I have spent the last few weeks doing all the follow up and wrap up for our first giving week, and analysing the results. There were of course lots of learnings to take forward to our next one, but here are a few of my highlights.

One of the most successful aspects of the campaign was not the people that donated. We tied our campaign into the 150th Anniversary of the school library.  In the pre-campaign mailing, we sent all our alumni and pupils and bookmark in their house colours, asking them to send in a photo of their bookmark in whatever they were reading at the time. This was an incredibly successful engagement tool and over 100 people emailed in or tweeted a photograph. We have even been able to compile a list of everyone’s books as part of our summer newsletter.

The other thing that really surprised me during the campaign was how much of a dialogue we were able to have with people. I very much assumed that it would be kind of a broadcast only campaign but actually I responded to over 150 emails during the course of the week. It isn’t very often that I get to communicate back and forth on a one-to-one basis with that many people, so that was extremely valuable. There was even one alumni who initially emailed with a bit of a grumble, who made a donation after I had emailed him back. That felt like a huge win!

Our main goal for the campaign was to get 200 people to donate, additionally we wanted 50 first time donors, 35 donors under 35 and we were aiming to raise £100k.

I think it is safe to say we were a bit conservative when we set the goals because we surpassed all of these. We had 416 donors donate nearly £110,000. 190 donors made there first gift to the school, and 79 donors were under 35.

Wow, well our first giving day is over. It has been a very long 36 hours, I think I slept for maybe 5 hours in the middle of it all but it has been amazing. One never really knows how these things might go but I think it is safe to say our first giving day has gone better than I could have imagined. 

The whole team was glued to the website for the final few hours and though we haven’t been in the office together for months now, it really felt like the whole team was back together. 

The final result saw us nearly double our target of getting 200 donors and we raised over £100k. We are now victims of our own success as 400 donations need to be added to our database, reconciled with the stripe account and of course the bit I always love, the thank you letters. 

The first tip I have for anyone embarking on this, is get a social media scheduler. I used the one attached to our database, but there are loads out there. This saved me so much time on the day, and meant I could have posts go out on multiple platforms without having to really think about. I know if I hadn’t done this in advance it probably wouldn’t have happened. 

We have about 12 hours to go on our first giving day. It has been manic, But with a monetary lull in proceedings I thought I would write about one experience I have had. 

One of the emails we sent out had a typo. There was the “and” in place of “or”. You would think not a really that bad, but it changed the meaning of a sentence such that it implied people had son’s at the school, when the majority didn’t!!

Our alumni community are fastidious when it comes to spelling and grammar and so unsurprisingly quite a lot of them emailed in pointing out our error. Some found it funny, some asked if we could send them the details of the son they didn’t know they had, a few were a bit more annoyed by the situation. 

Anyway, instead of ignoring these emails I have responded personally to each one. Acknowledging our mistake and using it as a way of having a bit more of a dialogue with our alumni We have even had a couple of donations out of it that I think we wouldn’t otherwise have received.

Our Giving Week is starting to come together. The campaign video is finished and the proofs came back from the mailing house yesterday. I am buzzing with the excitement of it all. This is certainly the part of the campaign I love the most. 

We have continually needed to adapt this campaign to the rapidly changing circumstances of the time.  It was announced last week that none of our pupils will be returning to campus this term. This is really. hard for teaching staff and pupils and a huge amount of time and energy had gone into making preparations for  possible return. 

This has given the need for a virtual end of term celebration. (In steps our giving week)We now have a week of celebrations with 36 hours of fundraising in the middle of it, rounded off by an end of term assembly. This has meant that we now have more involvement from the Comms team and the Head as well as involvement from our pupils. In a normal jam packed summer term staff and pupil involvement in the campaign would have been minimal but now we will everyone’s attention. 

The prefects are organising a virtual inter-house competition which we are incorporating into our giving week and we have now got help from the comms team in producing content for the campaign which is great. 

One of the big contrasts I have found since working at a school instead of a more conventional charity is that fundraising is pretty low down the priority list. Where as in previous jobs fundraising has often been the beating heart of the organisation and everyone knows that without fundraising, the organisation wouldn’t exist, the same is not true at a school. In a game of school top trumps, the fundraising card never wins. 

Over the weekend I made that fatal mistake of checking my work email. I never normally do this and I had instant regret!! There was an email from the Head questioning the timing of our campaign and the breaks were momentarily slammed on. I had set a deadline for a final decision on the campaign progressing 3 weeks ago and I thought everyone was happy. The hardest things about delivering anything at the moment is that it the situation changes fast. In  The school is currently working on plans to bring back at least some of the pupils before the end of term and well the long and the short of it is my campaign has been moved to the last week of term. 

Although frustrating that it couldn’t have been decided on a few weeks ago, it is actually better. I am getting the full support of the communications team, more buy in from the Head and to boot the prefects have devised a virtual inter-house competition so that is one less thing on my to-do-list. 

The agency that we are working with on our giving week told me this week that we are the only people who haven’t postponed their summer fundraising campaign. All the other schools and universities they work with are postponing until at least September. 

Does everyone else know something we don’t? Are we just really lucky that the timing of ours has worked out? Well in part we are. This time last year I had just finished recruiting the callers for our telephone campaign and I think it is safe to say that a telephone campaign at the moment would be almost impossible. There are a lot less logisitics involved in a giving week and crucially it is online!

Our giving week has certainly started to change into more than just a fundraising campaign. When I first discussed the idea with my Manager and Director 12 months ago the concept of a giving week was to engage a younger cohort of alumni into supporting the school. I had looked at the demographics of regular givers and only 10% were under 40 where as 40% of the people that had attended one of our events were under 40. The numbers spoke for themselves. 

Although our primary aim is still to engage our younger alumni and hopefully convert a few of them into donors, our giving week is also an opportunity to bring together our school at time when they are physically apart. Our pupils are all at home and lessons have moved online, and I know that many of them are missing their friends and normal school life. I have been planning content about our different boarding houses since the beginning of the year, so it is a chance to share some fantastic stories and get our pupils involved in a way that the usual timetable would never have allowed. 

At the moment I think everyone is feeling a bit lost. I know I certainly am. We want to feel connected to the people and places we love even though we are self isolating or following social distancing rules. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, my initial thought when this all started getting very serious, was how on earth was I going to be able to carry on fundraising, when everyone would have more pressing and important things on their mind? I sometimes get frustrated when I think people are not making decisions fast enough but actually at the moment not rushing into a decision on our Giving Week is probably the best thing we have done in the last fortnight. 

There are several factors that have made this easier, we have the luxury of time, with 10 weeks still to go we don’t need a decision yet. Our agency partner have been really good at keeping an open dialog and are being flexible and adaptive around us. 

We have already received some donations towards a COVID-19 Hardship fund that has been set up, so we know if people in our community aren’t suffering financially they are willing to help those that are. 

From the outset our giving week has not been about raising money but engaging our community and getting new donors on board. We weren’t really planning on involving our pupils in our first giving week but actually it seems to fit very well. They are feeling distant from the school and their friends. I am hoping our campaign will provide a catalyst to ensure they can feel part of something. The gamification element of the campaign will really appeal to them. 

It really has been a remarkable few weeks. I was using some annual leave last week so wasn’t in the office when lock-down hit. This week, Monday morning greeted me with an inbox of mostly irrelevant emails (because 24 hours later it had changed) and trying to get used to working from home. 

Personally I have found the transition quite difficult. When all my colleagues were getting their heads round it together last week I was having so much needed, socially distant, downtime. They had overcome technology difficulties and figured out that if you just sit at your kitchen table from 9-5 you will actually go mad. This week I have just been playing catch up. I certainly haven’t been as productive this week as I would like, but I think everyone needs time to adjust to a new way of working. I am feeling in a much better place this Friday and feeling quite pumped for the challenges ahead. 

Like many fundraisers, my initial gut reaction to this crisis was that fundraising was just not going to be possible. When our entire community is facing such huge social and economic problems how could we possibly ask them for donations. I am however changing my mind. 

It has certainly been quite a week. I was going to be filming the main campaign video today, but over the course of the last two weeks I have worked from Plan A to Plan D! (Plan D involves filming no one and instead, creating a film with a series of photographs, subtitles and a voiceover (probably recorded by me!)

As things have changed incredibly quickly this week, it has led to us rethinking our plans. Although a giving week can still be done even amongst school closures, social distancing and self-isolation, I have certainly wondered if in 14 weeks’ time it is going to be appropriate to run a fundraising campaign.

The financial impact of Covid-19 has barely started and yet we all know someone who has serious concerns about how they are going to pay the bills, charitable giving is going to be very low down the priority list. We have already had a couple of ideas about reframing our campaign in light of the new financial, political and social climate we find ourselves in.

The school has already received calls from parents who are worried about how they will pay school fees and so shifting our fundraising asks to focus on the very pressing need of providing bursary support for families who are impacted by this crisis is one way we could reshape our campaign.  

Another part of my campaign was including a bookmark in the relevant house colours as part of the pre-campaign mailing. This was going to tie in with the library’s 150th-anniversary celebrations and provide a useful reminder of the campaign. We could send the bookmarks to all our pupils and alumni explaining what we were planning to do, why we aren’t any longer and asking them to send us photos of their bookmark in the book they are currently reading. Thus creating loads of material for social media.

Fundraisers often have to wear lots of different hats. You end up doing things that don't always seem like fundraising, particularly when you don't have much of a budget. I see it is an opportunity to learn new skills and gain experience and our giving week is certainly doing that.

We are working with an agency but outside of their costs, we do not have a budget. I have therefore needed to become almost an entire marketing department. I have been learning lots of new skills: from graphic design to video editing and I have loved taking on the challenge.

Graphic design skills have been largely self-taught with a bit of help from a photoshop evening class. I use an online programme called Canva which is free, although you might want to pay the small monthly subscription for the pro version because then it will resize your designs to any format you like. This is very helpful when you need things for Twitter, Facebook, website etc.

Social media wasn't something I felt very confident in having only used Facebook on a personal level. A friend who works in digital marketing suggested the easiest way to learn was to do. So I now have a Twitter and Instagram account and have just been having a play. I am looking forward to transforming our social media channels with interesting content and hopefully growing our follower base.

Video has been a bit more of a challenge. It plays a key part in a successful digital campaign but it is something I have never done before. A few of the pupils have been making little videos for campaign, and after many YouTube tutorials  I have some very basic skills in video editing using Premiere Pro. (We have a school licence to use this) My next challenge is producing the main campaign video.

One of the parts of my job that I love the most is getting to thank people for their donation. There is such a buzz as a fundraiser when you get a donation in and I love passing that back to a donor in my thank you letter. 

I am a big fan of a really personal thank you and for almost all the thank yous I do at school I tend to do a handwritten postcard. I admit I have the luxury of a relatively small number to do, clearly if you are receiving 100s of donations a week handwritten cards is not practical. But I like it because a card is something someone is more likely to keep, it will sit on the mantlepiece or get stuck to the fridge. I like the idea that every time they see it they are reminded that they give and how great that feels. 

Everyone knows how important stewardship of donors is. Regular givers are a group that can often get forgotten, you send them a thank you when they first set up their gift, but then what?  

We have recently sent a thank you card to all our regular givers, whether they have given for two months or 20 years. For our top regular givers who have given for the longest or given the most, we sent a personalised thank you and invited them to an event. I have six regular givers coming to a dinner next week out of the 44 I invited. I am really pleased that I am going to get the opportunity to get to know them a bit and once again thank them for their support. 

Having good data is key to the success of any fundraising team, but the quirks of your organisation’s database system can take some unpicking.  Last year we updated over 2800 records following a personal information update exercise. Although the data import put all the new email addresses and phone numbers in, what we had forgotten is that it wouldn’t delete the old ones! So much of the last week has been spent tidying up our data. Our giving week campaign is almost entirely digital so clean data and current email addresses are key. 

I know that the key to success in a digital campaign is to personalise content as much as possible. This is going to mean segmenting our data. Knowing we have donors and non-donors, parents and alumni and 11 different boarding houses mean before we have done any real analysis we have 44 different segments. I will keep you posted on whether we manage to have different communications for all these groups. 

At many places I have worked there has often been a disconnect from the fundraising team and other parts of the organisation. People often think that they should just let fundraisers get on with it and they don’t want to be involved. The most successful fundraising organisations are ones where fundraising is embraced across the whole organisation. It is not something that can just be done by the fundraising team alone. 

One of my greatest fears when embarking on our first Giving Week was how I was going to produce all the content for the campaign. Our theme is celebrating the boarding houses and so it isn’t something I can do on my own. We need input from current pupils. Our team has never worked with pupils before so it was going to be something new and so I had no idea how I was going to make this happen. 

This week I have had a big breakthrough. We are a boarding school and term time is pretty jam-packed for teaching staff and pupils. Navigating the timetable and curriculum and working out when there is time for a new project has not been easy. This week I have negotiated to have a homework slot dedicated to the pupils producing things around my theme of the boarding houses. They are going to be invited to produce poems, videos and podcasts etc about their boarding house. 

The pupils and the teaching staff probably won’t think that this is fundraising. Without there help, it would be impossible to create that wonderful feeling of nostalgia that is often the motivation for our alumni to give. I can’t wait to see what they come up with. 

New Year is often a time for reflection as well as looking forward. In the run-up to Christmas and since coming back into the office I have been working on our annual report. At every organisation I have worked for, the annual report/annual accounts are a fantastic tool to shout about what your organisation is doing well as well as talking about your plans for the future. Here the annual report is a fairly meaty affair. It focuses on five stories written by a guest editor. The theme this year is ‘sustainability’ which I think rather conveniently reflects the main aim I have for our regular giving programme.

Regular giving on its own doesn’t always raise huge sums of money. Particularly when compared to our very successful major donor programme. A regular giving programme does, however, have the potential to provide a sustainable source of income to your organisation. Currently, our regular givers collectively donate the equivalent of four full bursaries a year, their impact is significant and provides a stable and sustainable source of income to the school. 

Looking forward to 2020 we are embracing a brand new kind of fundraising, our first giving week. Next week, I have the first planning meeting with the agency we are working with, and so I have been looking at what we want to achieve. The main focus for us is new donors. Although our regular giving programme is established, there is definitely room to grow, only 25% of our active records have ever given, only 11% have ever given regularly and only 2% are current active regular givers. 

So I went to the CASE regular giving conference last week. It was a great two days of learning with lots of helpful takeaways. I thought I would highlight just a few. 

Slightly strangely one of the talks that had the biggest impact on my thinking was one that has made me decide not to do something. As with any fundraising team, we have limited resources and we can’t do everything. One of the presentations was about Global Regular Giving and how to decide whether you should start a regular giving in a particular country. 

It made me realise that although it might seem like there is untapped potential in a particular geographic area or fundraising channel, you need to consider a whole range of factors. Sometimes the reason you aren’t currently doing something is that it actually isn’t worth the time and energy, and that is ok. Taking the time to consider something new in the context of your whole fundraising plan is really important. 

My second favourite talk was about the donor journey, It all seems very obvious stuff but it is good to refocus the mind. Mapping out the touchpoints you have with a donor throughout the year can make sure you are asking them at the best possible time when they are feeling warmest towards your organisation. Using different channels and making sure you have different donor journeys dependent on the contact details and various opt-outs someone has. 

I wanted to start this blog to share the experiences I have as a fundraiser, partly so I can learn from what happens but also that other people might pick up tips along the way. 

A little bit about me first. I have been a professional fundraiser for nearly 10 years. I graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Politics in 2010. The graduate jobs market was in a pretty bad state and I had no idea what I wanted to do anyway. 

My Godmother had made a career out of fundraising and although it was not something I had ever considered it did involve the one thing I did like which was organising events. A week’s work experience in the summer before my final year at university had been the catalyst. The people I met at UNICEF UK that week will probably never know the impact they had on my life but it began the pursuit to do something that would make a difference. Since then I have worked for a whole variety of organisations: a children’s hospital, a children’s hospice, an adult disability charity, and two cancer charities. 

My most recent career move has been to work for an independent school. It wasn’t where I necessarily planned to end up but it has been one of the best jobs I have ever had. I have learnt so much in the two years I have been here and I get to work with a brilliant team and two of the industry’s best fundraisers (in my opinion anyway!)

I am responsible for the individual giving programme at the school which has been a real learning curve having mainly focused on trusts and foundations for the previous five years.