Justgiving

Following last week's blog around how charities could benefit by building closer relationships with their online donors, I've received comments from various charity folks I thought I would share which add to the debate. The Deputy Chief Executive of a volunteering services charity emailed me to ask;

...do charities in receipt of such donations (lucky so-and-so’s) really care about who is sending the money? I suppose giving by text etc is likely to involve relatively small amounts – not insignificant when you add them all up I grant – but only the really big charities with large staff teams have the luxury of relationship-forging with all their smaller donors I would have thought.

And I wondered if charities do think about the donors or just see the events and participants as their 'points of contact'?  If your charity has runners in the London marathon, I'll wager you look after them with T-shirts, training help, cheering and support along the course and maybe even a drink and somewhere to sit down after the event.  But do you know who actually donated all that money?

I've written a guest blog for the Guardian's Voluntary Sector network this week on the question of why charities should build more of their branding into their online fundraising platforms.  It's not about logos and identities, it's about creating more of a relationship between the donor and the charity as well as the one that exists between the donor and the fundraiser.

I believe organisations like Just Giving, Everyday Hero, Bmycharity and Virgin Money Giving (to name just a few) have done incredible work in helping a huge number of people raise money for important causes and so I'm certainly not being critical.  It just seems obvious to me that if donors have more of a relationship with the casue as well as the fundraiser they're sponsoring, then future donations will be easier to attract / develop...

Why is this important?  Because this is how successful charities turn one-off donations into ongoing giving ie; grater financial sustainability.  Here's the article in full, please do share your online fundraising thoughts...

http://bit.ly/zzRxBg

Any regular readers will know how I often lament the lack of great marketing and fundraising ideas making it to fruition.  All too often, decisions are made to bin new ideas because there is no proven track record of success or because it’s simply ‘different to the way things are always done around here...’

This week, I’ve had my faith restored by two approaches to fundraising that in one case is working and in the other, I hope works.  But both are trying something different to stand out from the plethora of charity messages we all receive at this time of the year.