Individual giving

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.

Now that the snow has finally gone, and some of us are still counting the cost of Christmas in both £s and lbs, as well as getting over the shock of being intimately reacquainted with the inside of th

Commissioner Gordon says : I never said thank you.

Batman replies : ... and you'll never have to.

- Batman Begins

But human nature doesn't generally work this way, right. We like being thanked for our efforts and there's no shame in that. And its been empirically established that charities and social enterprises alike are more likely to be successful when they thank supporters and customers (see the blogroll for numerous examples).

After the latest round of Christmas donations, however, I am starting to think that we need to find a better way of doing it. I keep my thank you letters and emails to learn from professionally, and in 2010 I've received nearly 50.

What is it that best motivates a donor to give to your cause? It could be any one of a number of factors (gratitude, duty, idealism, habit etc), but this week I was reminded of a particularly effective one, which some charities perhaps overlook.

As Christmas fast approaches and workloads temporarily quieten in the face of lots of snow and anticipation of the festive break, I have been looking both forwards and back – considering the year just

I recently attended a seminar given by a very knowledgeable chap called Marc Munier from pure360marketing.co.uk.  His 20,000 hours of working with email marketing and campaigning was distilled into a hugely enlightening session which, because it wasn't an open event, I can't share with you.  However, I thought his 10 tips to getting the most out of email marketing were worth tailoring and sharing.  I don't know Marc personally but I'm sure if you want to follow up his ideas, the team at pure360 would be glad to hear from you.

1. Data Capture.  When people visit your website capture email addresses.  use social media, newsletters etc wherever possible to ask for the right amount of information.  What's the right amount?  Basically it's the amount they are prepared to happily give in exchange for the value they think they will receive as a result.

One of the first marketing and communications lessons I learned was to make what you say to a target audience directly relevant to them.  The more emotion that relevance incorporated, the more powerful the message was likely to be and therefore drive the action you wanted.

It's been argued that some charities have taken this approach too far, attracting the accusation of 'guilting' people into donating or supporting.  That is, incorporating too much negative emotion alongside relevance into their messages.