The following articles, written by Sean Triner, Co-founder and Director of Pareto Fundraising and Pareto Phone were originally published in The Agitator column of Fundraising and Philanthropy Magazine’s e-newsletter.
If you were in Brent Cross back in 1994 on the day I abseiled down the face of the Holiday Inn dressed as Paddington Bear with ex-Eastender Susan Tully alongside, then what you would have witnessed was nothing less than my first attempt to attract younger donors to charity giving. At the time I was responsible for fundraising events at the UK medical research charity Action Research. My boss had been bemoaning the lack of fresh-faced supporters on our lists. “They’re all too old! Get us some youngsters!” he would tell me.
So because I always do what I’m told, I helped create a new event called “Bring Your Bear Show You Care” – a fundraising product designed to fulfil both my boss’s dream of younger donors, and my own of dangling high above London with the gorgeous, pouting Susan Tully. Yet still my boss wasn’t happy. Now he had got a taste of younger supporters, he wanted more. So a few months later, after I’d moved on to direct marketing proper, I took my first tentative steps into the brave new world of face-to-face (F2F) recruiting.