At this year’s IFC, it was more apparent than ever that fundraisers across the globe are working hard to address the same fundamental questions. Have we got the fundraising model right and what needs to Read more…
As a fundraiser, who do you consider to be your most important stakeholder? Think about it for a while. Actually, you probably didn’t need to think about for very long at all. You said donors, Read more…
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…)
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…)
I’ve seen countless blogs and articles about the importance of storytelling. The thing is, we know it’s important. People give to people. Giving is an emotional response to living in a world you want to change. A good story brings your cause to life.
But I see lots of fundraising asks that miss the story altogether. Who am I kidding, I’ve worked on a number of fundraising campaigns that have lacked good stories completely.
Why?
Well, for one, we’re professional fundraisers. We deal with budgets, targets, staff meetings and mail packs. Our charities often strive to be seen as professional, expert, sometimes even scientific in our approach to solving the world’s problems. We are no longer the sector that blindly delivers charity in the old (potentially demeaning) sense. We understand poverty/healthcare/animal welfare/international development/arts/higher education. We portray our beneficiaries with respect. We are experts in our field. (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…)
(Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie)
A number of fundraising headlines have proclaimed the donor pyramid to be dead. And working in America, I hadn’t heard too much about it since my early days in fundraising (way back in the ’90s!) except an occasional chuckle and a “that old thing!” retort at its mention. It used to be that in America, where major gifts represent a large share of fundraising income, the pyramid could illustrate which 20% of donors contribute 80% of giving income.
But even before my time as a fundraising professional, the pyramid had already come to be seen as a very simplistic measure of success. So naturally, I too thought it was dead until I moved to the Netherlands, where it’s alive and kicking (and screaming). In fact the donor pyramid is not just alive here in the Netherlands – it is beloved.
Why exactly? Is it that the pyramid is actually so useful or is it that there are no good alternatives?
(Click here for the English version)
De donateurpiramide is in een groot aantal artikelen over fondsenwerving al vaak dood verklaard. Als fondsenwerver in de VS, heb ik er al vanaf de jaren negentig weinig meer over gehoord. Vroeger was het zo dat in Amerika -waar major gifts een groot deel van het totale fondsenwervingsinkomen uitmaken- de piramide een instrument was om te laten zien welke 20% van je donateurs 80% van je totale inkomsten vertegenwoordigt.
Maar al voor mijn werkzame tijd als fondsenwerver, werd de piramide beschouwt als een simplificatie van de werkelijkheid. Voor mij was de donateurpiramide dan ook morsdood. Totdat ik naar Nederland verhuisde waar de piramide ‘alive and kicking’ bleek. En niet alleen dát, maar hij is ook nog eens erg geliefd!
Waarom eigenlijk? Komt het omdat de piramide echt nuttig is of zijn er misschien geen goede alternatieven?
Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. – John Donne
There’s an interesting exchange happening right now between MSF Canada and our donors, a phenomenon I think would be interesting to fundraisers outside of the humanitarian-NGO arena and that I’d like your opinion on. MSF Canada donors are again being stress-tested by us, the very organization many Canadians look towards as an outlet for their compassion in times of sudden crisis, most recently and specific to this post, last month’s cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami in Japan. If our doctors’ acts of vaccination and surgery are their humanitarian tools, then the donations our supporters make are theirs. And so how do donors feel when MSF tells them we do not accept earmarked gifts for the catastrophe in Japan? Do we wrest from them a degree of solidarity with the Japanese people in asking for unrestricted donations?
