Welcome to the second edition of the Annual Dutch Fundraising Growth Awards! Ok, not really an award show, but we’re gonna talk about Dutch market figures, fundraising growth and ranking the best fundraising organizations. And Read more…
Surely we all want to be charitable, to make a difference with the small amount of money we can spare each month? It’s not even that it’s a selfless gift… signing-up to donate to charity on a regular basis makes us feel good and, provided it’s a cause we’re aligned to, provides a whole new area for research, reflection and discussion (who knows, we may even encourage our friends and family to commit to the cause too). (more…)
I’m asked all the time, “What should I look for in a great gift officer?” “How many years of experience should I require?” “What size gifts should the candidates have closed?” My response, “Experience is Read more…
You are a fundraiser, and therefore you like numbers, right? Next month the Dutch Central Bureau of Fundraising (CBF) will publish their annual figures. In this post I’ll give you a sneak preview on the Read more…
If you are really going for retention in 2013 you have to record the Retention Song with your Fundraising team. I’ve especially adapted Bob Marley’s lyrics for everyone to embrace the area of retention. So, Read more…
I’m sitting in a circle of nine apparently sane people at a beach resort just outside San Diego, California and I’ve just been passed the talking stick. As I grasp its fur-covered handle the eagle’s feather attached to the other end wiggles slightly, indicating that I have to speak. I’m told I have to end my thought, which I’m not allowed to prepare in advance, by saying ‘I have spoken’, to which in unison the group will respond ‘A-ho’, Native American for ‘So you have’. In the near background a barefooted guy with bells on his feet is playing a didgeridoo. These are so-called ‘wisdom circles’ and I’m in a workshop on transforming philanthropy, where on their business cards the organisers have job titles such as the questor, the integrator, the potentiator, the torchbearer and the tribal chief. Fear grips me as I grip the talking stick and wonder ‘What, in the name of sanity, am I doing here?
One week before I had my first day at work at the Cancer Center Amsterdam of VUmc in April this year, my new colleague mailed me with very good news: TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) was Read more…
As a fundraiser you’ve probably heard it before: crowdfunding. Did you know that in 2011 almost $ 1.5 billion was raised through crowdfunding platforms worldwide? And the sky seems to be the limit with this fundraising technique. (more…)
When was the last time you had a discussion with your board or with communication colleagues because they felt that the images of the last campaign were “too emotional”? And do you remember when you Read more…
Two weeks ago I attended my 7th IFC in a row and I had great fun. Every time I go through all my notes in the weekend after the IFC, to think about the things Read more…
Taking risks and failure go with the territory. (Image © francesconegri) Coming back to the office after IFC, I made an overarching discovery that touches on everything else I learned: I am terrified of failure. Read more…
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…
In 2012, our Dutch initiative Alpe d’HuZes raised no less than 32.3 million euros. When we started out in 2006, we raised a little over 300,000 euros, so this year we brought in 100 times more than six years ago. That seems impossible and incredible at the same time, but that is what we do: impossible things. (more…)
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…)
As consumers we are now constantly connected, over two billion of us have 24/7 access to the internet and globally more people have mobile phones than access to electricity or clean drinking water. We are Read more…
A donor is someone who gives money to your organization. A supporter is someone who will support your organization financially or non-financially – or preferably both! My advice is: If you want donors who are Read more…
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…)
The Colonel and the College
On 23rd June 2009 the governing Council of the London School of Economics (LSE) agreed to accept a gift from a group of companies in Libya channelled via the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, controlled by Saif Gaddafi, son of Colonel Gaddafi the country’s ruler. In July 2009 LSE awarded Saif a PhD in philosophy. This story emerged in the media only after the uprising against the Gaddafi regime began in February 2011.
LSE was attacked in the UK press for having accepted the gift and the controversy grew so severe that by March 2011 the Director of the LSE resigned. The LSE Council later funded an independent enquiry led by Lord Woolf.
As Lord Woolf’s report makes clear, when the gift was being considered Libya was being seen as a potential friend by the West. The UN Arms Embargo had been lifted in 2003 and Libya was dropped from the list of “countries that sponsor terrorism” in 2007. The Colonel had met Tony Blair in 2007. By 2009, Libya was seen as progressing steadily in the right direction.
But just two years later the Colonel had become a reputational risk. The School’s reputation had been damaged, and the Director’s neck was on the block. (more…)
This is just one of the questions I’ll be helping Master Class delegates to answer at the International Fundraising Congress.
If you’ve ever considered raising money through direct response television, you really need to make sure your organisation is ready for it. This was really brought home to me earlier this year, when Lucy Caldicott from CLIC Sargent explained to me the issues she’d had to think about before embarking on drtv fundraising with her cause.
So, with thanks to Lucy for the inspiration, here are some key issues for you to consider.
1. Are you televisual?
Sounds obvious really. But to work on TV you need to be able to tell your story in a way that is highly emotionally engaging. It’s not so much an appeal to the heart, head and spirit. It’s more an appeal that grabs you by the guts. Hmm, nice image.
Given the above, it’s no surprise that causes working with children and animals have a head start when it comes to drtv.
Your Top 10 is here again! Giving you the best blog posts that were published in the past quarter.
Read them all! And share them with your fellow fundraisers!
Congratulations to Ken for the #1 position in Q3!
Just writing them is enough, right?
A few Sundays ago, I read an article in the Jobs section of my local newspaper, “The Journal News,”
“Don’t forget the ‘thank you.’” The author, Susan Ricker of careerbuilder.com, was discussing the attributes of a good thank you note after a job interview and it got me thinking about our thank you notes, the ones we all write to donors, event attendees, volunteers, and colleagues inside and outside of our organizations.
Are we getting the job done? (more…)
I’m going to go out on a limb here and make an assumption about you. You’re a fundraiser because you want to change the world. I’m willing to bet you care pretty deeply about your Read more…
The International Fundraising Congress (IFC) is a great place to gain a whole host of ideas and inspiration. But the problem is how do you integrate these different ideas and create a joined up and understandable strategy?
For many organisations the answer is The Strategy Map and complementary Balanced Scorecard. (We’ll call them BSC for short after this.) These are a set of contemporary planning tools created by US academics Norton and Kaplan as recently as 1992.
BSCs are now used by almost 50% of all large companies worldwide for strategy and are becoming increasingly popular among NGOs and INGOs for both service and fundraising strategy. Agencies using them for fundraising range from the giant International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to Terre des Hommes in Switzerland to a small Tanzanian health NGO, Maikanda. And this year at IFC there’s a specific session offering you an introduction to them. (more…)
“Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow’s hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.”
Charles Dickens
Connecting with our most loyal and senior supporters can be the most inspirational thing we do in our career as a fundraisers. It is such a privilege to meet and learn from people whose bodies are aging, but who, as Charles Dickens says, have hearts and spirits that are young and full of vigour.
Today I am going to share with you a little bit about what we are doing in my organization to develop a robust Planned Giving program. (more…)
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…)
