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loyalty

The Known Unknowns

Donald Rumsfeld said, “There are known knowns – These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns – That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know.”

I don’t make a habit of quoting Donald Rumsfeld but that’s a phrase that keeps coming to mind over the last few months here in Ireland. You see, fundraisers (or at least some fundraisers) are taking a battering. Two big charity scandals resulted in Board resignations and disappearing CEOs and we’re all feeling the effects in some shape or form. (more…)

Simon Scriver

Where to find all that money you’re losing

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You’re grocery shopping on a tight budget. You’ve got everything you need and a few things you want. You approach checkout knowing the £40 in your pocket will just about cover everything. But when you come to pay you find you’ve lost £10. Do you:

1)      Look for the missing £10 (you know you had it a moment ago)?

2)      Decide to do without a quarter of what you intended to get? (more…)

Charlie Hulme Charlie Hulme

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

Friendraising, what’s in it for you?

IFC series“Everybody who donates to our organization is a friend to us. We make no difference in how we treat our donors.” It’s about a year ago when Eveline Aendekerk, executive director of dance4life, said this to me. At first I thought she shared this as her ‘vision on fundraising’ to me, as a lot of fundraisers do. But she went on and told me about the friends4life concept. And I learned that when Eveline talks about her donors as her friends, she means it literally. (more…)

Vera Peerdeman

Panning for gold

Identifying those crucial supporter insights that underpin all great new fundraising products In preparing for our Innovation Masterclass at the IFC, Andrew Bathgate of Good Innovation, Rob Cummins of ActionAid UK and myself were clear Read more…

Gavin Coopey

Dear Fundraiser: What, exactly, is Your “Product”?

I’ve been reading Peter Drucker lately.  In case you don’t know, Peter Drucker was one of the first management gurus of the 50’s, and one of the most influential of all times.  As Mr. Drucker got older, he turned his talents to nonprofits, first opening a foundation for nonprofit management, and then donating his own time and energy to the social sector. His book, Managing the Nonprofit Organization, first published in 1990, was a seminal work in our field.

In 2005, just after he died, Bloomsberg News posted a fundraising challenge to the NGO world:  “Convert donors into contributors”,  Drucker had said in his last days.  “If nonprofit groups are to acquire more financial resources, those who give will need to feel more like participants.”

So, has this advice from the sage of NGO management held up? Are today’s NGOs creating more – or better – donors using methods of “engagement”?   It’s definitely the buzzword of the social-media decade,  but is it working?  Or rather, how is it playing out? (more…)

Mitchell Hinz

The Big Chill: can we cure donor’s emotional breakdown?

We had all hoped it would go better with time and we tried to ignore it. But the disease is still here, how is it possible?  Is it me or is everyone experiencing the same? Everybody is tweeting and blogging about this virus eating away our income and infecting our database (among many see  Roger Craver and  Tom Belford and also the rants from Lucy Gower and Reinier Spruit). Notwithstanding the ‘prescriptions’ on donor’s loyalty and relationship by Adrian Sargeant and Ken Burnett we still sadly look mainly at the numbers: call it retention or attrition, loyalty or stewardship, donors are leaving us. (more…)

Francesco Ambrogetti