I’m lucky enough to work in an organisation (and a management team) where fundraising is seen as an essential aspect of our daily work and our shared responsibility as leaders – to serve more children Read more…
I’d be shocked if there were any, or many, Trump supporters among this community of fundraising hipsters. But how many otherwise great people inadvertently emulate him as fundraising practitioners? What do I mean? Well, if Read 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…)
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…)
Three months ago I was part of an audience listening to Karen Osborne giving a presentation on ‘Stewardship’. Great presentation, as usual, most of which I had heard before. But at the same time we can’t hear enough about the importance of being donor centric, delivering on the promise, showing the impact. It makes me realize we can still do much better.
But there was something else in Karen’s presentation that triggered me. That I kept thinking about. She was talking about the WOW-moment (not meaning the ‘normal’ things like delivering on the promise). And when asking the audience: when was the last time we were ‘WOW-ed’ by an organization and when was the last time we were really pleasantly surprised, I realized I couldn’t think of any example. (more…)
Over the years, and the appeals, I’ve learned much about the factors that determine success in fundraising – and even more about what to avoid doing – and I’ll always be learning, because that’s one of the privileges of working with so many different charities, across such a wide variety of campaigns and media.
These points and tips are mainly written in the context of individual giving, although many are also just as relevant to events, community and legacy fundraising, membership marketing, volunteer recruitment or anywhere direct marketing techniques are used. They represent the most common issues in fundraising appeals that I have come across and include suggestions to help you avoid the same pitfalls. (more…)
2010 was a very special and historic fundraising year for KWF, the Dutch Cancer Society. We reached €100 million gross income from fundraising and recruited 115,000 new structural donors. A record in the history of KWF, which is the largest nonprofit in the Netherlands based on fundraising income.
One of the highlights in 2010 was the fundraising TV show “Stand Up To Cancer” which generated 50,000 new structural donors. This was the fourth fundraising TV show since 2006. This last one exceeded everyone’s expectations except our host Ruben Nicolai, a Dutch celebrity: he opened the show with his personal dream of 50,000 new donors, which is more than twice the result of the show in 2009. Our host proved to be very prophetic.
2010 was voor KWF Kankerbestrijding een heel bijzonder en historisch fondsenwervend jaar. We hebben voor het eerst de grens geslecht van € 100 miljoen baten eigen fondsenwerving en hebben 115.000 nieuwe structurele donateurs geworven. Een record in de historie van KWF Kankerbestrijding.
Eén van de hoogtepunten in 2010 was de fondsenwervende Tv-show ‘Sta op tegen Kanker’ (AVRO) die maar liefst 50.000 nieuwe structurele donateurs genereerde. TV is de afgelopen jaren een bijna vaste waarde in de kanalen-mix om donateurs te werven en dit was de 4e fondsenwervende Tv-show van KWF sinds 2006. Maar deze laatste overtrof werkelijk ieders verwachtingen behalve die van onze presentator Ruben Nicolai: hij sprak in de live uitzending zijn droom uit van 50.000 nieuwe donateurs en bleek gelukkig profetische eigenschappen te hebben.
