News & Articles

Sweeping changes made to ‘Include a Charity’ initiative to benefit the sector

June 17th, 2010

Include a Charity open to whole sector

Include a Charity is about undergo a strategic change in order to transform the landscape of bequest giving in Australia. Launched to the Australian public in 2006, Include a Charity (IAC) was originally funded by some of Australia’s leading charities, however this will now be opened up to the sector as a whole.

The new look IAC will be re-launched in November this year and will mirror that of the successful UK and Ireland model, whereby a large consortium of charities, of all sizes, help fund a social change campaign. This social change model has had great success having seen a 4% increase in the number of people leaving a gift in their Will.

In Australia, the number of people who leave a gift in their will to a charity is currently 8%. One of the goals of the new model is to double this number so that by 2020 the number of people leaving a bequest is 16%. This would equate to an additional $577m of income in today’s terms to the sector.

By being involved with IAC your organisation will be accessible to a whole new audience through a sizeable promotional budget that includes channels such as TV, Press, Solicitors and later Direct Mail activities.

There are not many initiatives that can deliver this kind of benefit to the sector and it can only happen by working together, making your support critical.

If you are interested in learning more please download a brochure here or contact Marcus Blease on 02 9479 7265 or email mblease@tscnsw.org.au

Posted in News, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

Your Perfect Donor Communications Plan

June 17th, 2010

By Sean Triner. This article is Part one in a two part series


Part I: The Big Picture

Traditional Communications

In the olden days it was easy. A typical donor communications calendar may have seen you send out a quarterly newsletter, a special appeal at Christmas and another at another special time, for example Chinese New Year in Hong Kong and tax time in Australia.

Such letters were relatively easy to get out and your donors were treated as being of one particular type, so everyone could get the same letter. There were few fundraising trained professionals in the industry – most people had ended up in fundraising by accident, or because they wanted to change the world; not by training.

Phone calls to donors were rare – maybe in response to a complaint or for some other unplanned purpose.

A good communications plan should consider many factors including external data, different audiences, brand and tone, resources, and much more.

Pulling together a donor communications plan

Most donor communication plans are pretty simple and revolve around ‘What we did last year.’

More advanced plans may include the line ‘But a bit better.’

Simple is good, but this is too simple. Donor communications are key – if you rely on individual donations they are your lifeblood. What you did last year, is probably what you did the year before and so on. At what point did someone work out what should be done?

In an article, it is hard to suggest what a perfect donor communications plan should be with so many diverse organisations, with different resources and donors but I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest some key aspects for pulling together comms plans for all organisations.

1. Audience

Audience can be split into various groups by channel of acquisition i.e. was this donor recruited by mail, phone, face-to-face or online and type of support i.e. are they a classic donor, regular giver, bequest or events donor.

The modern charity has diverse donors.

The ‘traditional’ donor (female, 55+, middle class suburb etc) still dominates for most, but those who have sensibly invested in face-to-face street and door-to-door recruitment of regular givers have a whole new audience of 30-50 year olds to deal with. Clearly these two groups should not get all of the same communications, all of the time – but they do share enough in common to get some of the same communications some of the time.

The essence of the communications are the same though. Thank the donor, ask them to please help more or keep giving. And deliver stories demonstrating the impact their donation is having.

2. Content

This is not rocket science. We call our approach to fundraising communications ‘The Pareto Way’ which really is another way of saying ‘making sure that we do everything that has been developed, tested and written about by marketing and fundraising experts from David Ogilvy to Mal Warwick’. Of course, we have tested and developed some tweaks and tactics, but the basics still work.

It is amazing what I see arrive in my letterbox and what I observe online from charities. Statistics, facts, ‘we are the largest blah blah’, ‘we have been around since 1982…’, ‘Australia’s leading blah blah’ etc which all the experts say not to do. Every good training course or book will tell you this.

Each and all of your communications should be story driven. Stories are what all marketers use to sell a product be it soap poweder, a new car or an ipod. One advantage we charities have over soap powder is that we have a plethora of stories at hand.

Content should be driven by stories about beneficiaries and enhanced with, ahem, more stories. All the material in a direct mail pack or newsletter, additional pieces (lifts), your response coupon – even reply envelopes should follow a theme and revolve around stories.

3. Tactics.

The old fashioned tactics still tend to work better. For appeals, Johnson boxes (the leader text above the ‘Dear Sean’ bit) still tend to lift response. Letters that look like letters, stories with a beginning, a middle and an end – just like direct mail from years ago tend to work. For newsletters, websites and emails, features linking donor and beneficiary (not pictures of CEOs getting big cheques) is what works best.

The key formula for appeal success is a letter, from one individual to another individual in first person singular that tells a story and makes a clear proposition. For non-ask communications like surveys, the same applies.

I think one reason that first person singular (I not we) makes for better reading is that it implies an acceptance of responsibility. Taking the time to explain the reason for why a gift is needed and what impact it will have, helps establish respect – I don’t expect you to give me money because I say so; I am willing to take the time to explain. This could go some way to explaining why longer copy and more inserts tend to lift response rates (despite donor focus groups leaning more towards ’short and to the point’.

All the way through, I say ‘tend’. This is because it depends.

It depends on having a great, clear proposition, argument and case study. Sometimes these things are short, sometimes not. Sometimes they need lots of information, sometimes they do not. What is clear is that a good, personal communication linking donor and beneficiary always works better.

5. Media.

Whilst I have mostly spoken about mail examples, some rules apply across the board. Honesty, first person singular, one to one personal communication applies to email, phone and even face-to-face.

Deciding what media to use is important. It is easy to send only email appeals to donors recruited online, yet we see that emailing and mailing them will keep them closer, and get them giving more. Donors who generally respond to mail, should be emailed too. With phone recruited donors, we should generally also use mail and email.
Basically, all forms of communication should be used with careful testing working out the optimum expenditure.

The final aspects when looking at a donor communications plan are timing and the number of communications sent.

There are some things that are a given for example a Christmas appeal tends to work better towards the end of the year. But many things are not as straightforward. When do you send your survey? What emails should go out? When do we talk about bequests? And the big one, how many communications should we send? How many is too many?

Part two in this series will look specifically at these areas in greater depth.

ADMA Forum 2010

Sean Triner along with guest presenters Chris Washington-Sare of Greenpeace, Trudi Mitchell of Cancer Council NSW and Cameron Watson formerly of World Vision will present a pre-forum workshop titled ‘Fundraiser’s Guide to the Ideal Comms Plan: How to Make Direct Marketing Raise More’ at ADMA Forum 2010.
This exclusive workshop is all about pulling together a great communications strategy that takes into account your cause, your resources, your brand and your goals. Using real case studies and evidence Sean will show some counter-intuitive ideas, how to integrate new media, reduce time on newsletters and make donor communications ever more effective.
The workshop will also help you develop the right measures for a good communications plan so you can easily demonstrate your successes to the board.
Learning Outcomes Include:

  • Leave the session with a sketch of your revised communications plan
  • Understand budget and HR implications of your plan
  • Take away a communications checklist and examples of good communications

For more information about ADMA Forum 2010 visit www.admaforum.com/nfp

Posted in News, Pareto Talk, Supporter Relationship Management | No Comments »

A look at how disaster organizations responded to donors in the wake of the Haiti earthquake

June 11th, 2010
Released 11 June 2010

Global fundraising agencies Pareto Fundraising and Pell & Bales have released the key findings from their most recent charity ‘mystery shopping’ exercise. The study, conducted from the end of January through to the end of April 2010, looked at the performance of several organizations fundraising for Haiti, and specifically how they responded following donations made online.

What we did

On the back of the tragedy that struck Haiti in January, 2010 Pareto Fundraising and Pell & Bales decided to look at how charities were responding to donors who made donations in the wake of the disaster.

Here’s how we did it

  • Made an online gift around two weeks after the Haiti disaster. The gift made was for the equivalent of $25 USD, to 52 organizations in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and Spain.
  • Sat back and watched what happened after the donation was made. We monitored the organizations subsequent efforts for the next two months (up till the end of April).
  • Analyzed the results, based on five key criteria:
    1. Initial contact experience. What was the experience like as a donor making the donation?
      1. Response time. Did we hear back from the charity the same day the gift was made online?
        1. Value of the ‘thank you’. Was it personal? Did we hear the words ‘thank you’? Was a story shared?
          1. How proactive the organization was. Was information shared about how our gift would make a difference? Was regular/monthly giving promoted initially?
            1. The follow up. Was there ongoing feedback and updates? Were we asked for subsequent donations, and if so were we asked to consider a regular/monthly gift?

What we found

Overall, the initial response to our gifts was very good. Most organizations responded to our donation immediately and were genuinely thankful for the donation made.

Whilst the ongoing frequency of communications was regular, and the feedback detailed, the element missing was the link to individual stories, and how our donation was having a direct impact. Most of the feedback was operationally focused.

We were asked for another financial contribution several times by some organizations in the subsequent two months, although the huge area of opportunity moving forward definitely lies within regular/monthly giving. Very few asked us to consider changing the way we support and commence an ongoing, monthly gift.

Below are some of the key insights. It is worth noting that the results were analyzed up until the end of April, and therefore some organizations may have subsequently engaged in the follow up activity referred to below from May onwards.

  • 83% of charities responded to our donation the same day (with an email confirmation). In the US, Canada and Australia the response came on the same day in 100% of occasions. In the UK 85% of the time, whereas only 30% of Spanish charities responded the same day of the gift. However it is worth noting that 4 of the 10 charities in Spain did not actually process our donation, at all.
  • If all charities that processed our donation (92%), all but three said the words ‘thank you’ within the email received after making the gift. However 10 organizations did not personalize the thank you email (I.e. it did not reference our name personally in the salutation or the body of the email).
  • Only 29% of charities initially promoted regular/monthly giving. The highest of the countries was the US where 55% of charities mystery shopped asked for an ongoing commitment.
  • In the follow up activity, after our first gift, 21% of organizations used vehicles other than email to communicate with us. Of the 52 charities we surveyed, only 2 (both in the UK) used a combination of email, mail and telephone to keep in touch and communicate with us. 31% of charities across the countries did not reach out to us at all after the initial thank you process.

What we’d recommend

Below we’ve provided some recommendations for organizations responding to disasters, related to both the initial period after a disaster, and in the weeks and months following.

Initial contact

  • Charities need to ensure that initial donations receive a speedy response either by auto
    response or within a short space of time (response in hours, not days).
  • Initial responses should be personalized and should contain the words ’thank you’.
  • When landing on a charities website, the disaster should be prominently displayed, with its own separate landing page. All email communications should provide a link straight to that landing page (or micro site).
  • If the organization is strategically focusing on regular/monthly gifts, the initial response should promote this and keep it singularly focused.

Subsequent contact

  • Subsequent communications need to be relevant and timely, providing useful and important updates and information demonstrating the impact the donor’s money is having on the ground. That means telling real, human stories.
  • Real feedback from the field should be provided on a regular basis, in a coherent manner. We should foster opportunities for deeper engagement and understanding of the issues at hand.
  • Stand out from the crowd. Some of the best examples from this exercise on how to feedback involved inviting donors to teleconferences and webinars to share stories from the field.

Conversion to Regular/Monthly Giving

  • Charities should develop and execute a follow up communication plan as part of an integrated strategy to convert onetime cash supporters onto regular/monthly giving.
  • All communications should focus on capturing details to make conversion to monthly giving easier e.g. Name, address, phone number and email. Offer opt outs rather than opt in to follow up contact.
  • Constant reinforcement in all communications of the importance and need for regular/monthly giving (linked to the need for long term, sustainable support to the people affected).
  • Develop integrated channel plan for conversion to monthly giving including email promotion/reinforcement, telephone conversion and mail mop up activity.
  • Aim to make direct approach to conversion onto regular/monthly giving within 2 months of first cash gift. Speed is key. We know that 2 months is better than 4 months, and so on.
  • Evaluate the impact of developing a specific regular/monthly giving product for the emergency situation (I.e. sign up for 365 days) along with a well thought out plan for future relationship management and donor care.
  • Once signed up to a regular/monthly gift, focus on the honeymoon period: the first 30 days after sign up. This is critical to arresting attrition.

Long term strategy

  • Develop a plan for communicating with non-responders to your regular/monthly giving conversion efforts. Consider how to feed these individuals into the ongoing cash program and look at ways to engage with non financial support. Test using as a prospect file for future conversion activity.
  • Ensure your organization is well equipped to for the next emergency response. For example, mail and email templates in place, thanking and conversion process agreed.

For more information on how to implement an effective emergency response plan please contact Jonathon Grapsas of Pareto Fundraising at jonathon.grapsas@paretofundraising.com, or Karl Holweger of Pell and Bales at karlholweger@aol.com

-Ends-

Posted in Benchmarking, News, Pareto Fundraising North America, Pareto Talk, Press Release | No Comments »

Leading Canadian charities come together in the spirit of sharing and best practice

May 4th, 2010
Released 4 May 2010

Pareto Fundraising has released the results of their 2010 benchmarking study looking at trends in the Canadian charitable sector.

The latest analysis looks at data through to the end of December 2009 from the participating 14 Canadian charities including: Amnesty International Canada, BC Cancer Foundation, Canadian Diabetes Association, Canadian Red Cross (Western Canada), CARE Canada, The Children’s Wish Foundation Canada, cbm Canada, Canadian Feed The Children, David Suzuki Foundation, Médecins Sans Frontières Canada, The Nature Conservancy of Canada, Ontario Nature, the SickKids Foundation and WWF-Canada.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, the results were mixed as to how charities in Canada have fared. Whilst income overall fell in 2009, there were certainly some positive signs for the sector, again reinforcing that those organizations that have taken a long term view to growth have come through the financial downturn relatively unscathed and in a strong position heading into and beyond 2010.

Specifically, the latest analysis, which looked at historical data from 4.7m donors and more than $2.2b worth of gifts, found that:

  • Income from individuals fell in 2009, down 10% to $158m. The key driver of that was a drop in onetime cash gifts donated, which decreased $17m last year (this is due to a decline in the number of cash gifts – the average cash gift actually rose).
  • As reported in the previous round of analysis, monthly giving continues to provide a tremendous stream of ongoing income for charities. At the height of the recession, monthly giving grew 9% in 2009, now providing $48m annually for the 14 organizations involved in the cooperative. Based on the current growth trajectory, monthly giving looks set to overtake cash giving in the next year as the major source of individual funding for Canadian charities.
  • Income from planned gifts increased last year (8%) despite the average value of realized
    bequests falling from $35k to $32k (though it still remained well above the 2007 level of $27K). This represents a huge area of growth for Canadian organizations. Despite the fact that the number of bequests left each year is on the rise, these levels are still lagging behind other developed fundraising nations.
  • The level of income and number of new cash donors from direct mail fell in 2009 by 15% and 22% respectively. This decrease in income was despite the increase in average gift levels via direct mail overall (a bigger increase than in the previous year). This decline in income was offset partly by the shift in focus for many organizations to recruiting monthly donors. The fall in new donors being recruited is both a reflection of less prospecting activity being undertaken overall, as well as a fall in the number of new
    recruits coming on board.
  • Online giving continues to grow, an increase in income of 17% from 2008. However giving online remains a relatively small chunk of the pie, accounting for just 2% of all individual income versus more traditional means like direct mail which represents closer to 20%.

    • According to Rebecca Davies, Director of Fundraising at Médecins Sans Frontières, participation in the benchmarking study over the past two years has helped Médecins Sans Frontières make responsible choices about which areas to invest in, particularly during turbulent times.

    Davies says “The involvement in the benchmarking group has not only helped reassure us that the decisions we’ve made to invest heavily in monthly giving and bequests have strategically been the rights ones for us but the participation in discussions with other leading Canadian
    organizations has been invaluable. We really appreciate the candour and sharing of best practices in the group sessions, and getting some context to the data provided.”

    Ends

    For information on how you can be involved in Pareto Fundraisings Benchmarking Study please contact Jonathon Grapsas at 647-347-0157 or by email at jonathon.grapsas@paretofundraising.com.

Posted in Benchmarking, Data Insights, Pareto Fundraising North America, Press Release | No Comments »

Avoid common data pitfalls

April 22nd, 2010

By Tertia Sanderson and Fiona Paterson. This article was first published in Fundraising and Phianthropy

Love it or hate it, donor data is the fuel that keeps your charity running. Raw data can be mined and transformed to provide insights and make any supporter communication compelling and personally relevant. But many charities stumble into common data pitfalls that make targeting the best people harder.

Pitfall #1: throwing away donors

It’s unlikely you have too many active donors, and yet it’s possible you have ‘thrown away’ a proportion of donors who may have been active if you had better understood and managed your donor data.

  • RTS (Return to Sender) donors are often flagged in a database as ‘Inactive’ or ‘Do Not Mail’. They should be marked as RTS. Source their new address and actively pursue them through other channels such as email and phone.
  • A donor who rings to complain about a communication received should not be marked as “never speak to me again”. If they have taken the time to ring up they are showing they care about your charity. Use the opportunity to get feedback from the donor – find out what has upset them and what action they would like to be taken. Address this through appropriate coding such as: they are to receive only limited communications and appeals without direct asks; they are not to be contacted by telephone; or they are to be contacted through email only. Don’t just cease communication.
  • The regular giver whose gift doesn’t go through is often ‘thrown away’. Not many charities have a formal process for following up dishonoured gifts and re-engaging the donor. These donors have not actively cancelled and are your best regular giving prospects; make an effort to recover them.
  • A large number of discarded donors are those who are automatically flagged as ‘inactive’ or archived because they meet certain criteria, such as ‘has not made a transaction in 24 months’. These may not be your hottest cash appeal targets, but any donor who has a transaction needs to remain in your contactable pool because they are more valuable than a cold prospect.

Ask yourself:
How do we mark a donor whose mail is returned and do we try to recover them?
What do we do when a regular gift is dishonoured?
Are we too quick to mark our donors as non-contactable?

Pitfall #2: limiting basic contact data collection

Don’t assume that one contact channel is enough. Australia post says at least 17% of people move house every year. By limiting your data to a street address, one in six of your records becomes invalid every 12 months.

Broaden your communication channels to more than just direct mail. Ask for and capture mobile numbers and email addresses. Analysis shows a donor who has provided an email address and a mobile phone number is less likely to stop giving and more likely to be responsive to streams of communication other than direct mail.

  • Ask donors to check and update their contact details at every opportunity – when you mail them, when they call to make a donation. Engaged, committed donors will do it; they want to hear from you in the future.
  • Information such as source of gift and date of birth is incredibly valuable, but is seldom actively sought or captured. Date of birth can be used as a form of verification, to assist acquisition profiling and as a life stage indicator useful for prospecting bequests.
  • Knowing what inspired a donor to first give to your cause provides valuable insight and an opportunity to understand the longer-term value of your acquisition activities.

Ask yourself:
Do we actively seek and revalidate contact information from our donors?
Do we use this to inform our understanding of the donor and communications with them?
Do we use the National Change of Address service at least once a year (at least for active donors and return to senders)?

Pitfall#3: Contradictory Codes

One of the most common problems that crops up is the misuse of codes and flags in databases. Codes or flags are often developed as a reaction to something and the context in which this new coding is placed is not considered. How it affects current process, entry protocols and how the code will be used alongside other data can be easily overlooked.

  • You want your donors IN for as many communication opportunities as possible. A ‘Do Not Contact’ flag might be a quick fix, but consider if this can be filtered by channel or timing so that it’s not ‘Do Not Contact’ ever.
  • Ensure your codes don’t contradict each other. For example, a donor should not be marked ‘email only’ in one section and ‘mail four times a year’ in another.
  • Fundraisers fundraise and database managers usually don’t. Help your database manager (and supporter services team) understand what you need and why.

Ask yourself:
Do we have a clear data management strategy?
Does our database manager understand the core functionality of the database and what fundraisers are trying to achieve?

About the writers

Tertia Sanderson is a data analyst who joined Pareto Fundraising in 2008 to use her data skills to improve lives, rather than profit. She brings to Pareto her Bachelor degree in data management, a love and passion for all things data plus 15 years experience in database design and manipulation.

Fiona is a Fundraising and Direct Marketing professional with over ten years experience helping to find, keep and grow donors through the expert management of strategic fundraising and database marketing programs. Enthusiastic and passionate about data, Fiona has a solid background delivering successful fundraising programs globally for clients including ChildFund Australia, Children’s Cancer Institute of Australia, MSF Hong Kong, Leprosy Mission New Zealand and WWF-Australia.

Posted in Data Insights, News, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

To love or not to love

March 4th, 2010

By Fiona Paterson

I love working on appeals, particularly the integrated campaigns we run. These appeals utilise digital and the phone alongside traditional direct mail. It gives me a chance to get absorbed by a great story, to remind myself why the charity we are helping exists. It also helps me connect with beneficiaries and remember that there are hundreds and thousands of wonderful Australians and New Zealanders out there who give their hard earned dollars to help others, even when their own financial situations may not be brilliant.

On the flip side sometimes I don’t love working on appeals. Because fundraisers are held to some pretty unrealistic expectations when it comes to their individual campaign outcomes.

For most the need to grow appeal income year-on-year is standard. But what happens when your audience is being asked to do more than just support your appeals? What happens when there is no acquisition to develop the base? What happens when market forces, like the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), threaten our audience’s capacity to give?

The context of an appeal

Christmas 2009 turned out to be a pretty tough one for lots of charities. At the start of 2010 I was in a ‘not loving appeal objectives’ frame of mind as more and more fundraisers began to ask me how had others Christmas appeals faired and set about trying to get a clear picture of the marketplace.

As a strategy director it’s hard for me to just look at individual appeals in isolation. I always want to know what the context is in which they are executed. Has there been much acquisition in the past year? Has the communications program/donor journey changed this year? Were new activities targeted at the audience preceding the appeal? Is a segmentation model used to target the activity? Has one been newly introduced? Was the messaging part of an ongoing, planned communication with donors? Was it an emergency message? And more…

But living in the real world means, as fundraisers, we mostly have to work to individual campaign targets.

I love, love, love, organisations that have the flexibility to look at their programs as whole – judging performance across the year, looking at combined returns across the gamut of activity being directed at the donor audience, but this is not the common practice.

So what happened with Christmas appeals to warm (previous) donors? I had a good dig around in the results of our clients, and spoke with a range of friends in other Charities.

What I found was that there was no one defining trend. A few organisations saw growth over their 2008 Christmas income; others found it harder and were seeing below or on par returns compared to 2008. On the whole however it appears that more appeals struggled than those that didn’t.

How did we do?

Increasing appeal income is not an unreasonable request. And for 2009 many organisations had this goal. In order to grow your appeal income you need to either increase average gift increase number of responses, increase your conversion of new donors to multi givers, increase your donor pool or a combination of these.

Most organisations maintained or grew their response rates. The contributing factors included:

  • (Better) targeting;
  • Focused efforts on high value/top 20 percent of donors;
  • Channel integration (eg using phone and/or email);
  • Utilising additional ‘waves’ of communication (follow up or chaser communications).

Many organisations saw average gifts plateau, and in some cases drop. The contributing factors here were:

  • Depressed high value giving. Just a few high value donors not giving or reducing their giving amounts can have a big impact;
  • Acquisition (in particular lower value cash recruitment). Recruiting more donors, at a lower value will see more lower value gifts, suppressing overall average gift; and
  • Anecdotally donors indicating they simply could not give at their previous levels.

For those not making specific asks to donors and/or using their individual, prior giving levels as the basis for your ask, depression of average gifts may have been even larger.

Across the year I have had feedback from major donor fundraisers that their usual suspects were indicating they were not able to give in 2009 or only able to give at a lower levels than in previous years. This has extended through to cash appeals with high value donors tending to maintain response (with a couple of exceptions) but give less.

Those organisations that focused their efforts on this group reaped the rewards. Strong business cases presented justifying higher value giving, follow up communications and person-to-person asking (via face-to-face and phone) and personalised touches helped to encourage this valued group of donors to continue their support.

Context is so important.

Did you change your program in 2009? Maybe you felt the GFC required a change in tack? Did you increase your focus on regular giving conversion? Maybe you had learnings and insights from 2008 that saw you adjust you communications mix or the way you asked your donors?

An organisation I work with changed their 2009 donor communication program. Through the introduction of new tactics in their Spring appeal they saw a significant increase in income from increased response and average gifts. They also introduced an additional communication before Christmas, the purpose of which was donor care and information gathering but unexpectedly generated significant income (lovely donors). And they have increased their active asking (via phone and mail) of cash donors to convert to regular giving throughout 2009.

When it came to their Christmas appeal, major growth in comparison to their appeal in 2008 the previous year was not generated. On the face of it their 2009 Christmas appeal was deemed unsuccessful. Viewed in isolation this is a reasonable conclusion. However on closer inspection we can see over the course of 2009 many of their donors had:

  • already given more than their previous annual value through increased average gifts and response rates in other appeals;
  • converted to regular giving cash gifts but the value and/or frequency of these gift can reduce)

Also to note was the volume and value of high value gifts had not matched those received in 2008.

Just taking a direct comparison between 2008 and 2009, their Christmas appeal doesn’t look impressive. Looking at 2008 versus 2009 as a whole we can see that growth has been impressive (even without expectations that the GFC had the potential to suppress growth).

In fact, just in the last quarter, nearly twice as many people gave as compared to 2008.

To summarise, what we did observe with the Christmas appeals 2009 were:

1. Response rates were maintained or increased;
2. Average gifts decreased or were static;
3. Fewer people gave over $1,000

Emerging Trends

There are some other emerging trends to watch out for; most are reflective of or are driving, changing donor giving behaviours.

  • More donors who used to only give through the post are now using our websites as a response channel
  • The increasing use of email to support direct mail appeals is helping to improving response
  • Below are three approaches showing encouraging returns:
    - Integrating email, supporting direct mail approaches & driving online to give
    - Using email drivers to reactivate lapsed donors
    - Using email drivers to convert tepid* supporters to cash donors
  • More opportunities/ways to give are being offered to our donors. Many organisations are increasing their approaches for regular giving conversion and upgrades, virtual gift campaigns are on the rise, and advocacy and campaigning approaches are increasing
  • Charities are asking more often

On this last point I often get asked “How many times should I ask my donors for a donation each year?” To quote Jeff Brooks “this is the wrong question – the question should be; How can we be relevant in the lives of our donors?” There is no magic formula. It critical to understand that for many donors it takes more than one ask to solicit a gift but they do not want to be treated like ATMs.

The importance of relevance.

If your Christmas campaign, or any campaign for that matter, did not at least match your 2008 returns (and you haven’t lost a whole pile of your active donor base in some freak database accident) then I recommend you consider the relevance of the communication you sent to your donors.

And consider the stage in the relationship journey each donor is with you. There are many questions you should be asking yourself including key ones such as:

  • Is this donor relatively new and do they know little about the topic?
  • Has this donor heard it all before?
  • How did they respond?
  • Would they be expecting you to communicate with them at this time, about this issues with this ask?

To paraphrase Jeff Brooks in his Future Fundraising blog: ‘You can’t just raise funds for anything you want. If you go to your donors with a need, topic or ask they don’t associate you with, they just might ignore you in droves. No matter how great your work is.’

Tips for keeping your appeals on track

  • Make sure your communications consider your audience and are relevant to them
  • Ensure you are presenting a clear need and solution
  • Connect donors to beneficiaries (not you, your brand or organisations)
  • Tell a story your audience can connect with
  • Plan your second gift conversion journey
  • Focus your efforts on the top 20 percent (its where your income is coming form)
  • Review your online donation real estate (Is it easy to find? Is it easy to fill in? Can it be adapted to reflect your appeal ask?)
  • Explore channel integration (Email, Phone) – if you have low email or phone number penetration make 2010 your year to actively collect these. (Analysis shows us that even the presence of an email address or phone number on a donor record increases their retention likelihood)
  • Segment and target – don’t mass mail

______________________________________________________________________________________________

* Tepid Supporter – non-financial supporters such as activists, campaigners, e-news sign ups and non-cash donors such as event participants, lottery players and merchandise buyers

Jeff Brooks writes the best blog in fundraising, and we look forward to seeing him at the F&P Australasian Fundraising conference later this year click here and subscribe to his excellent, short updates

About Fiona Paterson

Fiona is a Fundraising and Direct Marketing professional with over ten years experience helping to find, keep and grow donors through the expert management of strategic fundraising and database marketing programs. Enthusiastic and passionate about data, Fiona has a solid background delivering successful fundraising programs globally for clients including ChildFund Australia, Children’s Cancer Institute of Australia, MSF Hong Kong, Leprosy Mission New Zealand and WWF-Australia.

Posted in Benchmarking, Data Insights, Fundraising Appeals, News, Pareto Talk | No Comments »

Does size matter

February 26th, 2010

The purpose and value of long letters

All fundraising communications should be approached with your objectives as the first consideration. From here, identifying the target audience and understanding their needs and being respectful to them as individuals shape the form of the communication. Pareto Fundraising’s recommended approach to all donor communications is that they are developed as part of a long-term supporter relationship management plan aiming to develop the one-to-one relationships you have with your donors. For test results and case study example click here

Your organisations target audience

For direct mail appeals and acquisition you should have a clear audience for your organisation. For example you may know that your donors are (using information gathered from a warm donor survey):

  • 65+, retired, home owners who like reading and gardening, playing bowls and golf. They support your organisation because they are passionate about the work that you do.
  • The publications they read include Good Weekend, Australian Geographic, Better Homes and Gardens.
  • They listen to 3AW and watch ABC and 60 minutes. All of which present long format information and stories.

Your supporters have told you:

 “I do not use the computer … I prefer snail mail, I handle all donations”
“I think that the work you do is outstanding, I cannot fault your communication”

In summary your donors are older – they like the mail, they sit down and read it, they like a good story. They need at least 12 point font. They need a clear message and for giving to be made as easy as possible (less thinking/decision making).

And while there will be different kinds of readers in your audience – long letters are OK for all of them:

  • Those that throw unopened envelope away – the length of letter is irrelevant;
  • Those that read only beginning and ending – the length of letter is irrelevant;
  • Skimmers can pick up more points from a longer letter; and
  • Passionate readers love long letters.

Short letters don’t work for the last two groups. Along letter must contain some key elements to make it work well. These key elements are detailed below – letter length is the consequence of the personalised communication approach Pareto Fundraising has developed, tested and found success with for over 65 charities worldwide.

The letter should be as long as it needs to be to tell a story and make it compelling:

  • Real story with a beginning, middle and end;
  • Case study, real life;
  • Short sentences; and
  • Short paragraphs

The letter should include:

  • A clear message:
    o Problem, solution, what I am asking you to do today; and
    o Linked to the story (interwoven)
  • Clear and repeated ask
  • Personalisation
    o Make the recipient feel like an individual not a number
    o More than just name and address
  • Deadline & Target (where relevant and real)

There is no formula for the actual length – four page, five page, six page. What we know from writing over 200 appeal packs in the past seven years in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and North America (with staff having written packs in the UK and Europe in their careers) is that you need to tell a compelling, human story, presenting a clear message and ask. This generally not possible in a two page letter – testing and trialling have proven this time and again.

In fact, in communicating a key appeal for one Victorian client, Sean Triner (co-founder of Pareto Fundraising) once wrote a letter for an organisation he volunteered with (and not a Pareto Fundraising client) that was over a dozen pages long. The letter achieved nearly 50 percent response and the highest average donation the organisation had ever received.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

A personal fundraiser

February 16th, 2010

By Sean Triner, Co Founder of Pareto Fundraising and Pareto Phone

For my 40th birthday I decided to forego presents, and reduce stress on my friends wondering what to get me. So I decided to fundraise for Women’s health charity – my birthday is on International Women’s Day.

Since I am a fundraiser for a living, I wanted to do this right and also work with a charity who would ring-fence the money raised for fundraising purposes, and follow up the donations with good donor care.

My Plan:

1) Choose a charity
2) Create an EveryDay Hero page
3) Use my blog, Facebook and Twitter to market it
4) Market direct to my personal contacts
5) Thank donations
6) Charity to follow up

Choosing a charity

A while back I had done some work with the Marie Stopes Foundation. A great charity, working in women’s health – especially sexual and reproductive health. I love the work they do and visited a project in Fiji. I also knew my $4,000 target would have a big impact and that it can be a difficult area for fundraising.

Creating an EveryDay Hero page

An easy process. It took about 20 minutes including uploading a couple of photos and it is all self explanatory. There are other fundraising websites like this such as Just Giving in the UK and Artez in North American and Australia.

Not that keen on the fact that there is no space to summarise the appeal, nor the fact that they don’t take AMEX (AMEX holders tend to be more generous – they are good customers and they like to use their AMEX cards. Many people don’t accept them because of higher charges – this is bad donor care. I didn’t realise until too late or I would have used another provider).

Check out the page here. Fundraisers need to remember that EveryDay Hero is the mechanism for donating. It will raise $0 if it is not marketed properly.

Posting on social media

I put up a simple blog, then a better one when I got a case-study. Also Twittered about it and put on Facebook.

The simple blog got in $220 within a couple of days, then nothing.

The more advanced blog has just gone up.

Direct Marketing

Over 95% of the income was generated through email and phone calls. I remembered my old events fundraising days, and that with sponsor forms it is really important to get the top contributors first.

So I went approached the people that I thought would donate a higher level ie over $100. These were people close to me, and earners. Nine have given so far averaging $152 each.

After that I sent emails to about twenty other friends and fundraising gurus.

When a decent average, and high ‘spread’ of donations were on the form to act as prompts, I then emailed all Pareto staff (60 emails – mail merged and emailed separately with slightly different version for senior managers).It is worth learning how to mail-merge to email rather than putting everyone in the To: box, or emailing yourself and putting them in the BCC: box.

Thanking

An automated thank you goes from EveryDay Hero, but in addition I recommend that you drop people a personal note as well, when the notification comes in.

Charity to follow up

Donors can choose whether the charity is notified of their details. If they supplied them, they would have wondered about what happens next. What should happen next is the charity also thank.

Donors should be thanked by the charity as their donations come in.

Also, just before the end of the campaign they should thank again – updating the donor on where we are up to with the campaign, telling them another story and asking if they would encourage friends to donate. In my case, around 1 March would be ideal.

Immediately after the campaign – in my case around the 9 March – another email should go to donors thanking them, telling them the result of the campaign, asking donors to sign up to a regular gift. You should ask for between 20% and 30% per month of whatever they donated. So a $250 donor should be asked for between $50 and $75 per month.

Next

Don’t forget the donors and the fundraiser. Ask the fundraiser themselves to become a regular monthly donor and make sure you stay in touch with the donors.

Finally

Visit this site, have a look around and please make a donation.

© Pareto Fundraising

Posted in Fundraising Appeals, Pareto Talk, Supporter Relationship Management | No Comments »

Introducing our newest recruits: Account Directors Sarah Bedenoch and Stefanie Kessler

January 13th, 2010

Media Release 13 January 2010

Pareto Fundraising is pleased to announce the appointment of Sarah Badenoch and Stefanie Kessler, two new Account Directors to be based in our Sydney Office.

COO Jim Hungerford says “Sarah and Stefanie will be a great asset for Pareto Fundraising. They bring with them a wealth of experience and are passionate about increasing the fundraising capacity of our clients, something that is central to the beliefs and values within our organisation.”

Sarah is a senior marketing executive with broad commercial and agency experience. Most recently she has been Head of Marketing for Aon Consulting; with previous roles in customer retention, customer relationship management and marketing communications; along with seven years’ of agency experience including time at Rapp Collins/DDB Australia.

She has had significant experience during this time working for not-for-profit organisations, however it was her recent experience on an advisory board for the National Breast Cancer Foundation that convinced her to make the leap to Pareto Fundraising.

Stefanie joins Pareto Fundraising as of 1st February. Stefanie has fantastic fundraising and management experience having worked with Greenpeace Australia, Wateraid UK and the Sydney 2002 Gay Games.

A particular claim to fame of hers is the dramatic results she has achieved in Greenpeace’s donor retention, where she reduced the attrition among their first-year donors from an already-respectable 25 percent to a stunning 16 percent.

Ends

For further information please contact Justine Mathieson at justine.mathieson@paretofundraising.com or 02 8823 5800.

Posted in Pareto Talk, Press Release | No Comments »

2009 festive photo competition winners announced

December 25th, 2009

Media Release 4 January 2010

The winner of Pareto Fundraising’s 2009 Festive Photo Competition, in which entrants uploaded a festive photo that inspired their friends and colleagues to vote for the entrant’s favourite charity have been announced. The first prize donation of AU$2000 was awarded to Hamlin Fistula International, an organisation dedicated to restoring the dignity of thousands of young women.

In a very close second place, CreArte received a donation of AU$500. The wonderful work that CreArte does with the beautiful children of Chile is inspiring. Third place the Kolisko Waldorf School, of the Philippines, received tremendous support as well, and a donation of $AU200 to support the school in its wonderful work.

COO Jim Hungerford comments “It was wonderful to see such passionate support of such wonderful causes expressed through everyone’s photos, votes & comments! Thank you to everyone who has made this such a success and congratulations to all the charities that were supported.”

“With 125 photos and thousands of votes cast, the competition was a great success. In the coming month, a case study will be published focusing on promotional tactics and how entrants encouraged people to engage and vote for their image.”

The competition was set up using social networking tool facebook and was built and administrated by an independent supplier company, Cheddar.

For more information about the digital solutions Pareto Fundraising can offer to help your organisation achieve your fundraising goals visit www.paretofundraising.com

Ends
For further information please contact Justine Mathieson at justine.mathieson@paretofundraising.com or 02 8823 5800.

Posted in Pareto Talk, Press Release | No Comments »

« Older Entries