2013 Christmas Fundraising campaigns… heavyweight fundraising packs

It’s usually after Christmas that we get that bloated feeling but here’s a picture of the Macmillan Christmas appeal received last week, containing  (to the tune of 12 days of Christmas everyone…):

one branded outer envelope

one ‘stock’ letter from Beverly the nurse

two free Christmas cards

two free envelopes

one free calendar

one free bookmark

one response envelope

one free car sticker

one free flat pen

15 free personalised address labels

one campaign flyer

…and a partridge in a pear tree.

The information was generally sound (part 4 on data), the branding clear and the ask simple to follow and directly associated with tangible benefits for people living with cancer.  But do I really need eight free gifts in one pack (OK six if I count the cards and envelopes as the same thing)?  I support MacMillan with a series of cash donations but I didn’t have the will to work through the letter, the flyer and all the other double-sided stuff.  Perhaps it’s too much?

What’s happening to Christmas 2013 fundraising campaigns?

The seasonal campaigns have been dropping on our doormats for a few weeks now  and we’ve noticed a few things that seem to be different from last year:

1. The number of ‘traditional’ direct mail campaigns is falling
2. The number of items in the packs we are receiving is getting silly
3. The lead asks seem to be getting lower
4. Getting the data right is still key to making the recipient respond positively

We’ll post a thought or two every couple of days and it would be great to hear your experiences too.  Here’s the first…

The law of unintended consequences

We read and hear a lot (not least from me) about the importance of innovation, testing new ideas and thinking our way through challenging times.  BUT… something we don’t often talk about is the law of unintended consequences.

Newton’s laws of motion state that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction… in other words, there is always a knock-on effect of the decisions we make.  Consequences are not always immediately identifiable so we can’t plan for every permutation but wherever possible, we should try to think about what the impact of our ideas will be in the future, before jumping into what seem like great initiatives right now.

One of the best ways to plan for unintended consequences is to share experiences so that we can all incorporate them where possible and so here are a few real-world examples (with the names removed to protect the innocent).

Choose your charity celebrities wisely

We’ve written about this topic before across a number of blogs but here’s a belting example from this very morning of why you should think carefully about using celebrities.

Here’s a snippet from my email invitation to the Chain of Hope Ball and there are three things wrong with it from my perspective:

1. The fist two scrolls are full of celebrities darling, and nothing about what the event is for ie; the cause you’re asking me to support
2. The celebrities and entertainment picked seem to be the product of who was available rather than targeted at the (likely) wealthy attendees in any cohesive manner
3. Jeffrey Archer is a convicted perjurer.  A liar on a significant level… and I’m supposed to be impressed that he is running the  charity auction!

And let me add that not putting the price for tickets anywhere doesn’t make your event seem exclusive in the ‘Tattler society page’ way that you hope it does… it makes you seem like you haven’t really targeted your audience well enough to send this kind of email invitation.

So, don’t use liars to promote your cause, don’t assume your audience thinks your cause is less important than rubbing shoulders with ‘celebrities’ (because it isn’t) and try to target people who actually care.  Rant over.

Starting a new Charity Job

In the same week I received a video rehash of ‘what fundraising directors should do in their first 100 days’ and my wife was offered a new job. Having watched the video and re-read Kivi Leroux Miller’s free guide (click on the image), I started to think that there is a pretty healthy list of other things a new fundraiser can do that

Free Guide from Kivi Leroux Miller

aren’t so ‘strategic’ to help start a new role in the right way.

I should explain what I mean by right; setting strong foundations to be effective beyond that honeymoon (however long it is). Here’s an experienced-based list of things I think we could all consider when the time is right for a move:

• Get to know your team, colleagues, peers and boss. So much is written about the efficacy of emotions and personal connections to a cause in fundraising activity, so spend time getting to know those around you on that level. Being able to empathise and relate to your teams makes working together in such an environment easier, particularly if times get tougher and you all need to find that ‘something extra’.

The problem with being ‘competitive’

Organisational wisdom tells us that businesses and charities alike have to be ‘competitive’ to survive.  But what does that mean exactly?

If you ask a business it means making sure everything from pricing to product or service delivery is done to a high standard that attracts customers.  Let’s be honest though; in an increasingly commoditised world market place the reality is perhaps closer to doing things to a minimum standard that doesn’t encourage your customers to look elsewhere.  Being ‘competitive’ is more like an organisation’s ticket to the game and once there, they have to find other ways of encouraging customers to choose them specifically.

Can effective fundraising ever be unethical?

Does the end always justify the means?  Does innovation always lead to an improvement?  Today’s blog is an open question around a service I’m sure many of you have come across this year – as I have recently.  Here’s the story…

A few entrepreneurial groups have started to work with funeral directors across the UK to look after some of the administration around in-memoriam giving.  The companies engage directly with funeral directors to take moneys collected at services or in lieu of flowers and promise to deal directly with the charities concerned, saving the funeral directors time.

There is no charge to the funeral directors for this service so it’s relatively simple to see the appeal of passing all of the administration around dealing with charities to a third party.

The companies then contact the charities concerned and offer to send the money collected minus a fee – some offering gift aid services (although I’m not sure how this is achieved given the anonymous nature of funeral donations) and suggesting that the fee comes out of that extra amount.

The charity can’t send a thank you and receipts to the family (as they would with direct relationships with funeral directors) or manage their records efficiently for future activity because the money arrives anonymously.  There is also no direct link to the funeral directors or the families so no idea of exactly how much has been collected.

Perhaps the key factor is that the donor doesn’t know their donation is reaching the desired charity minus a fee.  Perhaps this doesn’t matter to some, but I wonder…

In one instance related to me by a practising fundraiser, the charity was told that they would pretty much have to deal with this particular organisation as they had hundreds of funeral directors signed up with more to follow.

So, the ROI is great.  The administration burden on charities is low and the funeral directors have perhaps a more simple process for handing over collections.  But is it ethical for this innovation to hide from donors that their donation isn’t going to the cause in its entirety?

Do please register your thoughts on the poll and we’ll share the findings with our readers.

Can you suffer from Twitter withdrawal?

All the training I’ve been on and blogs I’ve read suggest that you shouldn’t start using tools like Twitter for your organisations if you can’t keep it up.  Little and often is the key according to those who know far more than me.

I was delivering workshops for most of last week and didn’t use Twitter at all for three days.  Once I got to this point, I decided to hold out for the rest of the week as an experiment to see what would actually happen for me personally and for our organisation.  Here’s what we noticed.

For the organisation

• Sounds obvious but I had fewer inbound email requests for free help and advice from charities – and we usually get at least a good handful every week
• No new sector events have come to my attention and been added to my calendar beyond those we proactively target anyway
• I have no idea what various sector thinkers and experts have added to the collective ‘knowledge’

enough buzzwords – more action

I followed the Institute of Fundraising National Convention’s twitter stream with interest last week and was, like many of my friends and colleagues in the sector, amazed at just how many times certain words, phrases or ideas came to the fore.

Lucy Gowar’s latest blog sums it up nicely around the use of the word innovation every other sentence!

What amazes me is that here at Bottom Line Ideas we’ve been talking to Trustees, managers and junior team members for over five years about the importance of understanding and managing, not avoiding, risk.  In fact, these blog pages are littered with ideas and thoughts on the subject.  But when a handful of ‘gurus’ talk about the same thing, we must all of a sudden pay attention to the concepts of risk, failure, innovation and learning from them to move us all forwards.

Duh!

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m grateful to the likes of the afore-mentioned folks for raising the issue so publicly and refreshing it in the minds of the charity sector audience, but this isn’t new and it isn’t news.  The fact that the subject of the sector’s risk aversion / fear of ‘the new’ is still making plenary session speeches is just depressing!

Why is Help for Heroes so Successful?

Last week Third Sector reported that Help for Heroes had received over £600,000 in donations following the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.  This adds to the impressive sum of over £150m the charity has raised and allocated in just a handful of years since its creation in 2007.

How come they are so successful when many other established charities are finding it tougher right now?

From an outsider’s (and a sector watcher’s) perspective, here are some of the things I see that seem to differentiate Help for Heroes from other charities:

• Lots of media coverage generated using the powerful and very personable stories of wounded service men and women. Including well-targeted partnerships like the Sun whose readers tend to support the armed forces