Latest posts
Are You Ok With Ok?
‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’ – Upton Sinclair Over half the charities recently surveyed in the USA said they were unable Read more…
Latest posts
Whose Side Are You On?
And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand – but can you think of a more divided sector than ours? Despite shining exceptions on the whole we’re divided internally, divided from Read more…
acquisition
Want To Raise More Money? Then Stop Asking For It!
Why? Because the definition of insanity is to repeatedly do the same thing and expect a different result. Up to 40% of new monthly givers in the UK lapse within months of sign up. How Read more…
human resources
Why Tell a ‘Story’ When You Can Tell The Truth?
(Or ‘How to bring integrity to your storytelling, while keeping donors and fundraisers loyal all at the same time’)
About half our donors are leaving. According to Third Sector’s latest survey half the fundraisers are close behind them. It seems the only ones staying are the beneficiaries and God knows they’d leave if they could!
Anyone else seeing a correlation here?
But could it be that the answer to both these problems lies in the same thing; a lack of genuine connection to the cause? With all the hype around storytelling it seems we’ve missed the most fundamental point of all…
These aren’t just ‘stories’.
So how has this disconnect affected us and our donors? Let’s start with the much maligned donor, ‘Attriting Annie’ (irony intentional!), blissfully unaware of where she is on her ‘journey’. Why’s she leaving; was it something we said? Let’s face it; she doesn’t cancel regular payments for the things she wants. So the question has to be are we doing enough to make her want to be a part of what we do? (more…)
acquisition
The Fundraising Parable of the Good Samaritan
Claire Squires stood at the starting line of this year’s London Marathon knowing she’d raised £500 for the Samaritans.
Hours later, when news of her death broke, donations were pouring in to her fundraising page at £500 per minute.
Claire’s death is a tragedy – but what does this phenomenon say about us and the state of fundraising today?
There’s no denying this is a tough time to be fundraising. Yet the day after the marathon saw the largest number of donations JustGiving has ever received in a single day – with more than 10,000 people donating at any given time! In just 3 days Claire raised almost a quarter of the £3.8 million that the Samaritan’s receives each year from individual donations. (more…)