Individual giving

On holiday in Devon recently, I visited the famous Donkey Sanctuary (yes really!). Two things struck me. Firstly, entry was free – a great way to attract new donors from around the country. Secondly, on the walls around the site were huge boards naming their legacy donors, year by year - and I mean huge! They were unmissable and listed the many hundreds of people who have remembered this charity in their wills. So what can we learn from this?

Do you want to know how to easily write the ideal case study?  So would I. 

Unfortunately, in my experience there are too many variables for it to be ‘quick and easy’.

I’m not going to name names here but in the last fortnight, in the process of helping charity clients to write case studies I’ve come across many articles, e-books and blogs that all suggest a magic formula to what should be included in a good case study.  To be fair, lots of what I found makes sense in that they should be succinct wherever possible, outcomes-focused and in today’s multi-media world should contain images and even video links to show your work or outcomes in action. 

I found some particularly sound advice over at ngo media - if you appreciate an experienced view overlaid with common sense, this is a good place to start.

But here’s why I disagree with those who purport to having THE formula for a great case study – and it’s really obvious if you think about it...

Not all audiences want to see, hear or know the same things about us or our work.

With the well-publicised postage price increase set to be implemented on 30 April 2012 and VAT (20%) to be applied to all forms of postage (excluding first and second cl

There is plenty of free advice on fundraising on the web, but not much from donors. And here is a very good example from the latter type.

Being a bit harder-hitting in our marketing can be a powerful way to create an emotional trigger to encourage action.  That said, it’s also at the riskier end of communications techniques because there is a greater potential to shock or offend recipients rather than inspire them to action.

Anti-fur clothing campaigners like PeTA famously use shock tactics (and lots of stripped off celebrities) to get across their point about animal cruelty and appeal to the audience’s raw emotion.  But, as we know, this doesn’t always work in their favour as even sympathetic audiences can be turned off by communications they deem have simply gone too far.

Last week I was one of the seventy million people who apparently viewed the Kony 2012 video. Probably as good an example of viral marketing as it is possible to get.

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

Whilst social media is still perceived as a cool set of communications tools, the debate continues to rage regarding hard facts-based ROI for fundraisers. This new article and infographic from the Care2 network shows a picture from the USA which suggests these channels are valued but that direct mail is still the daddy when it comes to fundraising success.

I've seen better results from UK charities (the now infamous NSPCC Facebook campaign and Comic Relief to name just two) so what do UK fundraisers think of this experience from the USA? Does it mirror what we're seeing here or are we ahead of the curve in terms of using social media for fundraising as opposed to building awareness?

Sometimes it pays to chase up a fake email. A journalist today forwarded me an email purportedly from the Santander Foundation, which had apparently been received by some charities.