This blog is meant for those who use Google Analytics. You can read this if you would like to polish up on your basic Analytics skills. It’s not meant for freaks. Just some basic tips and tricks for those who want to learn about the visitors on their website or use their site to generate leads or donations.
Today I will just discuss the very basics of Google Analytics, like how to install it and what do the terms mean. In my next blog, more advanced options of Analytics will be discussed like setting goals, creating funnels or using Analytics for A/B testing.
Karate Fundraising? A new discipline is born? Come on! You didn’t hear about it yet?
Ok, don’t worry, this is not (really) a new channel or a way to boosting the income of your fundraising programme. It’s more like a way of seeing things and to ease your fundraiser everyday’s life.
Let me first explain how I came across the concept of “Karate Fundraising”. I was speaking on the phone with my friend Paolo Ferrara, one of the Italian digital gurus. Just trying to set a day to meet, in order to prepare a session for the Italian Fundraising Congress earlier this year. The session was about arguing which techniques, digital or traditional, were more successful in fundraising. (more…)
The world is a volatile place and constantly in motion. And so is the fundraising world. In this blog I am not talking about new techniques or new channels, but about changing attitudes.
It has been going on for many many years, but it is still the most important trend in corporate fundraising: philanthropic donations by companies are on the decline. I wouldn’t go near saying that corporate philanthropy is dead, as some people do, but it is definitely on the decline. Luckily, the attitude of the general public has also changed: almost everybody is calling upon big firms to be good corporate citizens. And these companies all want to show that they are.
A third group, NGOs, is somewhat behind, and some of them should urgently change their attitude. Instead of focusing on philanthropic donations with little or even nothing in return, they need to be more commercial. Many of them have already changed their attitude or are at least aware that they should, but especially the older, larger and more established NGOs, do not like the word ‘commercial’.
That is the question I get asked a lot working with clients on their strategic fundraising plan. And a good question it is. Especially because fundraising events and in particular sports events have become so popular in Europe. So this question deserves some kind of answer.
So, If you are considering to set up your own fundraising event or if you are wondering if you are making enough money from your own event, please bare with me in my search for an answer.
To be frank, it is extremely hard to predict exactly how much will be raised with your event this year or the next, but there are crucial factors that influence your success. Depending on how many ‘karma-points’ you score on each of these factors will give you some feeling of the potential success. (see a calculation below)
People who have had the pleasure to listen to Richard Radcliffe’s inspiring and challenging presentations on legacy fundraising, may have had the same thought as I’ve had after meeting him: ‘How on earth can I get as experienced as he is and make legacy fundraising feel like a walk in the park?’
And specially when you have read in Sebastian Wilberforce’s ‘Legacy fundraising‘ that “Richard Radcliffe has more then 30 years experience in the charity sector….specializes in planning and running legacy focus groups….he has met more than 15.000 donors….”, legacy fundraisers with only a few years of experience may start to feel a bit lost. And some of us, like me, may start to wonder how many lives we need to get even close to the experience Richard has in legacy fundraising.
I think you can start by looking for that little piece of Richard Radcliffe in your inner self, the piece that makes him know how donors, volunteers, prospects, board members, colleagues and beneficiaries think about making their last will and including a charity in it. (more…)
So you have been working on your attitude to innovation. You have decided that ‘just ticking along’ is not an option and you are thinking about how you can make the most difference to the cause you fundraise for. You have also set yourself some Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Now what?
Your next innovators’ priority is to consider where to focus your efforts. This should be driven by your fundraising strategy. It is vital that you make time to ensure you are focusing your efforts on the right activities; the activities that will make the most difference in achieving your fundraising and engagement targets.
We all have the same amount of time in a day: 24 hours or 1,440 minutes. You have exactly the same amount of time that was given to Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa and Albert Einstein. It’s how you maximise the difference you make that’s the real challenge.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoQ9L8TZfCc Message from 101fundraising: “This video has been originally produced for the Fundraising Online 2011 conference organized by the Resource Alliance. We gratefully re-distribute this video, and the interesting concept of integrated campaigning and fundraising expressed in Read more…
As Reinier discussed in his recent 101fundraising post, the 90-degree shift isn’t exactly breaking news… but is it really happening in fundraising? Or are we perhaps seeing it as just another box to tick, another marketing incantation to bandy about the meeting room (think ‘synergy’ or ‘paradigm shift’ – you know, the kinds of things Lindsey Naegle of The Simpsons might say).
But I have to admit, sometimes the theory is easier to grasp than the practical implementation. Here are some rules of thumb I try to bear in mind to make sure I keep the donor front of mind in everything we do.
Thank you so much for the wonderful chance to really feel a part of what is happening in Haiti! These workers are real, sincere, ordinary people with the right training who work on behalf of our pittance donated to help the people in distress. Thank you so much for having enabled us to listen as the team told of their work in such an ongoing needy situation of our confreres in Haiti. Sincerely, a Donor, Oakville, Ontario
I hosted a donor accountability webinar last year. Like the curate’s egg, some parts of it were excellent, others, not so much.
Here it is:
(Click here if the embedded video is not working.)
Als kind ga je door een aantal zeer herkenbare levensfases. Nadat het ruim een jaar draaide om eten en slapen schijn je te kunnen praten en van dat spreekrecht wil je dan ook gebruik maken! Zo is er de leeftijd 2, daar hoort bij: ik ben 2 en ik zeg nee. De eerste bewuste tekenen van recalcitrantie. Blijkbaar hebben we dan al in de gaten dat we ons alles niet meer hoeven laten welgevallen en dus zeggen we om de haverklap nee. Bij sommigen gaat deze fase gewoon weer voorbij, bij anderen ebt hij nog wat langer na.
Ietsje later in ons leven, laten we zeggen vanaf een jaar of 7 komen we in de “waarom dan-fase”. We willen alles beredeneert zien. Niets is zomaar meer wat er gezegd wordt. Volwassenen verkopen ons geen knollen meer voor citroenen, we willen het naadje van de kous weten. We zijn duidelijk op zoek naar kennis en ontwikkelen ons. Ook die fase gaat voor de meesten van ons weer voorbij als de vroege puberteit aanbreekt en de hormonen de overhand nemen. Bij mij is deze fase nooit over gegaan. Ik zit er nog in. (more…)
Een donateur is iemand die op vrijwillige basis een goed doel ondersteunt. Meestal met geld. Dit doet de donateur veelal omdat hij iets heeft of voelt met de doelstelling van het gesteunde goede doel. De donateur voelt zich betrokken en laat dit blijken door financieel te steunen. Hierdoor voelt de donateur zich ook een beetje lid, de donateur staat tenslotte samen met het goede doel pal voor de doelstelling. Om de beginvraag maar meteen te beantwoorden: Ja, de donateur is een klant.
Doen de goede doelen wel recht aan die klantstatus? Nemen zij de donateur wel serieus? Wordt een donateur wel als klant gezien? Vaak niet. (more…)
It’s been some years ago since I’ve read Ken Burnett’s 89 great ideas in The Zen of Fundraising. Many, if not all of them, keep coming back to me from time to time. Lately it’s this one: make the 90-degree shift. Ken explains: “The 90-degree shift is nothing more complex than seeing things from your donor’s point of view rather than from your own or your organization’s point of view.”
He illustrates this with three good old marketing sayings: – When a customer buys a quarter-inch drill, what he really wants is a quarter-inch hole. – It doesn’t matter what you want to sell. The only thing that matters is what they want to buy. – People don’t read advertisements. They read what interests them. Sometimes that includes an advertisement.
According to Ken, “almost nothing will make your fundraising more successful than learning to implement this simple attitude of mind.” (more…)
I am a numbers nerd; the queen of testing. I have passionate love affairs with databases. And even though, over the years, I’ve done every other fundraising job from copy- and proposal-writing to events to a major gift negotiation — and even knocking on doors asking for petition signatures and “a check as well so that we have the resources to ensure that this legislation passes” (I was 18. Maybe my start in fundraising?) – I always come back to the numbers. Beautiful numbers.
So when I came to work at an animal sanctuary in the Netherlands, I was more than a little nervous to learn that I would be working as a “donor contact” at a nine day donor visitation event. (“You mean I have to talk to people? For nine straight day? In Dutch?”) (more…)
In my last 101fundraising crowdblog I talked about the difference between innovation and creativity, incremental and radical innovation, and dispelled the myth that innovation is about a lone genius. Innovation is more likely to be a combination of a slow hunch with a series of previously unconnected connections rather than a single ‘light bulb’ moment.
Your challenge now is how you DO innovation. How do you have more connections, combine them in new ways and actually turn them into successful fundraising, not just once but as part of a continuous cycle. How do you turn ‘innovation’ into business as usual? How do you turn innovation into simply ‘how we do things round here’? (more…)
Wij fondsenwervers pochen graag over onze grootste DM-successen. We hebben ze allemaal wel eens gehad, het kleine succesje van dat ge-ni-ale pack dat we hadden bedacht. Knalde die respons toch mooi even met 2 procent omhoog! ‘Jaja, dat was slim van ons….’ En dat unieke Afrikaanse gelukspoppetje zorgde ervoor dat heel wat prospects die buitengewone, gekleurde envelop met dito gekke vorm toch maar mooi openden…
We voelen ons als Roodkapje. Opgewekt huppelen we naar grootmoeder die vol verwachting op ons ligt te wachten. Onze organisatie heeft een prachtige boodschap die we graag willen neerleggen bij onze donateurs… (more…)
Our initiative Alpe d’HuZes started in 2006 with 66 bikers who wanted to bike the Dutch mountain Alpe d’Huez in France and make a difference in the fight against cancer. We were aiming for 50,000 euro, but we raised 350,000 euros and were suprised by our succes.
How in the world of cancer and fundraising was this possible? (more…)
It’s not fun being a fundraiser nowadays: depressing trends like declining responses, high-cost-acquisition in combination with through-the-roof-attrition, rock-bottom-retention and charity-bashing-media… pfff, mission impossible?!
Or, is there still a bright light in the fundraising sky? Sure there is, plenty!
We just have to continue to improve ourselves. Watch out that you are not being sucked into the motionless status quo. We will fight attrition, increase response numbers and retention rates, build pure and genuine supporter relationships by honest storytelling and true engagement and raise all the money we need to make this world a better place!
It’s probably not so simple either… and therefore, as fundraisers, we test.
Often we see something like “Please donate a tweet a day to help …. “ followed by a link to a site where people have to sign-in with their twitter details, or give it permission to access their twitter account.
Often though organisations don’t explain how the ‘donated’ tweet helps, they say what it helps, but often not how it helps.
If a charitable organisation is looking at using something like “donate-a-tweet”, it would make sense, and help with the cause if they were to tell people how “donate-a-tweet” works. If an organisation were to do this it would give their friends, followers an insight into how much it can help. (more…)
Dinsdag 21 juni werd het convenant “Ruimte voor Geven” ondertekend. Een convenant tussen de overheid, in de personen van minister-president Mark Rutte en staatssecretaris van Justitie Fred Teeven enerzijds en vertegenwoordigers van de filantropische sector anderzijds. Op de website van de rijksoverheid staat: “Het convenant bevat afspraken die de samenwerking tussen de sector en de overheid effectiever kunnen maken” en alle betrokkenen verzekeren dat dit goed is voor onze sector. En ik geloof die betrokkenen wel.
That night I dreamed I was an indentured servant in colonial Philadelphia. Somehow, even in the dream, I sensed that I had once been a development officer in post-Colonial New York City.
We need every drop of philanthropy we can get. We must fasten our lips to the spigot and suck, so to speak.
“The Ask” – Sam Lipsyte
I’m blogging today from the land of the silver birch, home of the beaver, where still the mighty moose wanders at will. What you call your own ‘where’ — camp, cabin, or cottage — depends on what part of Canada you’re from, but everyone’s destination looks pretty much the same: blue lake and rocky shore, family and friends, sunsets on the dock. And above all, in a Canadian camp/cabin/cottage there are books. The swollen and musty throwback paperbacks permanent to your camp/cabin/cottage and that you’d only read, for reasons both pragmatic and snobby, in that context (“Mrs. John Albert Jr.’s Guide to Making Soap out of Wild Game Fat”, “Summer Sisters” by Judy Blume). And, of course of most of all, those books you’ve saved all year to read at the lake.
In ons vakgebied zijn we allemaal handig in het gebruik van -vaak Engelstalig- marketingjargon. Elke dag zijn we als fondsenwervers bezig met high value donors, life time value of upgrading. Onze collega’s houden zich bezig met campaigning en event planning. Eigenlijk alles wat geld oplevert. Loyalty is ook zo’n woord dat rond zingt in onze branche: iedereen weet wat er mee bedoeld wordt en iedere fondsenwerver is er op zijn of haar manier mee bezig. We meten resultaten om dan te concluderen dat dit ene welkomstpakket perfect gewerkt heeft of die bedankbrief misschien bijgeslepen moet worden. Ons uiteindelijke doel is om de kaalslag van donoruitval tegen te gaan en je donors te binden. Ze mogen niet weglopen! Onder geen beding! (more…)
Fundraising is tough. ‘More for less’ has practically become a daily mantra for both donors and charities. Great causes are clamoring in an increasingly crowded marketplace for a finite piece of the fundraising income pie. Innovation is heralded as the latest buzzword to provide salvation and solutions. ‘We must be more innovative’ is the answer to how to deliver ‘more for less‘.
Trouble is, not many people seem to know what innovation means, least of all how to ‘do’ it. Innovation and its mate creativity are two terms that, in my opinion are somewhat overused. So before we adventure in innovation lets be clear what we mean. (more…)
The Dutch fundraising landscape has changed a lot over the past few years. For decades fundraising was an activity exclusively of charities, charitable organisations that are formed for charitable purposes. But these traditional charities encounter totally different parties on the fundraising field: non-profit organisations not being charities; let’s call them non-traditional fundraising organisations, from musea to universities, from orchestras to sportsclubs, from hospitals to schools.
Fundraising departments of traditional charities differ a lot from fundraising departments in non-traditional fundraising organisations. Usually charities have specialised staff for specific fundraising programmes (DM, TM, Legacies, Events etc.), while the newcomers have all-round fundraisers on board to kick-off their fundraising programmes, most of them being pioneers in environments where fundraising is not part of the core-business of the organisation. It is interesting to see the speed of this trend, the amount of organisations entering the Dutch fundraising arena and the way professionals deal with this trend.
In part 1 of this blog post I referred to a presentation by Karen Osborne ….in which she addressed the (lack of) WOW-factor in fundraising. In the mean time I did have a WOW-moment of my own that I would like to share with you.
The other day I was surfing the web and stranded on a crowd funding website called Kickstarter.com. Kickstarter, unknown to me at that time, is a platform for artists to publish their projects in order to raise a specified amount of money, necessary to realize their goals. (more…)
While in the good old days the MT and board members brought in the big money, knew all of their major donors and took care of their needs, nowadays major donors are mostly the responsibility of a fundraiser. And often this job is just one of the things he or she is taking care of. Fundraisers are struggling between the ‘bulk’, and the personal attention one special donor needs and definitely deserves.
But this is slowly changing: more and more NGO’s start to expand their fundraising team with dedicated fundraisers, solely focusing on the needs of major donors and legacy plegders, increasing the group of (potential) major donors. Some of the biggest NGO’s in Holland even have a whole team responsible for gifts from major donors, sometimes with the help of a prospect researcher. Major donor working-groups are being born, master classes are being followed, books are being read, agencies specialized in major gift fundraising are founded. Fundraisers transform into ‘Relationship manager’, or ‘Special gift advisor’, strategic plans on increasing major gift income are written. But, when all this hard work is done, at the end it comes back to the one thing it all started with: getting your leaders involved in your major donor fundraising. Why? Because, no matter how dedicated and trustworthy the fundraiser may be, at the end (or should I say, at the beginning of your major gift cycle) your best prospects want to talk to your board members, your directors, your ambassadors. (more…)
