queer ideas

Face to face fundraising from 1910

Many people seem to think that large-scale face to face fundraising was first developed by Greenpeace in the 1990s, but it's been around far longer than that.

ActionAid were recruiting child sponsors in the 1970s by going from door to door. And Oxfam were using press ads to recruit people to collect regular pledges from their friends and neighbours in the 1960s.

But that's nothing to what the YMCA was doing back at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Around the world, new YMCAs were built with money raised through what became known as the Lightning Canvass.

The idea was simple. Get a group of young men, divide them into teams and send them out on the streets for two weeks to recruit donors who would give on the 'Instalment System'.

It was the brainchild of Charles Sumner Ward, who could well be described as the godfather of modern fundraising.

Charles was General Secretary of Grand Rapids YMCA in Michigan. And he had a problem that many CEOs of today's small charities might recognise. He had to spend most of his time fundraising rather than doing 'real' work.

As a result he came up with a plan. In January of 1892, he asked his directors to close down their desks for part of each day so they could give "wholehearted support to an intensive, organised effort to raise the Y's budget at the beginning of the year". At the heart of the idea was a dislike of fundraising that resulted in a desire "to get the agony over with quickly."

The plan worked brilliantly. Together with a group of volunteers, they raised the year's budget within a few days. For the next five years, Ward repeated the exercise with similar results.

Soon other YMCAs were asking for his advice. He introduced them to his approach and success followed success. He raised £103,000 for Boston YMCA, £64,000 for Montreal YMCA, over £160,000 for Toronto YMCA and a massive £200,000 for Philadelphia YMCA (which would be worth over £16,000,000 today)

In 1912 he brought the technique to the UK and helped set up campaigns for a number of new British YMCAs, including one for Manchester YMCA. Having searched the archives of The Manchester Guardian I've found out what happened.

350 different volunteer fundraisers working in teams known by such donor friendly names as The Hustlers, The Tender Heart Ticklers and The Gold Chasers raised £14,000 in twelve days. They did this, in their own words, by...

"scouring Manchester during the campaign...merry bands of well-intentioned highwaymen on the prowl, ready to pounce upon every good-natured-looking individual with their cry, 'your money or your promise.' "

To build excitement they erected a huge fundraising clock in Manchester city centre that allowed everyone to see the money rolling in. It was so important to the campaign that it took pride of place in the campaign brochure...

Sadly, they fell short of their target by £6,000, but the regular payments on the 'Instalment System' made up the difference.

They generated these by encouraging donors to complete a forerunner of the direct debit form. It was designed to neatly dovetail with the the clock...

The success of these campaigns wasn't down to luck. Ward had tested and proved his strategy many times. And luckily, the Manchester Guardian on the 7th of October, 1912, detailed just a few elements of the approach...

"In money-raising, the quick campaign method had proved itself to be the very best method up to the present. The best time for holding the campaign was towards the end of January, because by then dividends and rents had recently been paid, and it was the time when many people and firms set aside amounts for the year's gifts...they should not overlook the importance of having a luncheon or dinner on the eve of the campaign to which they should invite a large number of possible subscribers."

But even in 1912, there were dissenting voices that weren't convinced that face to face fundraising was the way forward. The Manchester Guardian reported the concerns of the Rev. Stanley J. Hersee who thought the effect of a lightning campaign would be disastrous...

"It was really a spasmodic effort concentrated into five or ten days; they had a tremendous reaction, and the backwash was a bad thing. Many people were growing tired of the sort of 'revolver, your money, or your life' campaign."

It just shows that even when it comes to the attitudes of donors there's nothing new in the world of fundraising. Apart from the fact that today's face to face fundraisers look a little different from their Edwardian counterparts...

With thanks to Gary Shearin for providing the images.

The anatomy of a failed campaign

A few weeks ago, I questioned the decision of the D&AD to award a coveted Yellow Pencil to a student team for an idea that they developed for Oxfam.

The D&AD asked me to write a follow up piece that you can read here. Or for those who are a little short on time, you might prefer the Reader's Digest version...

The creative process that ignores the needs of donors is a waste of time and money.

It's why I always find the news that yet another charity has appointed yet another above the line agency to develop a mould breaking campaign so depressing.

The fact is, good fundraising isn't actually broken. Even in these tough economic times it still works very well. So rather than rejecting it for the best guesses of people who have never raised money in their lives, I'd suggest that any charity concerned about income should embrace traditional fundraising techniques tighter than ever.

And to help illustrate what might happen if you decide to do otherwise, I'd like to point you in the direction of a rather remarkable but cautionary tale on SOFII.

It's written by Lucy Gower and features an account of ActionAid's failed 'What a Feeling' campaign given by their ex director of fundraising, Richard Turner.

It's remarkable because for the first time (that I'm aware of), somebody has been brave enough to give an honest account of what can actually happen when a revolutionary new fundraising strategy is implemented.

Lucy explains...

"The idea came from meeting supporters. The team deliberately got a diverse group together to hear them talk about ActionAid. What stood out was the way they spoke about what they gained. This tallied with the anecdotal comments from supporters when meeting fundraisers; as a result of donating, fundraising, or campaigning for ActionAid, supporters would frequently describe their feelings. Therefore it was decided that this would be the basis of the campaign - real supporters sharing their real feelings to encourage other people like them to sign up to help ActionAid..."

It was a complex strategy that used a wide range of traditional and new media. This video helps give a flavour of the approach and the thinking behind it.

And the results?

..."Despite the conviction of Richard and the fundraising team that they were onto something great, the campaign failed. ActionAid didn’t reach the targets for sign ups to new direct debits. They missed them by a mile."

You should read the whole article as Richard has obviously thought long and hard about the reasons for the failure, but I'd particularly like to highlight three key points that we should all remember...

1. Spend your time understanding the problems you actually need to tackle (such as high attrition or poor recruitment) before embarking on broad engagement / awareness campaigns.
2. Don't lose focus on the work that donors want to fund.
3. Test your ideas and only roll out once they have been proven to work.

As Lucy points out, ActionAid were actually on to something with 'What a Feeling'. I strongly believe that the emotional rewards we receive in return for helping others is our sector's 'product'.

But my sneaking suspicion is that donors don't really want to think they are giving for 'selfish' reasons. To my mind, this very thought is likely to reduce the power of the feelings that, as fundraisers, we are trying to generate in the first place.

I also think it is worth including the short-lived TV ad produced by OgilvyOne London that followed the campaign's launch. You can find out what happened after this was run here.

A massive, massive thanks to Richard for being so open about the campaign. As Lucy says...

"I hope that sharing his experience will help us all learn, as well as encourage us to be more open about failure in order that we can ultimately all fundraise more effectively for the causes that we are passionate about."

Update: Richard has posted more thoughts on this campaign on his blog. You can read them here.

When to choose choice

Choice is becoming a buzzword in fundraising. But just how important is it?

Over the last few years, organisations like Kiva, DonorsChoose and CRUK (with MyProjects) have done rather well by offering people a chance to decide how their donations are used. Kiva, which launched in 2005, has generated over $200 million for people working their way out of poverty. DonorsChoose, which is only two years older, has generated over $77 million for schools in need of teaching materials. And CRUK has over 400 individual fund raising pages and 23 project pages which have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But is choice the key factor that lies behind this level of fundraising success?

There are a number of charities that have built websites around the offer of choice who haven't been quite so successful.

Take FORGE for instance. I wrote a piece about this charity back in 2008 on how they came unstuck when they focused on offering online donor choice as a means to raise funds.

See The Difference, who do some great social networking activity to promote their site, also seem to be struggling (see this post for more thoughts on their approach to fundraising). If you look at their most funded projects on their website, few have generated more than a thousand pounds.

And My Action For Children which generated a massive amount of hits from press advertising and celebrity tweets seems to have converted just a tiny percentage to donors. Sign-ups just one month later have dwindled to a trickle.

I believe the different levels of success seen by the two sets of examples is down to something other than choice.

Kiva is fundamentally different. It asks people to lend - not give. And though a supporting donation is suggested (to fund the work of the KIva organisation) this is discretionary. In effect, you are not giving to charity as you can get your money back. As we've seen in the UK with Lend With Care, this is an offer that people find different and attractive. Add feedback on the impact of your loan and fantastic celebrity and corporate support (most notably that offered by YouTube) and you have a financial success on your hands.

DonorsChoose has also benefitted from celebrity support. But at its heart it offers something very special – great feedback. Though they will accept any size of gift, DonorsChoose prompts donors to give $100 by promising them a feedback pack from the school they help. This pack contains a letter from a teacher along with drawings, thank you notes and photographs from the children who've benefitted from the donor's gift. DonorsChoose encourage schools to get really creative with these packs and see them as so important that if a school fails to provide them to donors they can be excluded from the site. The other stroke of genius of the DonorsChoose model is that they also offer a thank you pack to everyone who gives a closing gift. So if a project has just a few dollars needed to hit target, the donor who makes up the shortfall - even if it really is just ten or twenty dollars – gets a thank you pack as well.

Take a look at CRUK's MyProjects and you see two main types of donation – gifts in memory and gifts in response to personal fundraising pages. In this respect it is not that dissimilar to JustGiving. The most successful of the projects on MyProjects is the Santander staff fundraiser for mobile cancer awareness units. Santander staff have been encouraged to raise money for CRUK with the promise that if they hit a certain target they will be eligible for a trip to Brazil to help renovate a school. MyProjects has simply functioned as an online means for them to run personal fundraising activities (see what I mean about it being just like JustGiving?).

If choice was that important to donors, thousands of tiny niche charities would be doing much better. If someone wanted to offer support for disabled children in London for instance, all they need to do is type those words into Google and they'd be presented with a long list of organisations that would love a donation. And more to the point, they would probably all offer a more rewarding and personal experience of giving than can be had when you donate to the national charities you'd find bidding on those search terms through AdWords.

And here's another example of why I think that choice is only a small part of the route to better fundraising.

I started out my fundraising career at ActionAid (about twenty years ago) where I worked on a product called ProjectAid.

ActionAid raised most of its income through child sponsorship. Supporter feedback and research told us that people loved knowing how their money changed a child's life. It also told us that some people found sponsorship expensive and others found it 'emotionally unattractive'.

We took a few logical steps and the end result was ProjectAid. We'd ask the donor to sign up to a regular gift and every four months we'd send them details of projects in need of funding. They could choose the one they wanted to support and we'd then report back on how work was progressing. I still have the first recruitment piece we ever produced and, as you can see, It's not that far from the 'game changing' ideas of crowd funding that we see today. Just on paper rather than on-line.

We tested it with a variety of media, but it didn't do that well.

But what was particularly interesting was how donors responded to the offer of choice. Most ended up ticking the 'where the need is greatest' box on the donation form. The product eventually was used as a 'drop ask' for people who were interested in child sponsorship but found the price too high. It was superseded by another product that concentrated on providing good feedback, which in the long run was more effective.

I've been involved in offering choice to donors in a number of different ways over the years and found similar results pretty much every time. Some people do value choice (particularly with causes such as cancer research and with high level gifts), but many others were more interested in hearing about need, impact and what they had done to make a difference. As one donor put it (and I paraphrase)...

"You're the experts on this. I just want to know that my money has helped".

In my experience, that's what charities should be focusing on. As I mentioned in a previous post, choice is only important if it is relevant. If it isn't, it can become a chore and actively turn donors off.

And if you are interested in finding out why, you should probably take a look at this study featured in Neuromarketing on choice fatigue.

If used appropriately, choice can probably enhance your offer, but, using the tried and tested (and tired) golfing analogy, it should be one of a number of clubs in your fundraising bag, rather than a single club that you rely on for the whole game.

How should we defend face-to-face fundraising?

During my recent break from blogging, I've been keeping an eye on the debate about face-to-face fundraising.

It's been quite a saga.

It was obviously all kicked off by the piece on BBC's Newsnight. If you missed it, you can watch it here.

The central story was that charities pay professional face-to-face companies to recruit regular givers, paying up to £136 for each new donor they sign-up. 

Newsnight questioned whether this was a good use of funds, citing industry figures that show more than 50% of people recruited in this way cancel their direct debit in the first year. 

With the average annual value of a donor standing at about £90, their view was it seemed as though most of a donor's gift was going to the professional companies – not to fund the core work of the charity.

It appears from reading the PFRA response that it wasn't the most even handed piece of journalism...

'A Newsnight researcher revealed his real agenda when he told the PFRA: “I think if people knew how much it costs charities to recruit them then they wouldn’t sign up [via an F2F fundraiser].” We believe that the journalists working on this story set out from the start explicitly to persuade people not to donate via F2F because of the allegedly ‘prohibitive’ costs. Of course that argument could only be maintained by systematically ignoring the costs of other forms of fundraising, some of which work out at far greater per donor than F2F, and by ignoring the return on investment that F2F generates (often over 1:3). Essentially their agenda was not to ‘inform’ the public but to convince them of the ‘truth’ of their own personal – and false – prejudices.'

But stitch up or not, the sector doesn't seem to have handled this story particularly well.

When the BBC asked charities how much they spend to recruit a new face to face donor, only two responded – Cancer Research UK who pay £112 a head and the British Heart Foundation who pay £136. Newsnight informed us that other charities cited 'commercial confidentiality' as the reason for their reluctance to respond.

And though they were asked, charity CEOs weren't up for defending face-to-face on the show. Mark Astarita, Director of Fundraising for the British Red Cross, explained why ...

'Newsnight wanted to set us up in a head-to-head situation with a small charity that hates face-to-face,” Astarita said. “It would have been a David and Goliath-type battle which nobody would have won.  It would have been damaging to the whole sector and so everybody made a wise judgement not to play that horrible game."

“You could tell by the way they structured all the questions that they had an agenda – it was not an ‘investigation’, they wanted to make their story stick.”

In the end, Newsnight was unable to find charities to take part and so at the last minute decided simply to interview a charity that uses face-to-face.  That was when the BHF agreed to take part, Astarita said.

He added that if Newsnight had proposed a straight interview from the outset, he expected charities would have been queuing up to defend the practice." '

The trouble is, whether we like it or not, it's the media channels that set the agenda and if we don't respond intelligently, we'll all be worse off.

A recent survey by the Charity Commission has shown that over the last two years, 11% of people have lost trust in charities, with media coverage about charities and how they spend their donations seemingly driving this change in attitude.

Which is why I was disapointed to read about the debate at the recent IOF conference on face-to-face fundraising, where PFRA CEO, Mick Aldridge summed up the sector's reluctance to defend face-to-face fundraising...

'Aldridge's attack wasn’t limited to the sector’s reluctance to defend face-to-face, but also centred on the “intolerable and hypocritical... ‘slagging off’ that face-to-face receives from some of our so-called colleagues from other fundraising disciplines”.

“That is rank hypocrisy and it has to stop,” he said. He noted that direct mail recruitment costs “are many orders of magnitude higher than for face-to-face” and challenged advocates of that medium, and others such as digital, to publish figures on RoI and costs for general viewing.'

It seems that the PFRA is concentrating on defending face-to-face on cost – because it recruits donors more cost-effectively than press or direct mail it should own the moral high ground. That's fine if the debate is within the charity sector. But as we know, it's a little wider than that.

Mick has also pointed out that we need a champion to defend the technique. And he's right, but I'd go one step further.  We are one sector and we all succeed or fail together. We need every single charity in the land to commit to champion fundraising in all its forms. Because, as it is now,  it's quite obvious that few donors fully appreciate the impact of their response to our fundraising messages.

A series of nfpSynergy studies has found that donors think that just 25 pence in every pound they donate actually goes to fund actual 'work'. The perception is that the majority of their gifts are used to cover administration and fundraising costs.

And it's people like Rarry Revan, who comments on another piece in Civil Society, who suggests a blindingly obvious way that we can tackle this misconception...

'Get a beneficiary out there, maybe a cancer survivor who said without face to face I wouldn't be alive. Or an African doctor who learnt their trade because of donors who were signed up on the doorstep.'

By taking this approach we shift the debate from how we raise money to the impact of how we spend it. And every single charity in the land can help achieve this goal. It's not about big advertising campaigns either. We'll win this argument on the micro-level.

Take Care International for example. They have shown that the attrition rate of face-to-face can be halved by providing donors with personalised, high quality feedback on how their donations have been used.

And ActionAid generates response rates to thank you feedback packs that many charities would love to get from their actual appeals.

The fact that a significant percentage of people find face-to-face recruiters irritating is just one symptom of a wider problem. We have to remember that people complain about DM, telephone fundraising and even online advertising too. Donors simply aren't linking their gifts to any measurable outcome.  And we are verging on stupid if we continue to ignore the desire amongst donors to know what difference their gifts have made.

People pay for value and if, after a great face-to-face recruitment process, you find yourself on the receiving end of a stream of self-congratulatory newsletters and appeals for more money it's not surprising that you might feel a bit short-changed.

The moral high ground on this matter is well within our grasp, but it won't be gained through an internal debate about relative costs nor through interviews on Money Box or Newsnight.

Instead we should confront criticism through aggressively demonstrating the benefits of our work.

By doing so, we'll ensure that the amazing goals we are striving for - cures for disease, the eradication of poverty and the end of cruelty and injustice - are worth the inconvenience of a smile and invitation for a quick chat from a nice fundraiser on a street corner.

What can a few billionaires teach you about fundraising?

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have put together a group of 40 billionaires who have promised to give away at least half their wealth to philanthropic causes.

That's pretty good news. But unless your charity is in line for one of the resulting gifts, you might think that's the end of the story.

You'd be wrong.

Before you get back to putting together your next appeal, can I suggest that you take a quick visit to The Giving Pledge and have a look around. Within a click or two you'll find details of the actual pledges.

When you do, you'll see that Bill and Warren have given us all a rather special gift – a copy of the original letter from each billionaire that explains just why they are giving so much money away.

Stop and think about that for a minute.

Just a click away are 40 letters written by the wealthiest donors in the world explaining just why they give, what they are interested in and what motivates them.

That's a priceless resource.

When you'll read them, you'll see that time after time, what comes over is the joy that people get from giving. Take this quote from Peter G. Peterson, Chair of The Blackstone Group:

"As I watched and learned from my father’s example, I noticed how much pleasure his giving to others gave him.  Indeed, today, I get much more pleasure giving money to what I consider worthwhile causes than making the money in the first place.  As I checked with other philanthropists, I found this was a very common experience."

Or this, from Gerry Lenfest, Chair of the Telvue Corporation:

"One is not measured by how many homes, yachts or airplanes you have. The ultimate achievement in life is how you feel about yourself. And giving your wealth away to have an impact for good does help with that feeling."

Or perhaps, most importantly, this example from Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot.

"I share this with you because of happiness one can conceive by watching the joys of their work.

I remember very vividly a child that I had seen about a year ago that was severely autistic in my walk through MAC. Someone pointed this child out to me and when he looked at me he went into total hysteria, e.g. screaming, butting his head against the wall, etc. These actions happen with children of these disabilities.

Approximately one year later we were doing a documentary with NBC and I walked into a classroom where the producer asked me to appear with one of the children.

There was this same young man and I was horrified he would have another episode as he had in the past. Instead he came over, sat in my lap and talked! By the way, he had not spoken for the six years of his life before going to MAC.

I cried, the teachers cried, the cameraman cried, and the parents cried. What a blessing this was to have changed one life and to have had such an impact on a life.

I encourage you to always try to see the faces of the recipients you help."

Few of these super-wealthy donors talk about the detail of the causes they fund. Expense ratios, cases for support and brands aren't mentioned at all. Just one donor talks of giving because of guilt.

Instead they concentrate on describing the emotional reaction they have when they see the impact of their giving.

And in that respect they are just like everyone else.

They are normal people who just happen to have massive bank accounts. They have the same motivations to give as the rest of us. The only difference is that their power, their wealth and their influence results in them being able to regularly see the impact of their actions, first hand.

As you read their letters, you'll see stories of involvement and engagement. The writers are not just giving money and walking away. They are staying around for the long-term.

They are building rich and rewarding relationships with the people and causes they are helping.

You can see that they enjoy their giving. And the more they enjoy it, the more they give away – millions of dollars more.

And that brings me to the point of this post. Why can't all donors receive this same level of insight and enjoyment from supporting a charity?

Take a look child sponsorship charities like ActionAid and World Vision and you'll see that providing good feedback to donors on an individual level isn't impossible and it certainly isn't expensive. In fact, the levels of income and donor loyalty that these charities generate demonstrates the complete opposite.

Great feedback raises more money. And donors love it. It doesn't matter if you are giving away ten pounds or tens of millions. What all donors actually want is to see the impact they have had on someone or something's life.

It shouldn't require a billionaire to tell us what we should be doing. But just in case, I've reproduced the pledge from Ronald O. Perelman. Should he every fancy a change in career, I think he might just have a bright future as fundraiser ahead of him.

How many times do you have to ask for help?

Many years ago I worked with a charity that used to recruit new supporters through display and insert advertising.

At one point they stopped advertising for about six months. When they started again, nothing worked!

Banker ads in banker publications were generating a tiny number of donors compared to what was expected.

The charity was worried.

They ran some more ads to double check the results.

Things looked a little better, so they ran some more.

Results improved again. More ads were run.

This continued until after about half a dozen insertions, results were back at expected levels.

That's because people need time to make the decision to give. Asking just once isn't enough. The time may not be right for them. They may have concerns that they need to consider. 

It's something known as effective frequency. It's the number of times that someone has to see an ad before a response is generated.

I was reminded about this by a fantastic post on Social Hallucinations that shows a graph illustrating this concept.

As Daria points out, success is dependent on many factors, but the majority of people still need between three and five exposures before something sticks.

It doesn't mean that running an ad five times is going to generate a huge number of donors. People still might find your message (or the execution) irrelevant and ignore it.

But what is important to realise is that people regularly need more than one opportunity to give before they put their hand in their pocket and you shouldn't necessarily reject an idea if it fails on the first attempt. 

Daria sums things up pretty well when she says...

"We [need to] create many contact points with people in spaces where they already are, where they are in the right receptive mode and context. It is not necessarily about sending out the same message but adapting the message to environment it is going to be seen in. Integrate and adapt, be always in beta to get best out of it and make sure people hear what you say by communicating smarter."

For an example of how ActionAid is doing this, take a look at this post.

Today is World Malaria Day

Today is World Malaria Day.

Not much news from the NGOs so I thought I'd put up Mosquito Song from Seun Kuti. It's a cracking tune.

If you'd like to buy a mosquito net for someone in a poor country, ActionAid have some you might like to send. 

Protect a family of five for £10. Can't be bad.

Are your donors simply paying spectators?

There's a great video on Social Hallucinations produced by David Gauntlet from Making is Connecting.

David looks at everyday creativity and writes about seeing a cultural shift - from a sit back and be told one to a making and doing one.

So what's this got to do with fundraising?

Quite a lot.

Something that we repeatedly find people mention in our research at Bluefrog is a sense of disappointment with charities. They enter into a relationship with an organisation in the hope that they are going to be an active part of something good. What they receive is a stream of communications talking about what the charity is doing and requests for money.

Disillusioned and unengaged, they soon stop their support (This behaviour is often incorrectly described as lapsing).

But when people can actively do something more than sit back and give, they create cultural capital that benefits them as much as the charities they support.

An example of this is craftivism.

And an example of craftivism is Save the Children's Knit One, Save One campaign. This generated over half a million knitted hats for newborn babies in developing countries. It was also responsible for generating 50,000 messages that were delivered to Gordon Brown encouraging him to do more to help prevent deaths among children.

Save the Children isn't unique. When you think about it, there are a number of examples of this type of engagement already offered by charities.

Child sponsorship provides donors with an opportunity to write (and receive letters). Kiva enables people to help set-up new businesses (and see how they are performing). Care International offers supporters the chance to send advice and good wishes along with educational materials to school children in developing countries.

Organisations that fill the gap between giving cash and full-time volunteering are benefiting from the desire people have to create and connect. It doesn't matter if this is done on-line or off-line, but by giving people the chance to create change rather than simply be paying spectators, we offer them a welcome opportunity to add meaning to their world AND move it in the direction many of us would like.

That's the sort of approach that drives real engagement. It's an idea that I find really exciting. If you've got a few minutes to spare, you should really watch this video.

Fundraising is child's play

Few of us (in the UK) will have not picked up on Charlie Simpson, the 7 year-old boy who raised over £200,000 to help people in Haiti by doing a sponsored cycle round his local park.

But Charlie isn't the only child from whom fundraisers can learn.

Markita Andrews was an American Girl Scout (Girl Guides in the UK), who sold over $80,000 worth of cookies as part of a fundraising drive.

Markita had a number of tips as why she was so successful.

First off she maximised her impact by concentrating on being where she could find most customers. She would go from door to door, but she preferred the lobbies of apartment blocks where she would sell to people as they were coming home from work.

But more importantly, she framed her pitch so that customers saw the purchase as a trivial expense. She explained this when she was interviewed on the Johnny Carson show...

"I just went to everyone's house and said 'Can I have a $30,000 donation for the Girl Scouts?' When they said no, I asked would they at least buy a box of Girl Scout Cookies?"

Neuromarketing sees this approach as being similar to commercial sticker price framing. This technique compares the original price on a price tag (usually with a great big red cross through it) next to the sale price, emphasising what a great deal the customer is getting.

This is a technique that can be used by charities to generate donations in other ways than through the sale of cookies. When I was at ActionAid, we regularly compared the price of sponsorship to what else it might buy. One of the most successful ads compared the cost of sponsorship to the price someone might pay for a child's toy.

We would also break that cost down further in the body copy, demonstrating that £10 a month worked out at just 33 pence a day.

I've written before about the YMCA £5,000 pack that I ran for years in the 1990s. This pack used to generate a large number of £5,000 gifts, but within it were lower value prompts. These 'drop asks' were a powerful route to engage less affluent donors.

Asking for £5,000 didn't necessarily put people off. But using it, placed lower value gifts into context making them seem far more manageable.

It is one of the techniques that I still recommend today. If, for example, your current banker pack asks for £15, why not try a small test where you dramatically raise the primary donation request, but continue to offer the £15 option within the body of the pack.

It can't be applied without careful thought as it won't work for all packs, all offers or all lists, but it can be a very powerful tool.

Plant a tree with your iPhone

Here's another example of charities using iPhone Apps. This time it's to raise funds.

It's called A Real Tree and is a very simple idea. You buy the app for £0.59 in the UK ($0.99 in the USA) and the purchase price is used to plant a tree in one of twelve countries that suffer from serious levels of deforestation. The charities that benefit are Sustainable Harvest International and Trees for the Future.

Install and open the app and you'll see a seedling spring to life and grow whilst bird song plays in the background. If you give the tree a poke, a little red bird flies around and if you shake your iPhone it causes a breeze to blow and blossom to float away in the wind. This short film explains more...

That might seem quite dull, but it's the potential of the idea that excites me. At it's heart, this app is a virtual gift (albeit one you buy for yourself). Whether it's a goat for someone living in Malawi or dinner for a homeless youngster in the UK, we've seen a massive growth in this type of giving over the last few years. Many forward looking oragnisations such as ActionAid and FARM-Africa now offer more than simple cards and certificates – ActionAid sell interactive e-cards and FARM-Africa have personalised films on their FARM-Africa Presents gift site.

The creative use of apps offers us another way to encourage giving, making the experience more engaging and more exciting to donors. From taking the simple tamagotchi style approach of caring for a goat through to a means of providing detailed feedback involving video clips, totalisers and maps showing people where and how they are making a difference, the iPhone is now offering us a new route to bring donors and charities closer together.

Thanks to @mashable for the tip.