queer ideas

A great example of how to use Twitter as a campaign tool

I'm rather impressed by the Follow the Money Twitter app created in response to the allegation that The News of the World was involved in hacking Milly Dowler's voice mail account.

You can read more about it in Melissa Harrison's article in The Guardian, Why I set about hitting the News of the World where it hurts – its advertising.

Like most good ideas, it's very simple and could be inexpensively copied by campaigning organisations.

It's a web page with tweet me buttons that allows any twitterer to pose a suggested question to the Twitter accounts of the brands who are advertising in (and selling) The News of The World.

Take the country's largest newsagents for example. With a click of a button you can add your voice to the growing number of people who are deeply unimpressed with the paper's actions by asking @WHSmithcouk if they "consider it ethical to stock a newspaper prepared to hack a murdered girl's phone?"

I've just done it and am waiting for an answer. But looking at the number of people who've asked the question before me, I may be waiting some time. Click here to join the list.

Here's a screen grab of the site in case it gets taken down.

So what's going on in the digital fundraising world?

The 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study has been published by M+R Strategic Services and the Nonprofit Technology Network. It's based on analysing the online giving and advocacy activity of donors to 40 charities and nonprofits. It is obviously a US study, but the figures are useful to those of us wondering how we are doing with our online fundraising in the UK too.

You can download your free copy here (registration required but it's worth it).

As you'll see, the headline figure is one of growth. Income is up 14% from 2009 to 2010, much of it generated by appeals for Haiti and Pakistan. But all sectors actually saw an increase in the number of online gifts.

But that isn't necessarily down to the emails charities are sending as generally, response rates are in decline. The average for fundraising emails was down 17% at just 0.08%. Advocacy was down 7% at 3.3%.

Unsubscribe rates were approximately 0.24% for appeals, 0.22% for newsletters and 0.16% for advocacy emails.

One point I'd add that isn't covered in detail by this study is the impact email can have when used alongside direct mail appeals. We've seen a significant increase in response rates (upwards of 5%) when combining the two. So though response rates might generally be in decline, integration can be a very effective remedy (at least in the UK).

Facebook fan pages have seen growth rates on average of 14% a month and have been particularly popular for supporters of charities and nonprofits working in the wildlife and animal welfare sector.

Whereas Twitter seems most popular for people interested in international development.

Churn rates stood at an average of 18% for email and 14% for mobiles.

The report is packed full of tons of detailed data and well worth a read. There's a particularly interesting case study on how one organisation has used text messages to great effect. You'll also be able to dig through all the information on average gifts as well (which isn't necessarily so relevant to the UK).

A personal letter is worth a hundred impersonal emails

A new MP, Robert Halfon, has shared some of his thoughts on how charities lobby in The Guardian.

150 to 200 impersonal emails a days and a post bag full with "glossy reports, papers, letters from organisations, nine times out of ten sent as a mass mail-out and often with spelling mistakes" have left him feeling a little frustrated.

He also questions the idea that an effective internet campaign comprises setting up a website that sends an MP automated emails after a constituent adds their name and postcode.

As a result he's shared a few tips on how you could get him (and other MPs) to support your cause...

"When I get an invite to visit the local branch of an organisation, I will always go.

When I get a personalised letter, hand signed from a chief executive (as opposed to a public affairs officer) that contains local statistics and information, how can I not fail to be interested?

When a local constituent calls me asking for a meeting, to talk about his or her involvement in her charity, I will always do it."

I think it was Ken Livingstone who, back in the eighties, said that it only took a handful of letters on a single issue to make an MP sit up and take notice.

It seems things aren't so different today – as long as those letters are personal and relevant.

Just as with donors, it's a technique that wins every single time.

Robert's full article can be found here.

Taking protesting from the streets to Facebook

There are many ways to protest and with things like Facebook around, you don't neceassrily have to pick up a placard or loud-hailer and march the streets.

PETA proved this when they staged an anti-fur protest on DKNY's Facebook page last Monday.

Sixteen different users simply changed their profile pictures to letters (or simple blanks) which spelt out DK BUNNY BUTCHER.

You can read more on Mashable.

 

Putting the power of mums to work

Nick Clegg is off to the UN Summit in New York at the end of September and Save The Children want to put some pressure on him to encourage world leaders to refocus their efforts to ensure we achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Getting help from 100,000 people to nudge him in the right direction through signing a petition is part of their plan and they have decided that some influential UK parenting blogs could be a good recruiting round.

So they have invited three prominent bloggers: Josie from Sleep Is For The Weak, Sian from Mummy Tips and Eva from Nixd Minx to fly out and see what the charity is doing in Bangladesh. All three will obviously be speaking to mothers and children about their lives, hopes and fears and sharing their experiences on their blogs.

And through their blogs, they'll encourage their readers to get involved by signing the petition, donating money and giving unwanted clothes and household goods to their local Save the Children shop.

Some tweeters with huge followings like Neil Gaiman and Stephen Fry have already starting promoting the campaign (known as #blogadesh) and are generating some significant traffic.

But it will really kick off when the bloggers start writing about what they see. When someone you know and trust as a source of advice and inspiration starts talking about poverty, it's going to be more relevant, more motivating and more engaging that just seeing an advertising banner asking for help.

There's been some interesting research in the last few years in neuro-cognitive science that helps explain why this is the case. In short, if we see someone experience an emotion - anger, joy or sadness – the same neurons spark in our brain as if we were experiencing it ourselves.

It's one of the fundamental donor needs. We are driven to be sociable. We need to belong. And it's empathy which is the primary driver behind that need.

Rather than make you trawl through 1,500 words on the latest scientific research that backs up this claim, I've found this great animated video from the RSA where Jeremy Rifkin explains it far more effectively (and entertainingly) than I ever could.

As you'll see, new technology is changing the way we think about our fellow human beings. We are now extending our identities far beyond national and religious boundaries.

As a result, we are able to directly relate to people's suffering on a far more personal level - as mothers for instance – and do something that is becoming increasing clear that we psychologically need to do - offer help.

That's why I think Save The Children's approach is so exciting – it directly taps deep into our psyche and, as a result, I expect the outcome should be very rewarding for everyone who's involved - not just the people being helped in Bangladesh.

For more more details on donor needs take a look at this previous post.

Thanks to @charityclare for the heads up.

New research on text giving

I picked up on an interesting stream of tweets from @seanpowell last night.

He was attending a US benchmarking presentation from M&R Strategic Services and MobileActive on text messaging.

Following the American Red Cross's Haiti text campaign – which resulted in more than one million Americans donating over $26 million through $10 text donations – there's been a growth of interest in texting as a fundraising medium.

There isn't much publicly available data on success rates, so it's great that we have access to some detailed market intelligence based on campaigns undertaken by the American Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Choice America, The Humane Society of the United States, Defenders of Wildlife and Human Rights Campaign.

The key findings are:

• 80% of texters were recruited via online routes (by entering their mobile number on advocacy, donation or text message sign-up pages).
• Text lists grew at an an annual rate of just under 50%.
• Most growth came from gathering mobile phone numbers from existing supporters.
• Annual churn rate for text lists was 30.7%.
• The unsubscribe rate was 0.69%.
• At 0.92%, fundraising messages generated the highest number of unsubscriptions.
• When charities texted people with a campaigning message, asking them to call a decision maker on behalf of the charity the success rate was 4.7%.
• This compares to a response rate of 0.82% for campaigning emails that asked people to call a decision maker.
• The average number of text messages sent each month by a charity was 1.6.

Sean's twitter stream also shared some anecdotal information that's worth mentioning:

• $800,000 was generated by the Red Cross through misspellings of the word Haiti.
• $2 million was raised via texting in 2009. Over $35 million has been generated so far during 2010.

The full study can be found here. It also points out a number of interesting text case studies that are worth a read:

How an aquarium used text messaging as a means to recruit new visitors (click here).

How Keep a Child Alive generated $450,000 from more than 90,000 texts after Alicia Keys broadcast a request for help to American Idol's 30 million viewers, generating a response rate of 0.3%! (click here for the PDF)

How The Humane Society used text messaging to uplift donations to an email campaign (click here).

You should also take a look at this survey of text givers to the American Red Cross – 19% said they would rather text a gift than give online or write a cheque.

I'd also recommend you visit Sean Powell's blog, The Give Grind. As well as sharing more thoughts on the text survey, there are number of great posts on online giving. 

A change in direction for the NSPCC

There was a piece of news that seems to have sneaked under the radar in the last week or so, but could be the first step of a change in fundraising practice that will influence a whole range of charities.

It did get a mention in the charity press, but the real story was in the Daily Telegraph and The Times.

Andrew Flanagan, the NSPCC's newly appointed chief executive was talking about his new role and how his commercial skills would transfer to the charity sector.

The NSPCC is facing difficult times. Legacy income is down by £2 million and the closure of offices in Derbyshire and Norfolk have been announced – all accompanied by redundancies.

Unlike other large children's charities, the NSPCC doesn't have a raft of government contracts to fall back on. It relies on the generosity of donors for 85% of its income and as the recession bites, it is changing out of necessity.

And Andrew has been very frank about where those changes will be:

"I think we may have tried to advance on too broad a front. We need to move forward on a more methodical basis now."

The "broad front" refers to the charity's campaigning work. Most notably the Full Stop Campaign which raised £250 million between 1999 and 2007.

"We raised the money, and spent it wisely on good things, and people's lives changed as a result. But I don't think it advanced us towards the goal of ending child cruelty in terms of the expectations at the beginning."

What we will now see is a different approach where the NSPCC will put high-profile campaigns on hold whilst the downturn continues.

Just as companies like Coca-Cola, IBM and Shell are implementing recession survival strategies, so it appears is the NSPCC.

And the first strategy on any list is placing the focus on core business.

To Andrew, this is ensuring that the expansion of ChildLine goes ahead and other services such as their Caring Dads programme and the support provided for abused children going through court cases continues.

By concentrating on this type of innovative work, he hopes to encourage the government and local authorities to take note of the outcomes, engage in the programmes and expand them, presumably adding balance to the NSPCC's sources of income.

But, importantly for us, it looks like it could also mean a move to a new approach to fundraising.

I remember a piece of research that Bluefrog undertook a number of years ago on attitudes to children's charities. The NSPCC dominated people's thoughts in the discussions. The participants tended to see the charity as a rescue service protecting children at immediate risk, but they didn't really know what happened next. If I recall correctly, one person put it rather well.

"You can imagine the NSPCC knocking doors down, but after that...

...they (the children) are probably handed over to social services or something".

There was a definite gap in the charity map that the NSPCC hadn't filled that it looks like the projects that feature in Andrew's strategy may well cover off. And if they do that, I can see the NSPCC coming out of the recession stronger than when it started.

But perhaps more importantly, it may start other charities thinking about how they communicate with donors during the economic downturn. The NSPCC has a huge amount of experience and a very powerful voice. Fundraisers the world over listen when they speak and if they are moving away from campaigning work, other charities may well follow. And they are likely to raise more funds as a result.

At Bluefrog, we have already seen this change start to appear in briefs as the focus moves towards generating income and loyalty rather than on building brands. And we are not alone.

It was put very well by Derek Humphries in a recent tweet. 

"brand-literate fundraising is on the up. About time."