Events fundraising at its best

I wrote an opinion piece for Third Sector last week, about a great example of events fundraising in Scotland.

In case you didn’t read about it, I thought I’d share it with you here.

In the summer of 2008, Scope and Capability Scotland joined forces to run the ‘Beyond Boundaries: Ben Nevis Challenge’.

The aim was to raise awareness of their work whilst forging new corporate partnerships.

TV presenter Ken Hames, who in the BBC’s Beyond Boundaries programme led groups of disabled people on treks around the world, approached Scope to suggest a race between teams of able-bodied people led by wheelchair users.

Hames offered to recruit the teams at his motivational training courses.

With a modest budget of £20,000, the organisers not only had to promote the event and arrange for professional marshals to be stationed at points along the route, they also had to commission special wheelchairs for the team leaders.

Eight teams of seven people set off at 15-minute intervals, starting at 6am. Each team aimed to raise £10,000, to be split between Scope and Capability. Two failed to complete the race, but still reached their target, with the event generating net income of £60,000.

Extensive print, radio and TV coverage was secured and participants posted videos on YouTube, including the following:



This is surely events fundraising at its best – partnership between charities, hard work behind the scenes, celebrity involvement and endorsement, several teams, corporate partnership and a tough challenge. But most of all, this was a great idea; and it is this spirit of innovation that drives all good fundraising.

Responding to Ken Hames’ suggestion and harnessing his enthusiasm as they did, the organising team were on the right track from the start. Getting his involvement in recruiting teams was inspired.

However, the success – and that pretty well sums up £60k net income – was only possible because of the fundraising teams’ willingness and ability to work collaboratively. Such collaboration is rare, but the public loves to see it and both organisations will have been seen in a positive light as a result.

The media attention ensured multiple objectives were met: income was boosted, awareness was raised and wider staff morale must have been lifted. And most importantly, by involving wheelchair users in the event, its overall value would have been immense – everyone involved on the day, and people who read or heard about it, will have been given a lasting impression of how able people with disabilities are.

Events teams at Scope and Capability Scotland – you deserve a raise!

Blender shows how to use cheap viral video

The world of social media can seem bewildering.

From social networks such as Facebook and video sharing sites such as YouTube, right the way through to recommendation sites such as Digg and even the humble ‘rate this’ function found on any online shop, many marketers don’t know where to begin.

About 18 months ago, a pair of senior analysts at Forrester Research stepped in to the rescue. Their definitive Groundswell sets out how marketers can exploit these new opportunities. It includes, perhaps most importantly, a model for understanding your target audience and how to engage them in social technologies, by understanding their ‘Social Technographics Profile’.

Groundswell is especially useful because it enables you to keep apace with the ever-changing nature of these media: first, by setting out how to respond to these changes in the book, and second, by publishing updates and new findings on the blog.

Online video: why waste money on TV?
There are various case studies in the book, but I would like to focus on one that superbly illustrates how a little innovative thinking can give a huge return.

Blendtec is a manufacturer of expensive kitchen blenders. With dipping sales, they needed to find a way to stand out. One afternoon, their marketing director saw a pile of sawdust in the testing area – the result of a test to show that the blender was so strong it could blend a piece of timber – and realised people would like to see that for themselves.

He filmed his CEO blending various objects and posted the clips on YouTube. Viewers’ imagination was captured and, aided by a post on Digg, traffic soared. They started a blog, engaging with customers and fans, and people started to suggest increasingly bizarre items to blend. The clips have been viewed over one hundred million times – by people who chose to see them – and sales have spiralled.

The following clip is my favourite. The iPhone – will it blend?!



How charities can do the same
The following clips are both TV ads for charities. The first is the controversial but very successful ad for Barnardo’s and the second is the potentially more controversial ad for Women’s Aid.

Ofcom have banned the latter from running on TV.





Both portray the same truth: sickening abuse occurs behind closed doors. Both show the physical violence in a graphical way. One is allowed on telly. The other isn’t.

It is probably not possible here to debate the intricacies of the societal sensitivities that drive this. I wonder if we are subconsciously too ashamed to acknowledge that some adults treat some others in this way, simply because their strength is greater – whilst abuse of children is less surprising and therefore considered easier to watch.

In any event, the discomfort that the Barnardo’s ad generated is reflected in the number of complaints to the ASA.

However, both ads work incredibly well because although they show desperate images, they give the viewer an obvious way to respond – get involved, support the charity.

As Mark outlines in this post, the Barnardo's ad has been very successful. The ad has increased awareness of what Barnardo's actually does by 33% and, more importantly, 46% of people who have seen it say they are now more likely to support the charity.

Both ads have been viewed by many people on YouTube. The opportunity for Women’s Aid is to drive more traffic to the ads online, playing on the controversy, with clever use of channels such as Digg and Facebook – advertising on the latter being a relatively cheap way of driving additional traffic.

Big budget. Low budget.
You may have spotted a minor inconsistency in what I have written: both these ads were created by ad agencies, and required sizeable budgets.

However, the power of channels such as YouTube is that they can cost next to nothing. Fundraisers, and at the risk of being controversial I would say none more than community fundraisers, are often incredibly imaginative.

Look at what Blendtec has achieved. Although it uses humour, and doesn't deal with the hard-hitting realities that a charity ad might, charities can nevertheless learn some valuable lessons. What is your equivalent to Will It Blend?

£1 pack ancestor from the 1930s

In a dusty back room of a crumbling, disused Methodist chapel, in a small village near Nottingham, an old bookcase stood against a wall.

Tall and dark, its years seemed to weigh even heavier than the stacks of papers that lined its shelves.

The Victorian chapel, seen here in Google Maps, sat on a tiny plot of land. With no space to park vehicles it proved impossible to sell; its owners eventually realised that for the land to be useful the chapel had to be demolished.

As the contractors moved in, to start the painstaking process of taking the building down – literally brick-by-brick to avoid damaging nearby buildings – they found something unexpected in that undisturbed back room.

Under one corner of the century-old bookcase, a broken leg had been replaced with a stack of what looked like sheets of coloured card.

Only when the heavy brown frame was removed did they realise that a small part of England’s fundraising heritage had been discovered.



FOOT OF PENNIES
A Google search reveals only two mentions of this device, both from the 1930s – one in another village near Nottingham, and the other from a village near Pontypool in Wales. Both relate to fundraising for Methodist chapels.

The Foot of Pennies was a variation on a theme still familiar today. It was a device for collecting coins that could be taken home and used in house-to-house collecting or simply in private, family offerings.

Low value engagement
In 1935, one penny was worth the equivalent of about £0.17p or US$0.25c in today’s currency, meaning the Foot of Pennies would only raise the equivalent of £1.33 or a couple of bucks.

And that’s not much more than the £1 pack of today. (Although of course one penny could probably buy more than £0.17 does now...)

My hypothesis is that although it proved a useful vehicle for raising funds, it was primarily intended to work in a similar way to the £1 pack – by engaging the members of the community and building momentum towards regular, higher value giving.

It strikes me that although it is indeed a foot long, it only contains eight pennies. Why not 12? The mini die-cut envelopes, each with a gummed flap, could have been stapled in two staggered rows of six.

In ‘old money’, twelve pennies made a shilling, which would have seemed a more natural fundraising target.

For the historians among you, 20 shillings made one pound, meaning 240 pennies in a pound – in the Anglo-Saxon years of England in the late 700s, 240 silver penny coins weighed 1 pound (1lb).

Maybe the Methodists of the 1930s were unconcerned with price points and maximising their fundraising targets.

What they did appreciate, though, was clever design. The part-gummed, die-cut, roll-folded coin strip was stapled precisely to allow a row of pennies to be inserted.



And given that in the case of this chapel, and in one of the two examples on Google, the Foot of Pennies was used to raise funds for Sunday schools, the coloured cards and relatively small donations would have worked well to engage a younger audience. (Indeed, I wonder how many of our older donors today remember the Foot of Pennies.)

The wording is also worth a closer look: “Kindly help to fill this in” and “Every little helps”. The former is polite and direct, whilst the latter helps overcome any barriers that the small donation amount may raise.

What an intriguing – if little-known – piece of fundraising nostalgia.

Do you know about the Foot of Pennies – or anything similar?
Please add a comment if you do.

I will ensure this is featured on sofii, but if you know of a museum of fundraising, or anything similar, where you think a copy of this should appear, do let me know.

Would you like to own a Foot of Pennies?
I have ten copies from that Victorian chapel to give away. Simply email me with your postal address and I will happily share this delightful glimpse into the UK’s fundraising history with you. First come, first served.

For the very first reply I receive, I’ll also include a 1930s penny found under the old bookshelf – where it had probably rolled during a particularly busy counting session!

Twitter, charities and fundraising

This blog post will be out of date in a week.

Twitterati, hashtags, followfriday and retweet sound to most people like an obscure dialect from an isolated Himalayan valley.

But to some, they are the suddenly familiar phrases of the 140-character world of Twitter.

Outsiders have caught snippets of course. There was the celebrated “There’s a plane in the Hudson”, with the photo that fizzed around the newswires several minutes before even the NY authorities knew.

And who failed to smile when “Don’t tell wifey” accompanied a photo of Demi Moore in her undies, pressing Ashton’s trousers?

Even the cerebral world of BBC Radio Four has enjoyed its fair share of Twoops – my suggestion for ‘scoops via Twitter’ – with political blogger Guido Fawkes breaking the news of the leaked Downing Street slur emails via Twitter.

It is of little surprise, therefore, that charities and their entourage of suppliers and umbrella bodies have flocked onto Twitter.

Heavyweights and many smaller causes, all punching at the 140-character weight.

Twitter, if nothing else, is a great leveller.

And there has been much to excite charities – even in these opening months of 2009.

Twestivals – festivals in cities around the world, organised via Twitter – raised $250,000, which as the website states, “equates to 55 water projects in Ethiopia, Uganda and India, clean water for just over 17,000 people.”

The charity that benefited? The almost unknown charity: water, whose profile has skyrocketed on the back of Twitter – most recently through being the beneficiary of half of actor Hugh Jackman’s $100,000 offered via Twitter.

Mr Jackman’s generosity would, in my view, have been worth more if he had offered $10,000,000, an amount he may have noticed leaving his bank account. As it is, for an outlay of AUS$100k (US$72k!), he has generated publicity worth much more than $10m, at a return on investment of which any fundraiser would be envious.

From one low profile charity to another. Malaria No More has enjoyed similar exposure through Ashton Kutcher’s face-off with CNN. The cynic may say that the offer of $100,000 to fight malaria if he gets one million followers was nothing more than another cheap publicity stunt. Doubled within the week by Oprah, in her high profile entry to the Twittersphere.

Interestingly, the narrowly-vanquished CNN later mused on these developments and wondered whether this hype foreshadowed the beginning of the end for Twitter.

Back to charities, then, and their burgeoning use of Tweets. As a vehicle to facilitate campaigning and supporter mobilisation, it seems perfectly suited.

However, I wonder how many of these charity accounts are simply the ‘new media team’ (as they are often still called, sadly) – unused by fundraisers.

Whether Twitter remains, or even truly becomes, the great fundraising vehicle it has the potential to be is hard to predict.

But one dimension of Twitter that fundraisers around the globe could tap into, and benefit from for as long as its popularity lasts, is its value in connecting people.

I was trying to avoid the ‘networking’ word, but that is really what Twitter is good for. Not in the traditional sense, however.

Twitter connects people by enabling them to reveal the intricacies of their lives to one another. Not the inane “I’m waiting for a bus” Tweets, although many seem to enjoy sharing such details, but rather the moments of reflection, discovery or achievement that would otherwise pass unnoticed.

Skim reading is essential, with hundreds of updates a day to filter, but tools such as TweetDeck make the job easier … and a little perseverance is richly rewarded.

Bad losers

Oops!

Even when we [very occasionally] lose pitches, we're not as sour as this lot from NZ:



Nice creative though!

Innovate

Condé Nast has a tough job.

Consumer magazines is a notoriously difficult segment of the publishing industry.

A brief look at year-on-year ABCs shows just how tough things have got. The following charts show percentage circulation growth, first for men's monthlies, then women's monthlies, and finally women's weeklies - the worst.







Into this maelstrom, two high profile titles have been launched. And although each raises questions, as we shall see, they nevertheless prove that the magazine industry is bursting with innovation.

Of course this giant organisation must innovate, to survive, but its boldness and determination are what impress.

Condé Nast caused a stir with its Beth Ditto-bedraped Love.

Editor Katie Grand commented on the cover shoot: "Everything about the way that Beth looks reminds us not of her imperfections but our own. She has self-assurance and confidence by the truckload. She is happy with who she is and the way she is. Don't we all wish that we woke up in the morning and felt like that?"

Grand continued: "Everything has been botoxed, lifted, sucked and dyed out of the women that represent the absolute aspiration of real women."

Which I agree with. And which is why it is disappointing that the innovative remix on style that Love claims to be evapourates as the first pages turn to reveal the standard fare of botoxed ads for Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Miu Miu, etc.

The publishing behemoth goes on to tell us of the future in its men's lifestyle/ technology title Wired.

Innovation streams through your fingertips, as the rough texture of the cover plays with your senses.

And the cover is not finished with innovation until you have opened the three-panel roll fold image of London in the future - helped by amazing photography from Jason Hawkes.



This in turn leads to a breathtaking four-page ad for Sony Bravia, inside.

Even the launch of Wired was handled innovatively, with bespoke audio ads, featuring editor David Rowan describing the new magazine in a 30-second spot, created exclusively for music platform Spotify.

Unlike Love, Wired is content-rich, and its blend of geeky technology and slick lifestyle content works well.

But given that this US title failed in the UK before, in the mid nineties, and given that beyond this high profile launch issue it promises little more than GQ or FHM without the objectified women, it needs to be carefully judged not to run aground.

However, the innovation in both titles is hard to miss.

And so, as we head back after the Easter break, how can you take inspiration from Condé Nast?

It strikes me that three aspects of being innovative stand out from their recent launches:

1. Never stop putting your customer or donor at the centre of your thinking. Continually ask how you can better meet their needs (e.g. the Beth Ditto image)
   
2. Understand that you don't need to do completely new things - sometimes just doing the old things differently is enough (e.g. the textured, roll-fold cover)
   
3. Look for ways to take your message to your target audience that your competitors still think are too fringe (e.g. the Spotify ads).
   

Bent out of shape

How well do you take feedback?

For many, getting feedback on areas they need to improve can be crushing.

But if you want to go far, you must see it positively.

Feedback is your number one opportunity to develop.

Over the years, there have been [many] occasions when I have not met expectations, when I’ve dropped plates, when I’ve let people down. And in each case, I have endured embarrassing meetings with bosses – and not every boss has communicated constructively. (Although my current boss, with whom I had to endure one such meeting a year ago, handled it very well.)

However, in each case I have managed to coach myself through, and to take the feedback onboard. And I have grown.

The F word
Why do people avoid or deflect feedback? Clearly, factors such as poor self-esteem, low confidence and being unable to deal with conflict have a powerful effect.

But perhaps the biggest single force in getting those defensive barriers up is fear.

Fear you’ll be exposed as a fake. Fear you’ll be cornered. Fear you’ll be rejected.

In Tribes, Seth Godin argues that people are afraid of blame and criticism. He asserts that when people are not remarkable it is because they are afraid of criticism first and foremost.

If you’ve seen a colleague criticised by your boss, the fear sets in. Fear of criticism is a powerful deterrent and it doesn’t even have to happen for its effects to set in.

Now if you are in a position of leadership, you need to take this to heart: criticism stifles creativity.

There is criticism and there is feedback
A nagging, grinding negative voice puts a damper on anything. Mood hoovers can bring a team down … but leaders can be mood hoovers too, and they need to recognise that to be really good they must develop good feedback techniques.

Feedback, in contrast to criticism, can be the thing that turns someone’s whole career around.

Ten or fifteen years ago I worked with an analyst who needed to improve in some areas. Very bright, he was held back by certain weaknesses. Luckily for him, we had a great boss who gave honest and direct feedback (sometimes humorous too, like the time he got a flannel he'd bought specially for such an occasion out of his desk drawer and handed it to me, when I was dodging a question). The clincher for this analyst, however, was that he took the feedback onboard.

He is now Chief Marketing Officer for a global consumer brand.

To paraphrase Godin again, the only thing holding you back is your own fear. In every organisation, people rise to the level at which they become paralysed by fear.

The essence of leadership, he says, is being aware of your fear … and seeing it in the people you wish to lead. No, it won’t go away, but awareness is the key to making progress.

Self-awareness. Now there’s a big topic.

I liken it to sitting on your own shoulder, the whole day, watching yourself in each interaction, checking your reactions, gauging how you’re coming across to others.

Perhaps self-awareness goes hand in hand with being able to take feedback on board.

Without it, you react defensively. You even react aggressively, doing anything to deflect the comments. I saw this not long ago and it distressed me to see great talent wasted because the individual couldn’t take the feedback and admit they’d made a mistake.

How about you? Do you take feedback onboard … or do you get bent out of shape?

From a £1 pack to a £2.5m legacy

In reply to Mark’s post about the pound pack, I thought I would offer two additional perspectives. The first is as a client who bought it, and the second is regarding its power in legacy fundraising.

When I arrived at ChildLine, my incumbent agency was Bluefrog. I remember the concern I felt when I looked at the database and found thousands of donors who had only ever given £3.

“What sort of mickey mouse agency is this,” I remember saying.

I was similarly sceptical when they came in to explain how it worked. I sat with arms folded, wondering how much more flannel they would spout.

But when I had seen a live campaign for the first time, my views changed entirely.

Like many others, I had dismissed the idea at the first hurdle. I was preoccupied with the low value cash gift, and failed to see the bigger picture.

In time, however, ChildLine had one of the most advanced and finely tuned mail acquisition programmes in the industry, generating thousands of prospects, thousands of mid value regular givers and thousands of core cash givers with each campaign.

And 'campaign' is the critical word in that sentence, as the pound pack approach is much more than a cheap tactical trick, but is instead a carefully refined strategy.

At ChildLine, in common with most other charities who used it, initial mail response was around 10%. (Bluefrog is still achieving 12% and more, e.g. for a cancer charity in November 2008.)

A significant percentage of these prospects can then be converted to regular giving via telephone and mail.

But what about those who don’t convert? At ChildLine, we developed the ‘nursery programme’ – a series of hard-hitting mailings that converted roughly 15% to the core cash giving file.

If, after six or nine months, they had still only given the original £3, we sent another pound pack. Response was well above 50%. And conversion calling to them generated more good quality regular givers.

Are you building the spreadsheet in your mind? It adds up.

What’s more, detailed trends analysis we performed on the database, broken down by recruitment source, showed the pound pack regular givers and core cash givers to be the most valuable on the file.

But why the mention of legacies?

A surprising picture is beginning to emerge of the power of this humble piece of direct mail. Three quick examples illustrate our discovery…

A young people’s charity which uses pound packs recently received a legacy of £500,000 from a taxi driver from Hornchurch who had given the organisation the grand sum of £1 several years before. He had resisted every attempt to upgrade, cross-sell or convert him. He had received Christmas card catalogues, legacy mailings and appeal letters. But his £1 remained his sole gift.

A large children’s hospital tested a pound-pack-to-newsletter-to-legacy-mailing strategy about five years ago. Responders to the pound pack simply received a newsletter to affirm their gift, followed by an ask for a legacy. Carefully targeted lists meant a strong response at every stage – and they have already recouped three times the original investment in legacy gifts from those responders.

Finally, only last night, at Remember a Charity’s advertising launch event, one of our clients – an armed forces charity – was telling me about a lady who responded to their pound pack two years ago. She had only ever given £1 to the charity, but when she died late last year she left £2.5million to them in her Will.

It would appear that the immediacy and interactive nature of giving pound coins via a simple card in the post engages even those prospective donors with little cash but great asset wealth – who may otherwise not make it onto a charity’s database.

Perhaps the most important lesson here is the reminder to treat every donor with care and courtesy – even those who only give £1 and who resist every subsequent ask for money.

From anything to everything

A recent conversation between one of my colleagues in our legacies team and one of our clients’ donors went as follows: “Oh thank you for calling; I simply wanted to ask … how much can I leave to [charity name]?”

Slightly taken aback, but sensing a golden opportunity, he managed a calm reply: “Well, from anything to everything.”

“Oh good,” the lady said, “I’m so pleased. In that case, since I have no relatives, I shall leave you my entire estate of property, shares and cash.”

It struck me that this happy tale perfectly represents the way legacy fundraising is the confluence of three different streams of fundraising.

Over the years, this lady had been invited to supporter events, including project visits, but in fact had declined.

She had received direct marketing messages, including a recent letter, to which she replied with feedback on the reasons for her support, and an indication that she intended to include the charity in her Will.

On her reply form she had also ticked the box requesting an in-depth conversation with someone from the charity – entering into more of a major donor or planned giving type relationship, where her philanthropy could be unlocked with one-to-one contact.

As Stephen George of the NSPCC pointed out in a seminar at last year’s International Fundraising Congress (ifc) in Amsterdam, legacy fundraising often falls down because the fundraisers either come from a direct marketing background, and know little of major donors, or vice versa. And even fewer come from an events background – an area about which Iain McAndrew of Save the Children is so fervent an evangelist.

It is this combination of different facets that makes legacies such a dynamic and interesting area of fundraising. But for the same reason it is also one of the most challenging.

Given the potentially broad reach of the Remember a Charity social marketing strategy, about to be seen in a new advertising campaign, I anticipate charities seeing an uplift in enquiries and responses across the full spectrum of legacy fundraising.

If you find yourself in this position, will you be ready?

The Account Team is the agency

When I was a client, my Account Team was the agency.

My Account Director knew my strategy and helped build my budget. She somehow also knew what was happening in the detail. And she was good fun.

My Senior Account Manager was in charge of all the jobs running through the agency. Her role was to deliver each project on time, under budget and over target. And she did.

My Account Manager made it all happen. She was the one who knew exactly which change had been made by whom, when. And she delivered.

Sure, I loved meeting the creatives. I often had lunch with the CSD or MD. I enjoyed getting into the detail of the digital stuff. I was reassured by meeting the production team.

But they were all incidental serfs, at the beck and call of my Account Team - somewhere in the background.

When I sacked the agency, I sacked them.

When I reappointed the agency it was because they responded.

And as success built upon success, and as my managers and their teams gave positive reports, I knew my agency choice was right.

Does this resonate for you?

Remember a charity

Controversial charity consortium, Remember a Charity (RAC), is launching a fresh advertising campaign.

After a two-year absence, our televisions and radios shall once again crackle with this most serious of subjects. Or cackle this time round, as one of the most ingrained conventions of legacy marketing is upturned: humour has been injected into the creative.

And who has brought about such renewal?

As anyone who’s worked with him knows, Stephen George, the body’s Chair, and Development Director for Legacies at the NSPCC, is bursting with energy. And, although not single handed by any means, his leadership, imbued with this dynamism, has both held the consortium together and driven it in new directions.

A fierce advocate of research, Stephen refers to its importance in this new phase of activity in every interview or speech he gives.

A scratch beneath the surface of the new logo alone shows that care has been taken to pay attention to feedback from research.

But despite the now visible progress, RAC remains controversial.

Controversial for one reason: a two-year gap in advertising and a perceived lack of visible progress, combined with the challenges brought by recession, has focused the minds of most legacy fundraisers. RAC membership fees have been weighed even more carefully, and a number of members have pulled out, asking the question, “is it worth it – what else could I do with that money?”

But as the latest advertising campaign breaks, and the inevitable learning and research that will follow it emerges, non-members may well be left wishing they were involved.

Charity consortia often go through rocky patches, where the merits of membership are debated, and any advertising that is generated is scrutinised.

And there will be much to debate and scrutinise now.

The latest RAC campaign is built upon the principles of social marketing, where an attempt is made to change behaviour at a societal level, over time – think drink driving or stop smoking.

It works by using research to uncover the nuance in attitude that affects behaviour. In the case of drink driving, the most recent campaign was built upon an insight that people’s resolve not to drink too much is blurred in the moment they face a “just one more?” decision.

We wait with fascination to see the impact of this latest campaign on the world of legacy fundraising. It is a bold and exciting direction. And 'bold and exciting' is just what we need.

According to the RNLI's Charity Monitor, 41% of adults aged 65+ have made a Will. And 41% of those have included a charitable bequest. That still leaves three in five that don't ... and given that the average for the population is only 15% of Wills with a charitable gift, we face an enormous challenge.

But whatever controversy and criticism – or praise and admiration – this campaign generates, legacy fundraisers could do well to look at themselves first.

Will they be so focused on RAC, their enfant terrible, that the breaking campaign finds them not ready to capitalise on the enquiries and responses it generates?

Romance them

"So Posh, happy David is in Milan?"

"They died as heroes"

"Cheryl flies in, Ashley jets out"

As fundraisers, how can we interrupt our audiences, when we compete with such sugar-rush media?

(The three lines above are on the same front page of just one of today’s free evening papers in London.)

Well in fact, Bluefrog seems to be interrupting rather well – despite the economic gloom. Recent recruitment of cash donors runs at 6% and £11 average gift for one client. And two-stage recruitment of committed givers runs at 12% initial gift and 9% conversion for another. And it is hard to keep up with our adwords and Facebook campaigns.

But our isolated success acts as counterpoint to the fact that Direct Debit cancellations are soaring, as Third Sector reports today.

Why is it that even stewardship-toting NSPCC is watching donors herd onto their online banks and cancel at such intensity?

Simple.

There’s no romance left. One fundraiser recently said that signing up to a direct debit with his charity was like inviting a pack of vampires (if ‘pack’ is the right word) into your home.

But why have charities like the NSPCC allowed themselves to give in to the temptation to put their donors under such pressure? Like bankers peddling sub-prime debt, it seems that the quick wins of cash asks and upgrades has blinded many fundraisers into near oblivion.

The machine-gun staccato of appeal > upgrade > appeal > faux-feedback > appeal > upgrade > appeal has eroded any goodwill that may have been there at the start.

What appears to have been lost is the focus on the donor.

What do donors need?


Our research has revealed that a typical donor has various needs – sometimes as simple as an impulse to help, sometimes as complex as needing to grow or to define themselves. If, through the course of a communication cycle, you can show that by giving to your organisation, their varying needs can be met, you are far more likely to develop a lasting relationship.

Sounds a lot like romance doesn’t it?

I will never forget the moment, many years ago, when I was sat in a launderette, waiting for my washing to dry. Mercedes, the chain-smoking manager, in the middle of doing a service wash for a customer, screeched in delight, “Elaine, ooh, Elaine! Look at this! ‘Ere, can you imagine picking a bloke up in a pub ‘cos you fancied him ‘cos of the bulge in his jeans, only to get him home and find he’s got a pair of these on?!” (Holding up a ‘loin king’ padded thong.)

Looking back, I can see there is a salutary – if a little obscure – lesson for fundraisers in that.

As stewardship guru Karen Osborne puts it, standard donor communications are just, ‘this is what we promise to do with your money’. “Stewardship,” she asserts, is, “‘this is in fact what we did with your money.’ It’s the delivery on the promise.”

Just as employing loin kings is generally an unromantic tactic, so too is the harassment of donors for short-term gain.

If you want to foster long-term relationships with donors, build a mutual exchange with them: one that is fulfilling and stimulating for them.

ActionAid – and other development agencies that offer child-sponsorship – boast industry-beating retention levels. They understand that for their richly rewarded donors, cancelling a direct debit would be like cancelling a part of themselves.

Take a moment today to look at what they do well, and think how to apply it.

Negative waves

Ever worked with a mood hoover?

Hell, they make life miserable, don't they?

Are you a mood hoover?

If you are, you need to dig into the pit of yourself and find a way to become solution-focused, rather than objection-focused.

If you have serious cause to be angry or miserable, you need to deal with it. You will become the cause of your own downfall if you don't, and you will see yourself managed out of your team or organisation.

No one likes working with a mood hoover, even if they laugh along with their negativity. Generally, people like to be around positive, successful, future-focused people.

And if you manage a mood hoover, you need to be brave and sit down with them to explain the impact they are having ... and set clear boundaries that give them no choice but to change.

Kelly's Heroes - to which I attribute around 65% of my personality, values and character - contains several moments of genius.

But the following scene (up to 4m 25s) is the best snapshot of the importance of positive waves I have ever seen.

Past > Present > Future

What will have the biggest impact on the way you perform today? Your past, your present or your future?

Similarly, what will have the biggest impact on the way your team performs today?

Clue: it is not the past.

If you’ll forgive a generalisation, it is not the trauma in a person’s past, or the emptiness of their present, that makes them decide to jump off a bridge; it is the bleakness of their future.

Psychologists, in their complex and difficult therapy with victims of torture, understand that the most powerful aspect of this abuse is that the person’s future is unpredictable and beyond their control. They do not know what will happen next.

Thankfully, you and your team are not enduring something as horrific as that – however stressful things are – but exactly the same principle applies.

If things are uncertain, especially during times of change – and most especially in this climate of general uncertainty – people experience incredible stress and their performance usually dips. So you need to pay particular attention to their future.

As performance coach Struan Robertson explained to me once, you need to map out where things are going, as far as possible, to minimise the insecurity that comes from not knowing.

But even when you simply do not know or cannot say, you must go out of your way to make even the next few steps as clear as they can be.

Then you and your people will be better able to perform well.

Vision
But to turn this completely on its head, the principle of the future being the most powerful driver for performance can be harnessed positively.

Like the sails of a yacht bulging and creaking as they catch a strong wind, bringing a surge in acceleration as the prow cuts through the waves and the hull leans over under the force, so too the future can be something that adds momentum to your performance.

And it happens when you are clear about your vision and strategy. And when you successfully get all hands on deck, as you excite people into playing a part.

Go on! Lead your teams forward.

That was easy

So says the Staples strapline.

And it is.

Call the freephone number. Speak to someone lovely. See the stationery arrive.

Would supporters say the same of your charity?

How are they treated if they request information – or make a donation? What is it like to deal with Supporter Services?

I was asked by one of our clients to speak at their recent fundraising conference. At one point I said that to see the supporter at the centre one must see Supporter Services as the bedrock of fundraising.

What struck me was that afterwards one of their team said to me, “thank you for saying that … no one ever mentions Supporter Services”.

Yet in fact, how often do you send thank you letters, handle complaints or update someone’s contact details?

Work hard not to overlook this most valuable of departments. Look back at my post See > Do > Get and do all you can to harness this potential opportunity to make your organisation stand out through great service.