101 Fundraising

acquisition

Face: The Future

The Outlook for Face-to-Face Fundraising
It seems a lot of fundraisers’ time is spent thinking about the future: Will we manage to invest our full budget? Will we reach our targets? What to do if the income is not as planned? Will I have a decent budget next year? Five year plans…

Wouldn’t it be great to have a crystal ball that spelled out at least some of what lay ahead and allowed us to focus just a little more on the present moment? Well, for better or worse, that particular technology hasn’t yet materialized but that doesn’t stop us fundraisers from engaging in a little bit of future gazing. Being prepared for different eventualities is important – it allows us to be able to respond quickly and appropriately and to minimize the damage from inevitable bumps along the way – of course it’s an art, not a science, and with this disclaimer in mind I’d like to offer a few forecasts on how I see the face-to-face method of donor recruitment evolving over the next couple of years.

1. Shrinking public space in traditional markets

Many councils and cities ban street fundraising

Open any news source in (for example) the UK or Austria (or many of the most established face-to-face markets) and it won’t be long before you read about a city or council that is implementing (or considering) a complete ban or enforced reduction of face-to-face activities in the public domain. Search Twitter for the words ‘fundraiser’ or ‘chugger’ (a term I consider to be both offensive and ignorant by the way) and you’ll see that the face-to-face topic evokes plenty of debate from the public – and a majority of those moved to tweet tend to have a negative view of the practice and are quite vocal in calling for restrictions. I forecast that authorities in these markets will continue to impose limitations and the amount of public space open to street and door-to-door fundraisers will continue to shrink. (more…)

Jack Ryan

acquisition

Five types of corporate giving

Does your nonprofit take advantage of the variety of corporate giving programs that exist? If not, your organization is missing out! In 2010, U.S. corporations gave over $15.5 billion worth of cash and products to nonprofits (Source: Giving USA’s 2011 annual Report on Philanthropy for 2010). Get in on the action by exploring the different programs that are available.

Here the top five most prevalent types of corporate giving programs: (more…)

Adam Weinger

acquisition

I wish I’d thought of that

Last week I was proud to be one of the 22 speakers at the inaugural ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ event in London, brilliantly organised by the team and volunteers at sofii.

An excited audience heard about 22 campaigns picked by the speakers as something they wished they had thought of. It was a brilliant and buzzy afternoon with a great fast-paced format that included growing mo’s for Movember, which involved the audience wearing stick on moustaches, to Barbie’s destruction of the rainforest to the audience love-in for charity: water. In fact it was commented that the event felt like TED for fundraising. Pretty cool. Although I have never seen the audience in a TED talk wear stick on moustaches; I think TED are missing a trick.

Some fundraising excellence themes emerged; trust, honesty, truth, storytelling, simplicity, integrity, conviction, empathy and passion.

But for me, many of these celebrated ideas involve two more vital elements; bravery and risk. Trying something new is brave and risky because let’s face it – if it is new we don’t know for sure that it will work. (more…)

Lucy Gower

acquisition

I Wish I’d Thought Of That

On Thursday afternoon, SOFII (brainchild of fundraising great, Ken Burnett) presented their first ever ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ event. 22 speakers from agencies and charities, large charities and small from across all cause types, spoke about ideas from other fundraisers that they wish they’d had first.

It was a great event (there was a running joke of those who wish they’d thought of I Wish I’d Thought of That), not least because it was fundraisers sharing what they learned from each other, which is at the heart of SOFII.

The 22 big ideas ranged from the very, very old (Aline Reed of Bluefrog spoke about Great Ormond Street Hospital’s wartime appeal from 1940) to the very new (such as MSF’s innovative pills campaign in Spain, brought to life by Reuben Steains); from direct marketing to events to campaigning to social media; from big international names like UNICEF, Amnesty International and Greenpeace to UK charities like I CAN and Botton Village.

But across this diverse range of campaigns, two words seem to creep up time and time again. And it’s these two words I wanted to share with 101Fundraising: authenticity and conviction. (more…)

Alison McCants

acquisition

7 tips for welcoming new donors

If your organisation has no difficulty finding and keeping new donors, you are either a very lucky or extremely talented fundraiser, and either way one of few. For the rest of us, it seems a constant challenge to find new and better ways to attract high-quality recruits.

So here’s a few tips to help you keep them, once you do find them:

1. Tell donors both who you are and what you do

My partner and I (he is also a fundraiser) both love our jobs. But someone recently asked us both why we chose our respective organisations, and we realized that we had very different answers. He immediately began talking about the projects and the people being helped. But not about the Christian motivations, the long and prestigious Catholic history or the unique and important role of both ordinants and lay-people in the work. (Which are all true, but just wasn’t part of his spontaneous answer.) For him, the passion is for what they do.

I immediately began over the values and the vision of my organisation – what we believe in and stand for. And I realized that this is fundamentally more important to me than whatever work we are doing at any given moment. For me it’s first and foremost about who we are. (more…)

Sarah Clifton

opinion

We don’t expect babies to run before they can walk…

I was asked recently about why charities aren’t utilising digital channels more to attract new donors for this article and found myself pondering, as is often the case, about how charities can best get over the barriers standing in the way of their digital fundraising.

I’ve realised that the fact that question was in the context of digital is only important from the point of view of where we are now, because what I’m about to say relates just as much to anything that has ever gone before as well as anything else that is new – digital or otherwise.

In my experience, the main barriers for fundraisers that see the need to diversify their donor acquisition into digital seem to be: (more…)

Rachel Beer

acquisition

Social Network Fundraising: The Beginners Guide

This is me running 16km and raising €2,549 for the Dutch Cancer Institute (NKI-AVL). The target was only €200.

Social network fundraising works because of two reasons: (1) you are asking your own network, and (2) the fundraising is being done publicly. This combined provides a healthy and effective social peer pressure.

When you were young you probably had to do a sponsor run at school. You had to get pledges from your neighbors and family for a quarter or 50 cents per lap. Remember that your neighbor always said: “So, what is the rest giving?” This is the best way to describe social network fundraising, she didn’t even hesitated. Straight away she went into the “how much” discussion…

Recently I gave a presentation for the participants of the ATMA Challenge. In this fundraising event 30 young professionals will climb one of the Himalaya mountains (6,764 meter!). Every participant has to raise 2,000 euro for educational projects in India, so that adds up to 60,000 euro in total. My presentation contained 16 tips on how they can raise this money.

I am convinced that 2,000 per participant is too low. Just before I went there I posted on Facebook: “They are going to raise 100,000 euro. They just don’t know it yet.” (more…)

Reinier Spruit

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…)

Charlie Hulme

individuals

A fundraising checklist: what Italian fundraisers look like?

For sure, you would be able to answer this if you had participated at the 5th Italian “Festival del Fundraising” during the second week of May 2012. Three days, around 600 fundraisers, more than 20 sponsors and a lot of sun. The annual meeting is held at Castrocaro, a little town located next to Bologna, strategically between Roma and Milano.

Many, many, many sessions and activities and no time to rest if you came like many of us to learn by sharing. So even though you are in an historical 4-star hotel and have free access to thermal facilities, there is little chance for you to come back home without a huge need to rest. I am sure that every attendee will also have taken back a huge checklist full of technics to explore or to test: online, offline, integration of channels, new services and many ideas from abroad considering the number of foreign speakers that joined the event.

So let me try to review what are the trends that emerged without being too descriptive…let’s hope the other 599 people will write comments and identify their best moments. So here we go: (more…)

Patrice Simonnet

NL

Heb uw naaste lief!

Een aantal dagen geleden was ik op de jaarvergadering van Partos. Voor wie het niet weet, “Partos is de branchevereniging van Nederlandse organisaties werkzaam in internationale samenwerking.” Een club van betrokken mensen met leden die alles behalve hun eigen belang op de eerste plaats stellen; waarom zou je anders bij een organisatie als bijvoorbeeld Plan, Pax Christi of bijvoorbeeld Dorcas werken denk ik dan maar. Voor het geld hoef je het niet te doen. (more…)

Peter Goudkamp

human resources

The 7 Bad Habits of Insanely Productive People

Exactly one year ago, I read a blog post that hit me like a punch in the gut. It was Austin Kleon’s How to Steal Like an Artist, and it got right down and spoke directly to everything I was struggling with at the time. I was about to finish grad school and was terrified that I didn’t have what it would take to make it out in the ‘real’ world. Simply reading Kleon’s words changed my whole outlook. I immediately wrote in my own blog about how it made me feel. That post then turned into my first TEDx talk two months later. The reaction from nearly everyone was one of complete understanding. It turned out I wasn’t the only one with those fears and insecurities – I was just finally saying it out loud. (more…)

Margaux Smith

high value donors

Delivering a baby, delivering a budget

One morning last December I went to outer space and plucked a star. We named her Beatrix.

She’s our first, and I’d not had much exposure to newborns before. Even less on how to care for one.

Bea and I’ve taken many long walks these past five months (moves management, verily) and I’ve had time to think back over my twenty-year fundraising career, and if there was anything there that could teach me to be a parent. More interestingly to my colleagues and team, how would giving birth and nurturing a newborn shape my leadership style back at work? (more…)

Rebecca Davies

human resources

How do you keep good people at a nonprofit organization?

How do you keep good people at a nonprofit organization? With limited budgets and the reality of high turnover in our sector, what can you do to help keep great staff.

At hjc we have come up with 9 key deliverables from the company, to our staff:

1. Give them a professional development budget that THEY control. It’s about respect and autonomy when it comes to learning and improving. Every staff member gets $1,250 dollars (plus travel) to go to conferences; attend webinars; and purchase other training and books. It’s motivating and effective for us to give them complete control over their own personal PD budget.

(more…)

Mike Johnston

donor service

6 Things you get with friendraising

“Friendraising is raising money from your friends and family.” This is just one of the replies I got, when I recently asked app. 200 Dutch fundraising colleagues to send me their definition of ‘friendraising’. Well, if this is what friendraising is about, I guess the birthdays of fund- and friendraisers soon will be awfully quiet.

Fortunately, a lot of colleagues used better definitions. Myself, I like to use this one: friendraising is building sustainable relationships with persons, foundations and corporations, in order to get to know them better, and to (co)create a wide variety of ways to support your organization. Of course, a result of friendraising can be that you receive money. But if it’s up to me, it can be so much more. Let me sum up just 6 things for you. (more…)

Vera Peerdeman

face-to-face

We’ll keep the lot – thank you

There has been recent news stories about charity collectors lately, some of these have reached the global ‘ear’ others have only been covered in the country of origin.

The latest to hit global news has been about ‘chuggers’, a quaint term for ‘charity muggers’. They’re the people out on the streets raising awareness, funds and subscriptions; who bail up people, use all manner of technique to ‘sell’ their story to the public.

This along with stories about contract charity collection companies who don’t pass on the full amount of the money raised. (more…)

Graeme Russell

communication

Storytelling: the most powerful way to get your fundraising message across

Recently it feels as if there has been a lot of noise about the importance of storytelling in the charity sector. This is old news. But it is good news.

Anthropologists contend that 70 per cent of everything we learn is through stories. Perfecting the art, and it is an art, of seeking out real stories and telling them in a way that inspires both you and your donors is the essence of being a fundraiser.

There are some principles that will help your storytelling on sofii. However, in order to find your stories you first have to leave your desk. Margaux wrote recently about getting out more for inspiration. I agree. The art of storytelling is as much about seeking out inspirational stories as it is telling them. (more…)

Lucy Gower

new media

Fundraising Into the Future – and BEYOND! (Part 2)

Last week I blogged about the digital revolution in fundraising, and asked whether it has “changed the game”, or only the “rules”. (Or, as I would argue, not even the rules, more like the shape of the playing field and which ball gets kicked, hit, chased, or fielded).

Having finally gone Twitter (I know, I KNOW…) I’d say the biggest ‘revolution’ that social media has brought to the industry is… how many people without other jobs are now claiming to be someone “connecting donors to their causes” and “helping charities use social media to raise awareness and funds”. In other words, biggest winner so far? The industry. But let’s see….

BACK TO THE STORY…. (more…)

Mitchell Hinz

acquisition

Getting digital really working

So what does a solid, well performing digital fundraising program look like?

It’s the question I’m often asked, and am going to share, as best I can in a little under 1,300 words.

Dispelling the myths

One of the most frustrating things about the digital world is that it is full of illusion, and quite a lot of BS.

Here are some of my favourites:

Social media is the next big thing and will transform charities fundraising programs
Digital is completely different to the offline world, and as such different teams should be working on each program
Email and landing page copy must be short (more…)

Jonathon Grapsas

new media

Fundraising Into the Future – and BEYOND!

There’s a debate in the fundraising industry about the future. Not whether we will all have jobs; no, everyone’s pretty sure about that. The world’s problems aren’t going away, and in fact we seem to be creating problems at about the same rate we’re solving them, so the world will probably need NGOs in the foreseeable future, (and they will need funding), but that’s another blog.

No, the debate is about the digital revolution. First we had the “internet” (small “I”), then the Web, and now we have the portable Web – its called a “smart phone” in case you just climbed out of a cave – and a new place where people talk to friends and family, share things, even donate already, called social media, which right now is mostly Facebook and Twitter, but which will grow and diversify with Tumblr, and Pinterest, etc.

So the REAL QUESTION is this: has the advent of the digital medium “changed the game” of fundraising? Or has this simply expanded the methods we use to fundraise? To put it in MBA terms, do new digital activities raise *incremental* income, that would NOT have been raised otherwise, if we couldn’t ask for donations over the Web or phone? Or is it just taking over the more tied-and-true methods?

(more…)

Mitchell Hinz

101fundraising

Simply the best: Top 10 blog posts (Q1 2012)

From now on, every quarter we will share with you the best blog posts published in the past quarter.

If you don’t have time to read all the valuable information that we publish, at least read these 10…

We’re glad to see that 3 new crowdbloggers who recently joined are an instant success! Congrats Vera (1), Kimberley (8) and Brock (9)!

According to our readers these are the best blog posts of the first quarter of 2012: (more…)

101fundraising

acquisition

A fundraising check list : how to react to the economic crisis?

Let me propose to you a quick “check-list” hoping it could be useful when it comes to adapt your fundraising program to the economic crisis.

Because…yes..there is a crisis going on! You heard about it…except if you are working on street face-to-face campaigns somewhere in Asia. You are probably experiencing changes in redemption or attrition in the last months or years. If not, you should wonder about what to do if your organization arrive to the point where all indicators turns red.

External factors like credit crunch, increased fiscal pressure on individuals, political instability are much more difficult to face that choosing the right headline for your next DRTV campaign. Right now, Italy is a very good example having a temporary government that face the worst economic downturn since last world war II. As a result, many Italian organizations witnessed a terrible second semester 2011. And I am quite sure that all are monitoring their performance indicators daily…looking for new trends! But these will be hard to identify until next political elections in 2013. (more…)

Patrice Simonnet

communication

€ Gift – % FW ≠ € Beneficiant

Stel, het is midden jaren 80, je zit op een verjaardag en je laat terloops vallen dat je werkt voor een goed doel of in de internationale ontwikkelingshulp. De rest van het feestje zou waarschijnlijk tegen je op kijken, je bewonderen; jij zet je in voor een betere wereld!

Fast forward naar 2012: zelfde verjaardag, zelfde kringetje, zelfde baan … hele andere reactie. ”Ik geef nooit (meer) aan goede doelen, die zijn toch allemaal corrupt.”, “Kunnen die lui zichzelf niet redden daar in Afrika?”, “Het is toch een bodemloze put”, “Die directeuren verdienen toch allemaal te veel”, “We hebben het zelf veel te hard nodig in Nederland” … En tot slot, “Hoeveel geld komt er nou echt terecht bij die mensen daar? “

En naar mijn mening ligt er een groot gevaar in die laatste vraag.

In Nederland hebben we natuurlijk het CBF, met een lange traditie van controle van fondsenwerving en goede doelen. Een belangrijk criterium daarbij is “dat de kosten voor fondsenwerving van het goede doel, uitgedrukt als een percentage van de inkomsten uit eigen fondsenwerving in enig jaar, niet meer mogen bedragen dan 25% van de inkomsten uit eigen fondsenwerving.” Een prima criterium, waar inmiddels heel Nederland aan gewend is en waar de goede doelen altijd rekening mee houden. Maar waarbij ook een gevaar om de hoek is komen kijken. (more…)

Peter Goudkamp

strategy

Creative fundraising: lessons from the frontline

When did you last have a frontline experience with the cause you work for? Out of the office. On the ground. Sleeves up. Tough stuff. It’s more likely you did it if you work in a small organisation. Or an enlightened large one.

Personal experiences inspire great fundraising. I was reminded of this when I spent time in Borneo. I was there not as a fundraiser, but as a volunteer project manager. My mission? To reinvigorate a small run-down orangutan sanctuary. The place looked after primates rescued from hideous ordeals. Most had TB and so can never be returned to the wild.

Here are some of the creative lessons I was reminded of. I hope they help in your fundraising world:

1. Change your perspective: I began work by getting all the programme staff inside a cage. They had never been in one before. (more…)

Derek Humphries

acquisition

The 5 fastest growers and their recipe for success

That we all love ‘rankings’ was clear again when last December I posted a ranking of the fastest growers in Dutch fundraising revenue in recent years. The blog post is by far the most read post on 101fundraising so far and got a lot of reactions.

The post didn’t zoom in on organizations who increased their income substantially compared to the previous year, but the organizations that have a high average growth rate over several years (2006 – 2010). The idea is that by looking at the long-term, we’re looking at organizations who are doing something special in fundraising.

Ramses Man and myself questioned what these organizations did so well. So we decided to organize a ‘diner pensant’ and invited the five fastest growing organizations.

(more…)

Reinier Spruit

A crowdsourced blog on fundraising and changemaking.