Amplify articles

I wish I had recorded the conversation. It went something like this:

Caller: Hello, how are you today?

Me: Fine thank you.

Caller: Thank you for helping [a Heart Research charity]. You bought tickets a few months ago and your support is appreciated.

I’m calling today about another draw – you could buy the same number of tickets that you bought last time for $30. You’ll be helping to fight cancer and I hope that I can give you luck with the winning numbers.

Me: I’m sorry – which charity are you calling for?

Caller: It’s [a Heart Research charity].

Me: Oh – you said cancer just now.

Caller: Did I? Yes that’s right. They are all doing it. Heart Foundation [a Heart Research Charity], Cancer, [some others that I was too dumbfounded to hear].

I’m half questioning whether I’m making too much of this – “was the caller’s mistake really that bad?”.

YES! Agencies are targeting non-raffle donors and damaging your relationships, impacting their future giving and behaving like we (and you, the supporter) don’t care. I’m not against raffle fundraising – it’s great. But why are charities allowing their supporters to be treated like this?

Do you want your supporters to be shat on from a great height? Follow these 9 steps to make sure your raffle fundraising treats your donors like faecal matter:

1. Make sure your Board directors don’t ask too many questions. Don’t let someone with legal expertise review your supplier agreements or practice due diligence.
2. Sign-up to a campaign with a Raffle specialist agency without a clear strategy or objective. Stick to simple goals like ‘grow the database’ or ‘raise more money’.
3. Listen to your agency’s advice when they suggest your active, frequent, recent and mid-value supporters be included in the calling volumes.
4. Don’t do any caller training.
5. Don’t listen to call recordings.
6. Prioritise raffle income over other potential ways to engage lapsed supporters – regardless of demographics or giving behaviour.
7. Make sure you don’t review the results of the non-raffle playing segments. Ignore key facts such as gift value, age and anecdotal complaints that might help you target potential raffle players more effectively.
8. Tell your phone agency that you are very happy for them to call your data alongside the data of all the other charities on their roster.
9. And most importantly – don’t worry about following steps to make sure your supporters and potential donors are treated with respect and common decency. It’s okay to contact donors and assume they only want to win a prize and that the cause is irrelevant.

I’m worried. To be perfectly honest, I’m scared. What is going on is far worse than I ever imagined.

As fundraisers, we often have to defend our profession in the face of public derision and skepticism; we are challenged to explain practices which can seem counter-intuitive and to some people, unethical. As fundraisers we know this is not the case. Great fundraising has the power to change lives and influence real impact – in a way that government funding, Foundations and Corporate sponsorship are unable to.

I Love Fundraising because it is limited only by the potential you can see, your engagement and relationships with people of means and influence, and your ability to communicate that Vision.

We have enough difficulty explaining the BEST practices of the most effective charities. HOW ON EARTH WILL WE EXPLAIN WHY WE WORK WITH AGENCIES THAT ALLOW DEPRAVED BEHAVIOUR LIKE THIS?

Consider the clothing retailer that is discovered to have abuse within its supply chain.

Whether or not such abuse exists outside the knowledge or control of a company’s checks and ethics processes, the retailer is still to blame. If charities employ agencies without exhaustive due-diligence, what does that mean for the causes that we stand for?

How Iggy Pop can Help Non-profit Boards and Staff Build Effective Partnerships.

Iggy may never have stepped foot inside a boardroom before he wrote track four of his 1979 album, New Values and his portrayal of the chairman who couldn’t get any satisfaction might be somewhat distorted by an excited imagination (not to mention mind-enhancing substances). Yet his tale of the ‘Bored Chairman-of-the-board’ is more than just a play on words.

Iggy Pop probably has no idea what it feels like to be the chairman of a board. Likewise, the chairman of the board probably has no understanding of what it’s like to be the office cleaner, or the charity volunteer or Iggy Pop.

“Since each person’s reality is constrained by the conditions that surround him, this means that the likelihood of each ever being able to see things from the other’s perspective is fairly low.” (Smith, 1980)

As individuals in not-for-profit organisations, we are seldom given, or we rarely make the opportunities to experience what it’s like on the opposite side of the table. In many cases, a board director is unable to comprehend the challenges that the non-profit’s staff and executive team contend with everyday. Likewise, the staff member is unlikely to know what if feels like to be a board director.

Within this complex dynamic, the board directors and executive team members have a responsibility to the organisation to form a strong partnership. How might the inevitable challenges be negotiated?

Consider the following suggestions to help directors and staff build effective partnerships across the board table:

1.    Balance the meeting agenda.

• As stakeholders, both the CEO and board can influence the items that are included on the meeting agenda. Board meetings shouldn’t be limited to governance and operational oversight actions. Make sure each agenda has interesting content and time for discussion and debate. Perhaps invite a guest speaker to inspire passion and excitement about relevant topics.
• An engaging meeting ensures that you keep the interest and encourage participation of those attending, as well as reduce meeting apologies and retain members for longer tenures.

2.    Plan strategy and creative thinking sessions away from the office.

• The board and executive team have responsibilities to develop, implement and adjust strategic plans. Taking time away from the office to immerse the board and team in collaborative planning will help stakeholders embrace their responsibilities and the process will nurture relationships across the imaginary divide.

3.    Swap roles for a day. Literally.

• Plan a board meeting during office hours. Invite the CEO and executive team to spend several hours in the boardroom and to perform the functions of the board without the directors being present.

• Meanwhile, the board directors should tackle a list of things-to-do left by the executive team. Focus on tasks that will stretch the board and take them outside their comfort zones:

• Answer phone calls and speak to supporters
• Write a press release
• Open donations and record data in the CRM
• Write a thank you letter
• Manage major giver portfolios, do research & make follow-up calls
• Produce the monthly finance report for the board
• Write reports and results presentations
• Manage social media responses and make changes to the website

Whether you are on a board or part of an executive team, your organisation can profit immensely from a supportive and nurturing culture, engagement and relationship building activities, and each person’s dedication to their chosen cause, and humility to walk a few miles in someone else’s shoes.

A final note:

“If you want to transform your dysfunctional garage band into a legendary board-CEO team headed for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, make a commitment to “come together right now” to create the close-knit, trusting band your non-profit’s mission needs and deserves.” (Lockwood Herman and Gloeckner, 2016)

Somebody please tell me that I’m mistaken

Is this email prejudiced and disrespectful? 

Have I made a mistake? Or does this image imply that young people are on the streets drinking liquor out of brown paper bags?

I have never responded to a direct mail appeal.

While I am embarrassed and I feel guilty that I haven’t been practicing what I preach, I’m sure that many other fundraisers have also never picked up a pen, filled in the donation form, enclosed it in the freepost envelope provided along with their gift, and popped it into the nearest letter box.

If you fall into this category, I encourage you to give it a go today.

Though we may not represent the traditional charity audience, going through the process of donating by mail a very interesting exercise.

1. I kept the letter and donation form for TWO months

In the back of my mind I had already decided to respond to the letter I received on April 15th. And though I received two appeals since receiving the first one, I kept the first front of mind by leaving it on the floor of my office.

What insights can we gain from this?

• People are probably reminded by subsequent mailings and waves. This includes donor care and stewardship communications
• It is important that each mailing and wave has its own appeal code and that each gift is recorded against the specific form they respond to
• I felt guilty about having not donated every time I saw the letter in my office. Remember, your supporters often keep appeals, sometimes for many months. Don’t be afraid to reference those appeals and the stories they contain. Tap into the decision to donate which many of them may have already made
• Guilt is the fundraiser’s ally. Your objective shouldn’t be to induce guilt – the guilt is already felt by your supporters who wish they could do more.

Your objective should be to give supporters the opportunity to feel good about what they can do to help

2. It felt like a chore to get up and find a pen and my credit card

Don’t underestimate the amount of effort involved in responding to an appeal. To get someone to take action and get up off their chair, your letter must be very motivating. Effective creative is crucial.

I also kept getting distracted by things. Which is also an insight into the challenge of working from home…

3. I had to enter another room

Fundraising has many associations with psychology but there is one I hadn’t come across until I started to fill in this appeal: What happens when a donor enters another room?

• It’s known as the “Doorway Effect”, and it reveals some important features of how our minds are organised:

…a woman meets 3 builders on their lunch break. “What are you doing?” she asks. “I’m putting brick after sodding brick on top of another,” sighs the first. “I’m building a wall,” is the simple reply from the second. But the third builder swells with pride and replies: “I’m building a cathedral!”

• The important point here is CONTEXT. Provide your supporters with a tangible reason to give and show them a vision of what they are about to help build and they will be more engaged, and less likely to succumb to the doorway effect.

4. Filling in my credit card details was a challenge

I am not a neat writer.

• I found it incredibly difficult to write my credit card number in the tiny boxes
• I also worried that because my AMEX has 15 numbers instead of 16 whether I needed to put the numbers in a particular format
• I overcame these doubts and I wrote as neatly as I could but…

…how many of our 75+ supporters struggle with charity forms?

• There was barely enough room for my name and signature. Thankfully my name is reasonably short. Are we discouraging people with long names, married couples with joint accounts or people with hyphenated surnames from completing donation forms. I suggest we are
• I chose “My choice” but when I wrote in my give amount there wasn’t enough space to write all the zeros (not really, but a longer line is better)

5. Did I feel GOOD about responding to the appeal by mail?

The only time I felt like I was doing good was when I actually wrote the gift value onto the donation form.

• This could give some insight into the difference between donors who tick the value boxes and those who write their own amount
• The extra action that is involved in writing your own gift amount could point to a more engaged and therefore potentially more loyal supporter

Has anyone ever analysed the behaviour of those who write their own amount vs those who tick one of the ask prompts?

6. On the way to the post box…

I had always thought that the act of walking to a letter box and posting a gift to my favourite charity would be part of the feel-good process. Now I’m not so sure.

I didn’t feel connected to the charity when I put the letter into the box. In fact, the first time I passed the letterbox I completely forgot that that was what I went outside to do.

For me, the most important learning from this exercise is that keeping the donor’s attention is critical. And I mean at every point in the process – from fetching the mail, while reading the letter, getting the pen and credit card, filling in the form, putting it into the BRE and right up to the eventual action of walking to a letterbox.

Final thought

If, like me, your supporters are the most actively engaged and connected with the process while physically writing their details and ticking donation boxes, what can you do to your appeals to improve them?