The Thinking Sector

Article from The Fundraiser 28th August 2017

New rules mean the way charities use data has to change, but how we can ensure we still get the information we need for effective donor acquisition? Kirsty Stephenson explores the issue

As donor acquisition becomes increasingly more challenging we can no longer rely on traditional models, nor on traditional thinking, when it comes to fundraising.

Ben Oliver from face-to-face fundraising agency Appco Group Support says, “response from the public to fundraising has become less favourable and sadly as a nation we have developed a ‘heard it all before’ attitude. This doesn’t bode well for the future of our crucial charities. Never has it been harder to recruit a new donor and as such costs have increased.”

Upping our game

So, things have become harder, but charities still need the money to do the good work they do. How do we all up our game? I still stick by the old adage “if you don’t ask you don’t get”, but it is what you ask, how, why and when, that matters. While there is still a place for push tactics, if you want to develop a long-term relationship with your donors then 

1) building empathy with your cause, 

2) forming a connection with your donor and 

3) developing a mutual respect

are all key ingredients.

The general data protection regulation (GDPR) imprinted on the minds of fundraisers in recent months has sent waves of fear with regards to the tricky balancing act between a charity’s legitimate interest in furthering their cause, while not overriding the rights of the individual.

But ultimately, if we respect each donor’s wishes from the very first encounter, then in the longer term both donor and charity will benefit.

Making giving easier

Technology is an enabler to initiating as well as maintaining these long-term relationships and although the charity sector has been embracing digital for some time, most are limiting their organisational focus to the standard digital portfolio (website, online donation form, fundraising profiles, email newsletters and scheduled social media posts). But now, more innovative thinking is required – for example, we know that initial sign-up and payment mechanisms need to change to make giving easier and fall in line with donor expectation. Very few people have the time or inclination to fill out long forms, or listen to odious scripts in order to make a donation to a cause they are interested in. Charities and agencies must evolve their own technologies to comply with new regulatory rules, and adapt to public expectation.

The agency Open Fundraising embraces the concept of making giving as easy as possible – take for example their fundraising success (with the British Red Cross) at the recent One Love Manchester benefit concert for those affected by the terrorist attacks in Manchester. In their blog post about the event they state that, “By the end of the night we’d helped to raise more than £2 million from over 400,000 people who sent a text”. This is incredible - 400,000 all donating £5. A one-off donation from all of those people, no names attached, no address details, just a mobile number and a donation. 

Reversing the trends of declining acquisition

We have become accustomed to pushing the average gift up, to finding out as much as possible about our donors, to bombarding them with standard one-size-fits-all email newsletters asking them for more and more until they give up on us. Then, a few months after we eventually notice they’ve cancelled their direct debit and unsubscribed from our newsletters, we call them to try to persuade them back again. How about we reverse the trend – push the average donor gift down, but inspire them to stick around longer?

As donor habits change, as donors demand new ways of thinking and doing, it is our job as fundraisers to innovate and to rebuild an industry-wide mutual respect. If a donor doesn’t want to hand over their personal data with that crisp £5 note, then it should be their choice.

We can only do that by understanding what our donors want. How much data they want to share, how they choose to communicate with us (and vice versa) and the kind of relationship they are looking for.

Using open data

A lot of this information is available without the donor actively handing over the family jewels. There is a vast array of analytics available – organisational analytics, as well as the big data. Crunching the numbers could enable charities to have a greater impact.

As an example, let’s take George and the Giant Pledge, a small fundraising initiative set up by parents whose 4-year old boy George was diagnosed with childhood cancer at the beginning of this year. Every day without fail mum or dad update their Facebook page with the day’s events. Supporters have followed George through chemo, proton therapy and the highs and lows of being a “cancer family”. The storytelling is real and compulsive. Every day as I react to their latest post – thumbs up, sad face – one of my friends with a 4-year old, 5-year old, 6-year old … reads the same post and follows the same story as me.

Looking at the standard data available on George’s Facebook page will give a pretty clear picture of those following their story – I’m guessing parents, predominantly female, aged 25-44? But what if you linked that data to other (open) datasets, like ….., to make the information more valuable to and provide greater context? What if that data was mapped to statistical information held by central government or NGOs? 

According to this now reasonably dated Open Data and Charities report from the Nominet Trust, “Many organisations are unaware of the open government data resources that are now available to them." I suspect that is still the case.

Where to begin

However, before diving into the data, you’ll need to start with the organisational questions. Get back to the what, how, why and when, and then work out where you can find the information you need, and what use the results would be in providing those key ingredients of building empathy with your cause, forming a connection with your donor and developing a mutual respect.

As I check Twitter on the morning of writing this blog post, I see that International Overdose Awareness Day is trending. A day for remembering lives lost and a re-commitment to doing more. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, focusing on the financial impact of cancer. Over the course of the month, 170 iconic buildings nationally and internationally have agreed to support and raise the profile of the mission by glowing gold.

Let’s face it; charities and agencies need each other. Agencies wouldn’t exist without a client and charities couldn’t achieve their fundraising goals without the skills and strength of external resource.

So why is it all too often, when the going gets tough, they are willing to throw each other under the bus? More often than not it is the agency that takes the hit first.

But they need to work better as a partnership, to collaborate and get the best from each other for the interests of both parties, but also for the supporters. Here are my top tips for a successful charity-agency relationship ...

For most organisations, personalising every supporter email isn’t possible, but there are other ways you can make sure you’re connecting with recipients, says Kirsty Stephenson

As fundraisers, we love email marketing. The brilliance of email is that you can connect with a large group of individuals very efficiently. It is a cost-effective communication method that allows much more frequent and targeted contact with supporters than ever before.

The problem with mass email marketing is that because personalisation on an individual level isn’t usually possible, it’s easy to forget our supporters are real people. We talk in subscribes, opens, clicks, conversions and unsubscribes. We talk about “growing our list”. We can often forget our manners and stop making the effort that would come naturally if we were on the phone or face-to-face.

You might not think you need to ‘fix’ your email marketing, but perhaps take five minutes to think about the following ...

[...] The solution also helps improve operational efficiency for the charity, As Kirsty Stephenson, Head of Digital Strategy and Community Development at Child’s i explains, “The dashboard facility gives us a visual representation of our data, enabling more effective reporting and helping us to make informed decisions.”

It always feels good to thank people :)

I've been a supporter of Child's i Foundation for years now (I've written about them loads of times on this blog). Today I received the loveliest 'thank you' video from them, which they have kindly...

I am fortunate to be visiting a VSO International project in Sen Monorom, Cambodia at the moment. Here is a classroom of very enthusiastic and studious young adults who are being taught to use science equipment (donated to the school) by volunteers. 

I have always been a fan of VSO and the concept of sharing skills - donating time rather than money to change and often save the lives of others. This trip only confirmed how crucial their programmes are, particularly in developing countries.

What I admire the most about VSO is that it isn’t always a “sexy” proposition. Although I do agree with Kirsty Marrins when she says in her Guardian Post “I defy anyone to show me a sexy charity”, but some causes are certainly more saleable than others (babies and animals perhaps?). VSO are not asking supporters to connect with the causes but rather to support the skilled workers that enable those projects to go ahead. It feels very grown up, beyond the gimmicks.

Kirsty Stephenson, digital strategy and marketing manager, explains how Childs i Foundation went mobile on a minimal budget.

Through storytelling and sharing engaging content, Child’s i has been able to retain 60% of its supporters since 2009.

Child’s i Foundation is a small UK charity that works to reunite abandoned children in Uganda with their families or place them in adoptive homes instead of orphanages. Since 2009, they have found homes for over 140 children, provided ongoing support to families, promoted domestic adoption and influenced systemic change.

Kirsty Stephenson, digital strategist and project planner for Child’s i, says that social media has been integral to their fundraising process since the very beginning. As she puts it: “we are unashamed storytellers who believe anyone is a potential donor or supporter, as long as the charity’s story resonates with them.”

In this guest post, Kirsty Stephenson, digital strategist and project planner for Child’s i Foundation, explores how web-based and mobile technology are giving charities new and exciting ways to engage with supporters and increase donations.

Kirsty Stephenson is Digital Strategist and Project Planner for Child’s i Foundation. Kirsty will be exploring digital strategy in more detail at the Institute of Fundraising iFundraising: Digital and Mobile for Fundraisers two-day conference, 22-23 September, London.

Child’s i Foundation is a small charity with a big ambition and a huge responsibility to do the right thing by the parents we support, the children we help and the community of donors and supporters who enable us to exist and continue our work.

Yahoo, this storify I put together of #100forChildsi - the brilliant brainchild of @LondonKirsty has just appeared on the Storify homepage. The campaign idea is getting the attention it deserves!

Hands down this is the BEST use of @Storify I have ever seen https://t.co/dZBuPDyBlr (totally not biased) and no, it's not mine

— Kirsty Marrins (@LondonKirsty)

July 10, 2014

Presentation from @kirsty of Child’s i Foundation at Digital Edge 2014.

DIVE DEEPER INTO SOCIAL PLATFORMS Quality vs. quantity – gain a clear understanding of which social channels are for you and how to extract maximum value from them

To mark Mother's Day in the UK and other countries later in the year we have been celebrated the joy of Motherhood at Child's i Foundation. We wanted to help our supporters remember why it is so important to have a family, what family and parents mean to a child by thinking about our own mother or indeed being a parent.

This is a storify I put together of the activity surrounding the campaign.

It was a couple of months ago now that Alex Swallow from the Small Charities Coalition wrote the blog post "Some frogs are princes - or why size isn't everything" but Christmas is a good time to remind ourselves how important it is to spread the goodwill further than just the charities with big advertising budgets.

It astounds me how many small charities and voluntary organisations there are in the UK and 97 per cent of registered charities get under £1million in income per year. 

I'm on the committee for our local village pre-school which itself is a charity. 

What strikes me is how creative the team are at raising money. They keep the daily fees low (outside of the 15hrs per week Government funding) to ensure this local resource is available to all families in the area. Income is generated by a continuous flow of fundraising initiatives and events (that most often include the children). Be it £1 to enter the sunflower competition, framing the children's pictures and selling them in an art gallery, printing and selling Christmas cards or the big annual fundraiser, the money drips in. And the drip eventually fills the bucket.

The result, the staff are paid and our children thrive in an environment where staff, children and parents alike are involved and able to make a difference to the day-to-day learning of their child's early years education.

I think it is fair to say small charities are less likely to be complacent than bigger organisations. Every £1 raised really does count - "micro payments" to big charities are simply welcome donations to their smaller friends.

I think if you really want to make a huge difference to a cause dear to your heart this Christmas, take the time to seek out a small charity and make a "micro payment" - or something larger - you could change a life rather than help fund a meeting.

This past month I've been going through a process of radically re-drafting the Child's i Foundation story and communications strategy with Lucy Buck and a team of dedicated Child's i enthusiasts. It's been an awakening - for an organisation that is only 4 years old we have already become fettered with jargon. Paralysed by too much information to the point we have confused our audience. How burdensome for supporters, why should people who want to find out about us have to sift through every piece of information we decide to broadcast to make sense of what we do and who we are?

So the buzzwords of the numerous Google Hangouts we've been on in the last couple of weeks have been "lean" and "mean". We're getting a bit radical. We're sifting everything we do through our "values health check" (more jargon but it's just between ourselves) - what does this say about the organisation, does it benefit our supporters, are we doing anything differently, will it be of value to our community, how does it enable contribution, are we staying true to our belief in transparency or are we polishing the edges to make it more marketing friendly? Most importantly are we speaking in plain English? After all what does "languishing" in an orphanage really mean? Do people know what we mean by "institutions" and why "alternative care" is the way forward? It's the stuff the staff and team at Child's i talk about everyday but I can safely say most other people don't. Somehow we have all been duped by the misconception that real communication comes with the sheer volume of information shared via social channels. Posts are lined up on Hootsuite scheduled to broadcast everyday. We get caught up in a whirlwind of sharing. Sharing is caring and all that. We then falsely believe that everyone knows everything about us, after all they are following our journey every single day … yawn. It's then for organisations and causes that the jargon slips in. But despite the timeline nature of many platforms, our absorption of information on social channels isn't linear. We dip in and out. We might have missed the video on why "Our social work centre of excellence" is the best thing since sliced bread so all future references to it will be lost. Having been fortunate enough to be on the panel of judges the Top 30 charity CEOs on social media launch - announced this afternoon at Brook (#socialceos) - it's been fascinating to me to understand what makes somebody successful in championing their cause while establishing a distinct social identity. Being fresh to most of the nominee's Twitter feeds, I wanted to be able to quickly scan their feed (or blog / Facebook page etc.) and know what they stand for and why I would be interested in hearing their news and views. It's all very well they may have an interest in photography or cricket and that is of course important in confirming people are human and not just activist robots. I love a sense that Twitter people are real and not just a communications team a work, of personality revealing itself in 140 characters. But in revealing everything it can all become virtual clutter. That doesn't devalue what they are doing, what we are all doing. After all all we are trying to do is help people get to know us, our cause and hope they want to be part of it.