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acquisition

How Much Money Will You Waste This Year?

2013 was full of negative press about wasteful charities. Much as we refute the claim the fact is we are wasteful; just not of the things we are accused of. waste not want not

Real waste is the money we spent on PR and strategists who had us cowering rather than robustly defending ourselves. How many potential donations have we wasted by obfuscating instead of standing up? Why did we accept the premise of the accusations and whimper rather than reject it and fight? When did we decide people were too stupid to understand it would take more than a £3 donation to save the world? (more…)

Charlie Hulme Charlie Hulme

In the realm of fundraising senses – 1 Touch me right here!

Budweiser Superbowl HorsesRecently I had the fortune to work with Dan Hill one of the worldwide gurus on emotions applied to marketing. Dan advises the top Fortune 500 companies and political candidates on how to effectively advertise and succeed using emotions. What surprised me talking to Dan is how advanced commercial marketing is compared to fundraising. They understand better how the brain functions (specifically how to use emotions) and are using neurosciences to develop relevant messages and tactics to sell more sodas, shoes and beers. (more…)

Francesco Ambrogetti

A DIY workshop for lead conversion: Do try this at home!

In February I met with fundraisers in Amsterdam to brainstorm how we could engage our various supporter relationships (‘leads’ or prospects) to move them to become donors to our organizations.

And while I suspect that most came to the session “Turning Likes into Cash” to hear the closely held secret to raising donors via social media (spoiler: there isn’t one), I would like to think that most participants left with at least one practical idea that they didn’t have before the session. (more…)

Sarah Clifton

The ask that got the fundraiser

Last week was one of the UK’s largest small donation programme spectacles… Comic Relief. This annual campaign, now in its twenty fifth year has raised over £800m for use in the UK and abroad tackling social injustice and improving the lives of millions. Capturing the heart and imagination of the UK, it has grown from a single day event into a sustained build-up of programming, activity and fundraising that culminates in over seven hours of televised entertainment and fundraising pleas. (more…)

Damian Chapman

Donor Acquisition through Webinars? Worth a Try?

jpg_2033-Laptop-Cartoon-Character-Waving-A-Greeting-300x268I recently received an “exclusive” invitation for “select” guests to participate in a live webinar aimed at getting prospective students to enroll at a distance learning institution. Participants were promised the opportunity to interact with faculty members as they outlined their syllabus, connect with current students and even to discuss career paths with past students. In general the 60 minutes online were agreeable:  informative, fun and, yes, a little pushy – with incentives designed to get prospective students signed up to a course of study as soon as possible. While I decided against this particular course of study I realized there is a lot of potential in this webinar format for making sales and I wondered how it could be used for fundraising? (more…)

Jack Ryan

The last word

This is the very last 101fundraising blog post of 2012 and incidentally also our 200th. It therefore seems doubly appropriate to round out the year with a retrospective look at the year (almost) gone by. Read more…

Sarah Clifton

Live from IFC!

 

This year a number of 101fundraising crowdbloggers are in attendance at IFC, and at this hour we are precisely halfway through the conference. Some of us have given workshops and the rest of us have followed them. We’ve laughed at the good humor of some of the excellent presenters, cried at moving examples of the best DRTV spots from around the world (the award for the best spot went to Action Against Hunger for The Share Experiment), shared a few drinks, and mostly just enjoyed the rare chance to take a break from the “to do” list and share inspiration and ideas with some of the best in our business from around the world. (more…)

Sarah Clifton

Time to wake up to e-F2F

Today, all over the world, thousands of ordinary people will decide to start doing something amazing. Every month, they’ll give their hard-earned money to causes that they may never have heard of before, to help people they will never meet or protect places that they will never visit. (more…)

David Cravinho

Rubbish In : Rubbish Out

Bad Donor Retention Begins With Bad Donor Recruitment (and what you can do about it) 

Why are so many of your donors rushing for the exit?

One of my favourite Internet campaigns of the past few years is The Story of Stuff, which uses a simple but engaging animation as a way to tell the ‘Story’. It makes the obvious point that we inhabit in the same ecosphere as our environment and that when toxics are involved in the production  of our consumer goods there is a consequent toxic output that is damaging to our health, our economy and our environment. The same elementary wisdom reaches us in other nuggets of ‘common’ sense: eat too much greasy food and you’ll get spots, smoke and your lungs will turn black. To put it simply: Rubbish In = Rubbish Out.

This same maxim applies for fundraising campaigns. And in this blog I’d like to especially apply it to Face-to-Face campaigns (though it can apply equally well to any channel where we have control over the prospects we approach). The simple fact remains that if we recruit the wrong sort of donor in the beginning we will not get the sort of results we need in the longer term to achieve our organisations goals.

Rubbish (Donors) In = Rubbish (Donor Loyalty) Out. (more…)

Jack Ryan

Give the donor what he needs …

… not what you want to sell him.

Sounds so easy, you wouldn´t think twice about it. Yet the opposite happens all of the time. Just count the number of  times you´re watching the tele at home, nice and cosy with the kids. And these adverts come on, telling your offspring they should collect these Bagukan action figures of those brand new BeyBlades. And there you find yourself again in the Toys`r´us wondering how the hell you got yourself talked into this, shopping for stuff you don´t want, your kids don´t need, but some marketeer who knows all about ´share of wallet` needs to sell.

And it´s about that feeling “how the hell?” that I want to talk to you, in relation to fundraising of course. Recently I spoke to a guy I know quite well, who has done a lot in fundraising, especially telemarketing. He gave me his opinion on this and I must admit he hit a nerve. (more…)

Peter Goudkamp

Think face-to-face: think mobile

It really does make sense when you think about it. Using mobile as the key device to keep in touch with donors recruited on the street.

Think about it.

The average age of F2F recruits around the world is usually late 20’s, early to mid 30’s.

Almost 60% of Aussies own a smartphone, and around 18% a tablet device. These figures replicated in most developed fundraising nations. Overlay this with age and our key F2F recruits one of the most smartphone/tablet active groups, around 80% of them actively using a mobile device.

Most F2F donors are on the phone (or pretending they are) prior to being approached. Which means they’re “on the go”, as in mobile. Not sitting still.

And let’s face it: a mobile device makes it really easy these days to share content. Great content. At your fingertips.

So why therefore are we stuck in the mid 90’s when it comes to our attitude toward caring for donors recruited on the street? (more…)

Jonathon Grapsas

What’s All This Noise about Not Giving “Thank You” Gifts?

Recently, a small raft of articles have appeared about a new study, published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, apparently showing that offering a gift as a “thank you”  (what we in the industry would call a “premium” offer) can reduce the amount of money people will donate to your charity.

I found this to be old news.  But the press (and some marketing gurus) didn’t.   The top GOOGLE search on this was entitled “Charities: Don’t Thank Donors With a Gift! – Forbes”.Well, that’s the private sector for you:  making studies to “discover” what fundraisers already know. (more…)

Mitchell Hinz