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Emergencies should not overwhelm

Monday, March 7th, 2011

By Sean Triner

It always seems like there are more and more emergencies. This year fires, flood and earthquake have hammered Australia and New Zealand, as well as at least seven other countries. La Nina is not finished with us yet. The massive displacement of people in North Africa looks like it is just going to get worse, and the spectre of civil war raises its ugly head into the limelight again.

None of this takes away the needs caused by crippling diseases like arthritis, killer diseases like liver cancer, runaway species extinction and rainforest destruction. But let’s face it – it is the emergencies that get the news.

Colleagues and I have written about the perils of fundraisers holding off fundraising activities due to an emergency that doesn’t directly affect their charity. For example, a New Zealand cancer charity deciding to postpone its donor appeal due out the first week of March because of the earthquake. Few commentators disagree with our point that you should go ahead with your campaign.

But what if your organisation is directly affected? For example, if there is an earthquake, and your charity is a development agency tasked with helping out.

In this case, the emergency should affect your fundraising. If the event is gaining lots of media coverage, then it is likely that you are already affected by the phones ringing, and your website being overwhelmed.

Most emergency type charities are ready for this. Many have excellent emergency response plans with call centres on standby, mail files already selected, templates (electronic and mail) already in existence.

An emergency is a very exciting, exhausting and overwhelming time for fundraisers in such charities. People cancel leave, work 84 hour weeks, man phones, stuff envelopes; they may not have the skills for sorting through rubble but they put their soul into helping the rubble sorters’ funding.

But what next?

I tend to make gifts to emergencies. Caught up in the passion and the moment, appalled by what I see in the media, I want to do something. These gifts are usually on top of my usual gifts to my ‘regular’ charities.

Data analysis shows that I am not unusual. (Well, in that aspect anyway).

Often these donations are from people who have not ever donated to that charity before, or only during previous emergencies. I shall call these ‘emergency donors.’

Overall, charities tend to find that emergency donors are a tougher group to get motivated and become ‘normal’ donors – giving occasionally to tax or Christmas appeals, for example.

Data also shows that the best time to ask someone for a regular, monthly gift tends to be soon after a single gift.

We have seen from our own work within Pareto Phone and Pareto Fundraising that this tends to hold true for emergency donors too. For example, calling six months after an emergency will get better results than nine months later.

One theory, as yet untested, is that if that phone call is made even sooner – maybe within four days of a gift – the results would be even better.

Perhaps these results could be improved if the emergency donor had made a second gift? But we know they are not likely second gift prospects, except for emergencies.

It seems to me that the right second gift ask should be during the same emergency. I believe that most emergency donors give because of the media, but don’t really know how much to give. So they are ripe for asking.

I suggest testing email, phone and mail to solicit a second gift, within 72 hours of previous gift, whilst the emergency is still big news. The amount you ask for should be tested too. Perhaps test asking for the same amount v twice the amount v four times. Of course, the copy or script has to be brilliant to make this work, but that shouldn’t be hard. Just tell the truth.

You may not be able to get to them all, so target by size of gift, AMEX / diners card donors and credit cards ahead of cheques.
This approach should be followed, within weeks by a regular giving ask.

In your explorations, I would also suggest testing straight to regular gift against trying to get a second gift.
Whatever you do, please, make sure it is someone’s responsibility to follow up on donations. Ensure they are not dragged into the massive maelstrom of just trying to keep up during an emergency.

Here is my recommended five step plan – before an emergency. I think some charities are on top of the second part, but few are on top of the others.

Pareto Fundraising’s Five Step Plan…

If you’d like to discuss how we might help you with an emergency preparedness plan, please don’t hesitate to give Clarke Vincent a bell on 07 3015 4021 or drop him email.

Posted in 'The Agitator' Articles, News, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

2011 FIA Conference Feedback

Friday, March 4th, 2011

By Mai Seki, Fundraising Manager for Doctors of the World in Japan.

My name is Mai Seki and I work as the Fundraising Manager for Doctors of the World in Tokyo, Japan.

I am currently living in Sydney and working with Pareto Fundraising as part of an internship organised by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I was very excited to learn I was coming to Australia to work with Pareto Fundraising, as I knew it would be a fantastic opportunity for me to learn sophisticated fundraising approaches and strategies.

As part of my desire to learn as much as possible while here, I attended the 34th FIA conference held in Melbourne at the end of February. Each morning, I volunteered on the registration desk, and then in the afternoon was kindly permitted to attend some of the sessions.

I learnt a lot from each session, but Ken Burnett’s session ‘The innovation and inspiration show’ is still strongly impressed on my mind. One of the most important messages I took away from his session is to communicate with donors as human beings, and not just ask for their money.

After each session I attended, I contacted the speaker to request a copy of their presentations. I was extremely impressed when the first two responders were Ken Burnett and Stephen Pidgeon. They were two of the most top celebrated speakers at the conference and must be very busy, but both replied with genuine, warm-worded replies and also with remarkable speed! From them, I have not only learnt fundraising strategies, but also how professional fundraisers should be.

Click here to view the presentations given by Pareto Fundraising staff at the 2011 FIA Conference.

Posted in 2011 FIA Conference, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

There Are No Quiet Times

Friday, March 4th, 2011

By Sean Triner
This article was first published by F&P Magazine in February 2011

Time to rethink appeal frequency?

By focusing only on the traditional appeal times around tax and Christmas, Sean Triner says charities are missing out on seven months of the year.

We direct marketing fundraisers are kept busy – but we have the times, like after Christmas and tax where we seem to really lay off a little. Well, according to figures from Nielsen’s ‘Who Mails What’, anyway.

In some ways it makes sense – look at the giving patterns of major donors for example. Figure A shows when people gave specific donations of $1,000+ to 33 Australian and New Zealand charities. Tax-time clearly seems to be an important factor.

But considered in isolation, this doesn’t tell the whole picture. January is not generally considered a good fundraising month, yet $200 million was raised for the Queensland Flood Appeal. I wonder how this chart will look for 2011?

Figure A: Cash gifts $1,000+ by month, 2004 – 2009

It’s about more than the month

My point is that there are bigger influences over when people decide to give other than the month. And of course, when you ask them for money is one of those influences. So when should you be contacting donors?

The key is to think about direct marketing strategy in these terms:
• Maximising life-time value
• Net income over a year – not an appeal
• Number of donations received

If you or your board use these terms, you must abandon return per appeal as a measure – it is destructive and unhelpful. There are lots of articles on this issue, and a couple of books too – ‘The Life You Can Save’ by Peter Singer and ‘Uncharitable’ by Dan Pallotta.

There are many arguments about why it is the wrong measure, but the one most relevant right now is that it is better to raise $1,000,000 at a cost of $400,000 than it is to raise $650,000 at a cost of $50,000. Even though the net is the same, and the ROI raising the $1 million was worse, the reason it is better is that there is likely a higher number of donors, which means long-term income is ‘safer’.

Put bluntly, the more often you get people to give, the more they will give.

Ask more often
The basics of marketing teach us about RFV (recency, frequency, value) – and the example above – use the arguable fact that RFV targeting applies to charity donor bases as much as any other customer base.

Someone who gave six months ago is more likely to give than another otherwise identical donor who gave seven, eight, ten or twenty months ago.

The best way to reduce attrition is get a gift, and the best way to get a gift is to ask. So the best way – across a database – to reduce attrition is to ask closer to when someone last gave. In other words, ask more often.

This all makes sense for donors rather than prospects – but when is a donor a donor? Is it with their first gift, or their second? There will always be some people who only ever give one gift. But those that go on to give a second are much more likely to give a third, and so on. So it makes sense to try and get a second donation as quickly as possible.

All in the timing
We usually time an appeal to maximise response rates. But really, we should measure the overall response rate over a year – i.e. the number of people (and the number of donations) that we retain every year. This is a more useful measure than the response rate to a single appeal. Few charities in Australia measure appeals like this, but it is standard practice for many American charities.

To maximise this overall response rate, we need to plan appeals around response rate and subsequent behaviour.

For example, only sending acquisition mailings at tax and Christmas – the time many charities run big appeals – may seem to make sense, but the medium-term impact is that the new donors may have to wait an average of six months for the next major appeal.

And, on the other hand – letterboxes are absolutely packed out with charity appeals in late October to mid-December, and late April to mid-June. That leaves about seven months with much less competition. And it gives you better test times. Yet another benefit is that you can go to smaller, more tightly selected prospects more often, rather than trying to make up the numbers with some mediocre lists.

Running acquisition campaigns across so many different charities, over so many years has not revealed any data to suggest that there is any long-term advantage from concentrating acquisition in the two big appeal times of Christmas and tax. But it puts workload and cash flow pressures on organisations. I think we do it because that is how we always did it. Let’s break the mould and test sending our acquisition out more evenly, and mailing warm donors more often.

Posted in 'The Agitator' Articles, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

Excuses don’t help fundraising

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

By Jonathon Grapsas,
This article was first published in Canadian Fundraising and Philanthropy in February 2011.

Excuses don’t help fundraising
It’s been a horrible start to the year for Australia, in particular the state of Queensland. We’ve been hit with some of the worst floods in our history and one of the more brutal cyclones; all while other parts of the country suffer through bushfires and heat waves.

With the impact of the floods likely to be in the billions of dollars, the federal government has introduced a 12 month flood levy, which increases personal income tax by 0.75% for a year. The levy is designed to help rebuild Queensland’s infrastructure ruined by the floods.

In the aftermath of the announcement, a friend asked me what I thought, and whether I expected charitable support to be impacted by the levy? Did I believe that by the government ‘forcing’ people to support would be to the detriment of Aussie charities?

I really don’t think so. For two reasons:

People tend to give above and beyond what they normally would in emergency situations

Last year we had a Canadian client due to lodge an appeal the day after the Haiti earthquake. My client rang me in a panic wondering whether in fact we should post the appeal, or delay it.

My response was a categorical ‘yes, post it’. The Haiti situation was horrendous, beyond belief. But the kids we were appealing on behalf of needed help. Their situation hadn’t changed one bit. It couldn’t wait.

So the pack went out, net income increased 25% from the previous year’s appeal. It was a strong appeal. No doubt some of those donors also reached into their pockets to support organizations working in Haiti. But they didn’t forget the kids that also needed help locally in Canada.

I believe the same will ring true after the floods. But a word of warning, the next time this happens (and it will happen, disasters are occurring more frequently) don’t offer an excuse as to why donors shouldn’t or don’t need to respond. Good appeals for support are about clarity and need, not easy ‘get outs’. So avoid wording that mentions conditional support, like “I know you’re probably helping in the aftermath of X, but we also need your help”. That provides an excuse to switch off.

We saw a similar situation as part of the economic meltdown a couple of years back. All of the direct response testing I saw showed what we intuitively thought – mentioning the recession suppressed response.

People give when they see that something needs support, not when they’re presented a raft of excuses why they shouldn’t.

This was about infrastructure, not people

The flood levy is about rebuilding a state’s resources. Roads, buildings, technology. Decimated by a natural disaster.

Whilst that indirectly helps individuals, the levy isn’t about handouts to those affected.

Hence why I believe it won’t affect charitable support, assuming of course it’s backed up with damn good fundraising.

My advice to those fundraising post emergencies is to continue doing what you were planning on doing. Good results follow good practice.

And that’s what I told my mate.


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Posted in Canadian Fundraising and Philanthropy, Fundraising Appeals, Jonathon Grapsas Blog, Pareto Fundraising North America, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

ABC of Direct Response

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

By Jonathon Grapsas


Direct response fundraising often doesn’t make sense. It’s often simple and boring. To many, it’s downright counter intuitive.

Recently, I was asked by a colleague to pen the things I wish I had known earlier in my career; the nuggets of information that would help forge my career. So I’ve morphed this list into a kind of ABC of direct response. The key insights that can shape really effective programs.

Knowing what people say and do are different

I wish I’d understood that what people say and do are two very different things. It didn’t take me long to figure this one out, but knowing that “I won’t read/respond to/give to that” doesn’t necessarily correlate to response is a handy lesson to learn.

Ask yourself, how many statements do you make about things that you plan to do that you actually follow through on? Apply the same logic to fundraising. People simply respond to darn good fundraising, not just what they think they will.

Past behaviour the biggest predictor

Understanding what someone has done in the past is the biggest indicator of what they will do in the future. Recognising this and subsequently spending more time on getting this (the data) right ensures you’re halfway there.

Here’s where it can begin to be counter to our intuition. Surely if someone just responded they need some breathing space? Nope. Going back quickly to that individual ensures you’re giving yourself the best chance to identify likely responders.

As long as it needs to be

A well-worn adage, but still every bit as relevant. Letters shouldn’t be 4 pages or emails short because that’s what we’ve been told. They should be as long as they need to be ensuring they tick all of the mandatory boxes. Enough room to share a story, create a need, offer a solution, ask and keep asking.

The length is irrelevant so long as the execution is spot on.

Complaints are a good thing

Complaints indicate emotion and people caring. Caring enough to voice their views. Few or no complaints usually mean we haven’t pushed the envelope, and likely haven’t told it as it is.

Lots of complaints mean we’ve cut through, sharing something that has pulled on the strings. You’ll generally notice a direct link between lots of noise and grievance and income raised.

The key of course is managing them properly.

Discipline, but test

I wish I’d realized how important it is to be disciplined with what you do, avoiding loads of distraction. I’m not suggesting stifling innovation, but I would encourage doing what works, and do it really well. Remember what pays the bills.

That doesn’t mean repetition necessarily rules the day, testing plays a critical role. But make sure you understand what you’re trying to test, and whether it’s something that you can rightly learn from and apply moving forward. Something that will have a significant impact on future income, not something really tactical that might seem fun to test, but is a waste of time. Testing blue v black font on the outer envelope isn’t going to change the world.

Ok, I’m starting to feel a little like a kid penning their Christmas wish list. I just wish I’d written this article a few years back.


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Posted in Fundraising Appeals, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

The must do’s of bequest fundraising

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

By Fiona McPhee

Bequest income could currently represent 0% to 75% of your income. You might have a multi-faceted bequest program, no program at all or be somewhere in between. Whatever your situation, you should know that the potential bequests hold for your organisation is huge. With the average bequest in Australia today over $60,000, just think of the possibilities.

Whilst it might feel like ‘big brands’ benefit the most from bequests, any non-profit that offers a solution to a problem that is going to impact on society in a positive way has the potential to solicit bequest income.

Yes many bequests are reported as coming from “people we have had no previous association with”, but that is no excuse to do nothing. Organisations with large bequest income have not generated this without investing in their bequest marketing. And if you are from one of these larger organisations there is always room to improve. I recently worked with a well known, major charity who upon implementing some new facets to their bequest program uncovered hundreds more bequest leads on top of their already successful prospecting program.

The key? Seek bequests appropriately.

There are a multitude of ways you could approach the development of a bequest program. Staff on the road making face-to-face asks, direct mail programs, phone programs, press advertisements, online programs or a combination of these. There are some highly successful programs out there and there is no one magic formula. There are some things you can ensure you do to maximise your chances of success.

Having had the opportunity to analyse and work on a broad range of bequest programs, I’ve come across some ‘must dos’ that underpin each successful program.

When it comes to ‘getting started’ the often perceived challenge with bequest marketing is ‘how do you raise this delicate subject with donors?’

The first ‘must do’ has two parts:

  • Don’t be afraid to bring up the subject – everyone else is talking about it, you will be the only one not talking about it. Speaking with supporters who are engaged with your cause and want to know the best way they can help – bequests are one of these ways.
  • Remember to ask – as fundraisers we ask for donations, we ask people to volunteer, we ask people to participate on our events. But for some reason many don’t actually ask their supports to put them in their Will. A bequest brochure that provides information on how to change your Will is not asking.

Like all fundraising program budgets bequests budgets are not infinite. Its important we are spending our money with the best return possible our goal.

The ‘our bequests don’t seem to be coming from our donors’ insight often leads organisations to invest their bequest dollars in mass advertising or ‘Wills Days’ targeted at older audiences not necessarily already affiliated with the cause. I accept that not all bequests come from donor records already on your database – I can see it in the data. But the data also tells me that those most likely to be thinking about putting you in their Will or willing to get up and change their Will to add you in are your current supporters. These people who know you, know what you are trying to achieve, want to help your beneficiaries and believe in your vision. The second ‘must do’:

  • Start with warm before you spend your money on cold. Start prospecting in your warm file first – start with the people who have already shown they care. Once you have that all covered then broader marketing can be considered.

Often the legal side of bequests overtakes our usually accessible fundraising speak. Your great acquisition approaches and successful appeals are based on simple understandable language. So should your bequest communications. The third ‘must do’:

  • Use jargon-free language. Using ‘plain speak’ that your audience can understand

Truly effective fundraising and marketing communications have a clear offer or proposition. The fourth ‘must do’:

  • ‘Leave us a bequest’ is not enough of an offer – you need an appropriate bequest proposition (emotive & compelling, showing the benefits of leaving a bequest) to support your ask. When developing or assessing your bequest proposition ask your self does it:

– Present the need, problem or opportunity?

– Does it offer a solution?

– Does it consider the timing (a bequest is for the future not now)?

– Does it present a benefit to the donor?

– Is it emotional and unique?

And the final ‘must do’ is another classic marketing law:

  • Know your audience. Just because one channel or approach has worked in the past does not mean it’s the only one available to you. Your supporter base is changing shape, your current donors are getting older, your new donors might be from a different generation to your historical support base. What has worked for years could benefit from the testing of new approaches which may appeal to those your currently strategy has not yet motivated.

I have a Will, three charities are in it. All three asked me to consider leaving them a bequest. Each via a different channel and each gave me a compelling reason to do so. I’m 34 hopefully my bequests won’t be realised for many years to come but I expect over time more charities will find their way into my Will as the charities I support continue to develop their bequest approaches to me.


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Posted in Bequest/Legacies, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

Introducing our newest recruits

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Media Release 13 January 2011

Pareto Fundraising is pleased to announce the appointment of a number of new staff to our Sydney and Melbourne offices.

We have recently welcomed Audrey Hii and Libby Lang into our Account Services team, while Tara Tan joins our Marketing and Business Development team. We also have the pleasure of hosting Mai Seki from Japan for a 2 month internship.

Audrey joins us as an Account Manager and is based in Melbourne. Audrey previously worked for five years as a digital media planner/buyer and was lucky enough to include several not for profit clients among her accounts during this time. The experience of working across these campaigns, combined with her experience as a volunteer in Event Fundraising, convinced Audrey of her interest and passion for working in fundraising and she is very excited to be a part of the Pareto team!

Libby joins our Sydney team as an Account Executive. Libby has most recently worked for a social media marketing agency, and previously within the internal communications department of Microsoft Australia, where she played a large part in organising International Women’s Day a major fundraising event for UNIFEM Australia. Libby spent part of her time at university studying in Mexico. Libby’s experiences at home and abroad are what challenged her to discover the world of fundraising, and what lead her here to Pareto!

Also based in our Sydney office is Tara, who joins our Marketing and Business Development team as our Marketing Executive. Tara comes to us after four years as an Account Manager with a magazine distribution company, managing both Australian and UK publisher portfolios. During this time, Tara implemented marketing campaigns for some of Australia’s largest and most popular magazines, as well as successfully launching up to 15 new UK products each year. Interestingly, Tara’s decision to leave the magazine industry and make the leap to the world of fundraising was made while exploring a colonial Mexican town!

Also new to our Sydney team is Mai Seki, who joins Pareto Fundraising for a two month internship. Mai is the Fundraising Manager for Individual Donors for Doctors of the World, and hopes to use her time with Pareto Fundraising to gain invaluable knowledge about fundraising strategy and approach. On a personal note, Mai hopes to master Bachata and Zouk, two forms of dance, while in Sydney!

-Ends-

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Fundraising Institute of New Zealand membership

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Media Release 13 January 2011

FINZ is the membership body for all fundraisers and those involved with the charitable and the not for profit sector in New Zealand.

FINZ provides professional development training, a quarterly magazine, monthly e-newsletter, members’ area and discussion groups on the FINZ website. FINZ has an annual conference, mentoring, library services and advocacy along with other services to members.

As with any organisational body such as the Law Society or the Institute of Accountants, FINZ is here to advocate on behalf of its members and to provide a strong unified voice in the sector.

The charitable sector in New Zealand has a total income of $14.4 billion, government grants of $4.7 billion and donations of $2.6 billion – figures not to be taken lightly.

So, if you’re involved in the sector and want to have your voice heard, your professional development needs met and be supported, then join FINZ today. Membership costs $200 plus GST for 12 months.

You can join online. Alternatively, call 0508 64 3469 or email james@finz.org.nz

-Ends-

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Fundraising Resolutions: version 20.11

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

By Jonathon Grapsas
This article was first published in Canadian Fundraising & Philanthropy in January 2011

Many spend New Year’s Eve discussing plans to shed a few kilos or spend more time with their family. I’m not a big one for forlorn new year’s promises, but thought it would be a bit of fun (and a good checklist to look back on) to pen some fundraising resolutions for 2011.

Here goes. My eight point plan to become a better fundraiser this year.

1 Increase my thirst for knowledge. Read more (blogs, articles, papers), absorb as much as I can from the thought leaders in our sector, be a bigger sponge for learning.

2 Stop putting things off. As a wise school teacher once told me, ‘procrastination is the thief of time’. Smart man he was. I need to just get on with things.

3 Listen more. To those who I agree with, to those who think differently. Pause more often and simply hear what others have to say.

4 Be tenacious about testing. Challenge conventional thinking, test more than ever. That includes debunking more ‘commonly held’ fundraising myths. We talk about testing daily, myself included. Yet the conversion rate of tests we talk about to tests we deliver is low. Far too low.

5 Take my blinkers off and look outside. Not just outside the walls of the agency, but outside the sector. Most of the new stuff I learnt in 2010 was from the commercial sector. Not because they’re smarter, but because I looked more than I normally would outside our own world.

6 Empower others to do even better. My job is about changing the mindset and actions of others as well as my own. Spend more time on changing behaviour than I did in 2010.

7 Continue to search for ‘pacesetters’ in our sector. People and organisations doing great stuff. That includes mystery shopping charities around the globe. To learn for myself, and to share with others. Helping make others better fundraisers means I’m doing a better job too.

8 Get the balance right between learning from what worked and learning from what didn’t. Not too much back slapping (remember, the road to failure is paved with success), but not too much castigating your own work either.

When I think I’ve done what I said I would do, read the list again from start to finish. Then in December check back in and let you know how I did.

Have you written your 2011 fundraising resolutions?

Posted in Canadian Fundraising and Philanthropy, Pareto Fundraising North America, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

How looking outside can provide impetus for growth

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

By Jonathon Grapsas, Fundraising Development Director for Pareto Fundraising

It’s easy to spend a lot of time naval gazing as fundraisers. Digging deep within our own data to understand what’s going on. Speculating, hypothesizing and staring at reports you’ve looked at 100 times before, trying to make sense of it.

Sound familiar?

And whilst I’m not one dissuade you from looking at your own data, I would implore you to look beyond the confines of your four walls a little more.

Benchmarking, or comparing your performance to that of others, is one of the most powerful fundraising tools in our armory.

And not simply for the reasons you might expect….

For most, benchmarking evokes thoughts of geeky slides with charts too small to read. In actual fact the real power of benchmarking is more than just data.

It’s about people and sharing.

Benchmarking studies come in various shapes and sizes. I’m going to focus on what I believe to be the most useful of those, data benchmarking (as opposed to benchmarking surveys that ask you a series of questions rather than look at your real data). In other words, charities looking at the actual data of theirs and other organisations with the intention of learning more about others in order to further their cause.

Here are some of the reasons why looking at others is a must for any ambitious fundraising organisation.

1. It helps you identify trends

When charities share information and look at performance, both on a big picture scale and in minute detail, it provides fundraisers with information about what’s happening in the marketplace.

What’s working. What’s not. What’s driving growth.

This allows you to then make informed decisions about your own efforts, including reaffirming decisions you have made about areas to invest in. Or conversely giving you evidence that an area you have chosen not to bother with was indeed the right call to make.

Graphs and charts from benchmarking are regularly used as a reference by fundraising managers in presentations to their Boards and Committees.

2. Gives you a sense of your performance vs. the industry

How do you really know whether your fundraising is up to scratch or not? What on earth does 30 per cent retention of cash donors actually mean? Are you sure that having only 0.2 per cent of your file telling you they have left a bequest is low?

Questions we ask ourselves daily.

Benchmarking helps answers these and many other fundraising questions. It gives you a real sense of how you are doing.

The best way to do this is by looking at your data versus the data of other organisations. Of course there is always context. But where the names of the charities are shared and programs, size and budget are put in perspective, this gives fundraisers a true sense of how they are tracking.

3. You meet people, you share knowledge

Benchmarking introduces you to people that you wouldn’t have met otherwise. The old adage, ‘the more you put in, the more you put’ certainly applies here.

In fact having spent a lot of time, here in Australia, and in Canada, running benchmarking programs, I have to say this is the thing that excited me most.

More importantly it excites those involved. Like Rebecca Davies, Director of Fundraising at Médecins Sans Frontières, Canada who says that… “the participation in discussions with other leading Canadian organisations has been invaluable. We really appreciate the candor and sharing of best practices in the group sessions, and getting some context to the data provided.”

Benchmarking forces fundraisers to talk to each other. Because let’s face it, when we go to conferences and attend workshops, we’re a polite bunch and we also tend to keep to ourselves.

But when you’re looking at Charity A whose retention rate on new regular giving recruits is miles ahead of yours, you simply HAVE to talk to them. Find out how they’re doing it, what they’re doing differently and what they’ve tested.

Really clever people coming together to share not only data, but brilliant ideas. This can only result in great things happening.

4. Provides a forum to learn about new, and old frontiers

If you’re not using face to face recruitment to recruit new donors, then how are you going to learn more about the channel? Of course you could talk to an agency; you may even talk to a colleague who did it once, back in 1998.

And what about digital fundraising, it’s all the rage now, right? Where do you turn to for the lowdown on what’s happening out there?

Benchmarking programs particularly those that are all encompassing and study each area of fundraising allow you to learn, and do so looking at real, live data and not textbooks.

5. Helps you raise more money

The biggest barrier to measuring yourself is the cost of doing it. The second biggest barrier is a fear or reluctance to share.

Benchmarking is about value, not cost. If you commit to comparing yourselves with others, then you will not only recoup the upfront outlay, but the information it arms you with will allow you to make more informed and strategic decisions. And that can only mean two things: more dollars raised, more beneficiaries helped.

There are a heap of other benefits to sharing data and insights with others including keeping us more accountable and reducing any possible complacency.

If you’re interested in getting together with some of the best fundraisers in the country and finding out how to raise more money for your organisation, then please go to the Benchmarking section of out website before registration closes on 21st January, or get in touch with Clarke Vincent: clarke.vincent@paretofundraising.com or 07 3015 4021

Posted in Benchmarking, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

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