missed whilst away.

The headline which caught my eye concerned the launch of BT’s new online giving service, myDonate, because it touched a nerve that’s been exposed a fair bit over the last several weeks. Simply put, too much communication from all sorts of sources over-promises and under-delivers. The major splash across pages reporting the BT story was something like “BT enters online fundraising market with fee-free offer to rival JustGiving and Virgin Money”. But it isn’t free, is it.

Charities still pay credit card fees (albeit at reduced rates). On checking my insurance cover for a recent claim I found out that a clause buried deep in the small print and not mentioned during the sales process, meant that I was not covered for what I perceived to be legitimate and accidental damage to my property.

Dear Trustees and Executives

The Sunday Times this week published its list of the top 100 third sector places to work, 76 of which were charities. Whilst the authors wouldn't pretend that the findings are representative of every single charity in the UK, they might help us (I am a Trustee too) as a collective of leaders to think about the factors which make our organisations positive places to work. It seems that there are still significant differences between the commercial and not for profit sectors in terms of what motivates people to work there (no kidding) so I recommend we start focusing on these:

• Charity staff value highly the opportunity to give something back. Perhaps we can make the results of their contributions more specific and more obvious? I'm thinking internal communications, appraisals and reviews... simple and sincere thanks?
• The vast majority believe their organisation makes a positive difference to the world - surely something that we should reinforce with evidence and beneficiary stories wherever relevant to ensure staff stay engaged with the cause.
  

I've been involved with some interesting twitter debate this week around how valuable or otherwise brands are to fundraisers. Kudos to the following for some great quality discussion (even in only 140 characters):

@tobinaldrich@gillmcl @derekhumphries @markyphillips @MarkFlannCEO and @jeffbrooks

One of the best parts of my job is that people bring new ideas to me to develop into workable, real-world solutions for the charity sector.  Sometimes they don't take off but occasionally, I come across people who are thinking really creatively about how to help others.  

I want to share one such idea with you in this blog which potentially sees the financial 'system' working for vulnerable individuals and investors alike.

Following the most recent London NFPTweetup meeting of charity social media users, I was interested to read a thought-provoking and increasingly commented upon blog from @SamRSparrow (aka Samantha Sparrow) about 'slacktivism'. For those of you new to this term, and according to Wikipedia;

the word slacktivism is usually considered a pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts tend to require minimal personal effort from the slacktivist. Examples of activities labeled as "slacktivist" include signing internet petitions, the wearing of awareness ribbons or awareness bracelets with political messages, putting a ribbon magnet on a vehicle, writing blogs or statuses about issues on social networking sites, joining a Facebook group, posting issue-oriented YouTube videos, or altering one's personal data or avatar on social network services

This suggests to me that being a 'slacktivist' is considered a bad thing by at least the authors of the definition, who, are the truly engaged and spend their time moving heaven and earth to change the world. You do indeed do a great job but please get over yourselves.

Samantha's blog suggests that being a slacktivist might not be such a bad thing and that many people are involved with charities at this level. And I couldn't agree more. Millions of pounds have been raised by people wearing charity bracelets. Hundreds of millions have been raised through slacktivists supporting initiatives like Comic Relief, Children in Need and DEC Appeals. I don't see anything pejorative about that.

Read more at the Bottom Line Ideas Blog............

Just a quick thought for now in-between reserach for other articles...

Since the start of this week, I've received nine separate asks for donations or sponsorship from different people doing all sorts of cool things for the causes they support. All of the asks have been via social media and all but one are from connections I have, but that Iwouldn't call close. I checked a few individual's tweetstreams and it appears that they sent quite a number of (the same) asks to their contact lists.

I have no problem with people asking for support, I just wonder how effective it is when we try to scale-up our social media contacts like this?

Our memories can be powerful drivers of immediate and future actions. What we learn as children often shapes the decisions we take and our behaviours as adults. All pretty obvious.

In an attempt to persuade us to part with our cash, many organisations have used the concept of 'retro' marketing to try and tap into the positive associations we might have with a certain brand or time in our lives. The theory goes that we see or hear a marketing message and think "I remember that thing fondly, therefore I'm more inclined to buy the new version".

For the second time in a year, we've seen the Institute of Fundraising's Innovation panel report that an idea borne out of the financial services sector might be a go'er, but perhaps not. A score of three out of five for an initiative that helps fund good causes via activity that investors are undertaking anyway, and that costs the charity a small amount (£250) relative to the donations potential, seems strange.