queer ideas

It's time to listen to the Hamster of Fundraising Wisdom

When I was child, we lived in a flat (that's an apartment or condo for my north American readers). Like any small boy, I wanted a pet. I'd have liked a dog or a cat, but the architectural restrictions we lived under meant this was impossible.

So instead I got a hamster. I called him Herman. Both because of the alliterative quality of the name and because I liked Fred Gwynne's character in The Munsters.

Getting him was far from easy. I only got the go ahead after an extended period of pleading and negotiations that meant I had to agree to a series of tough conditions.

I had to feed him and change his water, I had to make sure he received plenty of exercise and most importantly, at least in my mum's eyes, I had to make sure he didn't smell. That meant that I had to regularly clean out his cage.

I readily and excitedly agreed to every single one. And I kept to them too. For or at least the first month. It was then that my mother realised that I needed "support and encouragement" to ensure that Herman had the nice clean home and interesting life that he deserved.

So a whole range of privileges became dependent on how well Herman was treated. A request for a little extra pocket money was met with the suggestion that it might be forthcoming once his cage was cleaned. Asking for a bar of chocolate would generate a response that focused on me being asked when Herman was last given a good run outside his cage.

In short, I discovered that having a hamster wasn't like having a toy that could be put away and forgot about until the next time I decided that I wanted to build Thunderbird 2 out of Lego.

No. A hamster came with responsibilities. It was all well and good having Herman as a little playmate, but it was when my mum said that if I wasn't prepared to actually care for him, I shouldn't have asked for a hamster in the first place, that I actually started to understand.

Having a pet, was as much about care as fun. And the more care I put in, the better my relationship with Herman became and the more fun we would both have. We even developed a trick where he would climb up my trouser leg and finally emerge through the neck of my T-shirt.

So, what's this got to do with fundraising?

To get the most out of your relationship with donors, you need to look after them.

So many of the complaints that we've seen from donors over the last few months are based on the fact that many charities aren't bothering to build a relationship with them and instead are replacing engagement with repeated requests for a regular gift and upgrades.

Back in 2004, nfpSynergy found that the fundraising method that irritated donors the most was direct mail. Today, it is what can be broadly termed as interruption techniques – face to face, telephone and text messaging.

The fact is, these techniques can raise significant amounts of income. But it's really hard to engage people recruited through these methods. I've written about my thoughts on the type of donors these routes can generate before.

A focus on them tends to build a file that is highly unresponsive to anything other then telephone calls. Cash appeals, legacy campaigns and newsletters struggle. The result is that fundraisers often give up and just focus on upgrade calling, keeping their fingers crossed that regulars givers won't cancel. It's got to the point where some charities are attempting to upgrade regular givers every nine months.

This sort of misses the point. Just because these donors aren't direct mail responsive, doesn't mean that they should be treated like living ATM machines. If they only respond on the telephone, use that to engage them. Ring them up and say thank you. Ask them why they support you and concentrate on that in your future communications – this is particularly important for healthcare charities.

As a sector, we are in danger of building a feeling amongst the next generation of donors that we don't really care about them.

In Bluefrog's private research we still find older donors tend to be very forgiving when it comes to charity communications. The fact is they actually don't expect that much from us. It's a far different situation with younger (middle-aged) people. They are much more likely to actually get angry when they feel they are being treated poorly by charities.

We need to remember that donors are not 'ours'. We share them. We need to consider the fact that we are all responsible for caring for them. A poor experience can hurt us all. And though an over-reliance on interruption techniques might recruit more donors for your charity in the short-term, that may well come at a significant cost to the sector.

Which might make all our good ideas, hard work and innovation a waste of time. When we look at the numbers, we'll see that we resemble a hamster on a wheel. No matter how fast we run, we simply don't get anywhere.

Which brings us to a little friendly advice from the Hamster of Fundraising Wisdom...

And if you are thinking of calling your donors with a thank you call, now might be a great time to start. Many telephone fundraising agencies are struggling as charities cancel their campaigns. I know that they would be glad of the business.

The fact is we don't have to stop using the telephone. We just need to use it differently.

This is not fundraising

Over the last fifteen years or so, we've seen a fundamental change in how we raise money. For most of the twentieth century, fundraising was about engagement.

It was about recruiting new donors, nurturing them, getting a second gift, then a third and then moving them to regular giving (which we used to call committed giving). We would maintain their support with feedback that showed them the impact of their generosity until finally we received the ultimate gift – a legacy.

It was hard work. It wasn't cheap. But when done well, it produced great returns.

But in the late 1990s, things changed. We discovered face to face fundraising and the power of interruption.

Face to face fundraisers would stop people on the street and sign them up as regular givers. At a stroke, we could cut out the hard work (and expense) needed to engage people before we gained their 'commitment'.

We soon worked out that these donors were different to the traditional donor. They were younger and they didn't give to our DM appeals. But because they gave through a Direct Debit, that didn't matter. After all, these donors gave twelve times a year.

There was the growing problem of attrition, but the face to face agencies introduced guarantees and it became something we learned to live with. After all, if these new recruits weren't responding to mail packs, what could we do?

And slowly the structure of donor bases changed. Rather than recruiting older supporters with an engagement to the cause, many charities were increasingly likely to be funded by younger people who didn't seem to want much of a relationship. They were regular givers. But they couldn't necessarily be described as supporters.

And if these donors didn't want to engage, charities were a bit stuck. Crossing fingers and hoping for the best, replaced old-fashioned fundraising. Donors grew to resemble a commodity where they were bought and sold for up to £100 each. Ironically, if they were the sort of person who was too busy or too disinterested to cancel a Direct Debit, it increased their value.

This all created something of a problem.

If you look at what's happened over the last five or six years, the income from individuals for many charities has stagnated. Yes, the recession has had a great deal to do with this but so has the fact that many charities have been primarily recruiting unengaged donors for the last fifteen years.

CAF figures show that the percentage of donors who give via Direct Debit has been stuck at about 30% of people who donate to charity since 2006/07. When the PFRA reminds us that face to face recruited 2.2 million new regular givers between 2009/10 and 2011/12, it makes you think we might be simply swapping donors on some form of philanthropic merry-go-round.

And the implications appear to be worse for legacy income.

Remember a Charity reports (PDF) that the number of Wills that include a charitable gift at probate has increased by 10% in the first part of this century. But take a visit to the Charity Commission website and have a look at what's happened to the legacy income of many of the big charities over the last five or six years or so. You'll see that legacy income is, by and large, flatlining or even in decline.

The fact is that the legacy prospect pools for some of our biggest charities are rapidly shrinking.

So what should we do?

I think it's about time for a change of focus. To value instead of cost.

Cheap regular givers are usually cheap for a reason. They have low levels of engagement. Commitment doesn't happen overnight – it is the result of hard work.

This isn't a criticism of face to face. As a technique, it has recruited hundreds of thousands of new supporters. Without it, we would be poorer.

My concern is simply an over-reliance on interruption – in all its guises. And the long-term implications of the technique.

Mobile, for instance, has been presented as the future of fundraising. Like face to face, it recruits donors cheaply. But the levels of loyalty and interest demonstrated by mobile donors are also incredibly low. Click through rates are tiny. And if a donor isn't going to click through, it doesn't really matter what information we put on our mobile responsive website, it's unlikley to be read. All for an average gift of £3 a month.

So where are the most valuable donors?

They can come from any source (even your own warm file) but perhaps direct mail, press and online offer the best return, particularly at the moment. And particularly direct mail. At Bluefrog, for example, we've seen responses of up to 5% on cold mailings in 2013.

They work because engagement requires time and space.

These techniques (when done well) allow you to not only present your case, but to also show the beneficiary as a real person and to give the donor what they need  – a taste of the joy of giving (and perhaps even a chance to show off about what they have done).

These donors might not be the cheapest to recruit. They might require a great follow-up after recruitment. And they might not all become long-term supporters. But there are at least four good reasons why they are more valuable than a donor who only gave because they were interrupted.

They recognise the value of giving to you and give freely.

One of the problems with interruption techniques is that social pressure comes into play. Though this can be valuable in gaining that first gift, it can leave the donor feeling uncertain. It's one of the reasons so many face to face cancellations happen in the first few days after recruitment.

They give a sum that matters to them.

Great fundraising isn't just about asking for smaller and smaller sums until you reach a point where the gift is so small it doesn't really concern your potential donor. Consider increasing the amount you ask for, rather than reducing it.

They are happy to share their address and contact details with you.

Donors who feel bombarded by charities who send inappropriate communications are not neccesarily in the right place to embark on a new relationship, even if it is going to be one that they might enjoy.

It's one of the problems that we face with mobile giving.

Mobile donors tell us that they value the ease with which they can skip and stop. They also value the anonymity it offers them. It is ironic, but they value the fact that they can use their mobile to keep charities at arm's length.

They are responsive.

Donors who are interested in your work, are far more likely to read your communications. If they aren't interested, they won't read anything you send them. And if they don't read, they aren't going to give. 

In short, we need to make giving enjoyable for the donor again.

After all, that is our job. That is fundraising.

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.

Direct debit cancellation rates on the rise

Following my post on the general downturn in DM response rates experienced at the time of the Royal Wedding in April, we have more evidence that this might be the start of a more pronounced trend.

Rapidata has released details of direct debit cancellations for July and they show that the high cancellation rates seen in May and June are continuing to run at approximately 4%.

This might not be as high as we saw in early 2009 when the monthly cancellation rate rose to over 5.5%, but is still a real cause for concern.

It should remind us that we need to focus like a laser beam on giving donors what they need and want in our communications. Even in the toughest times, few donors will cut back their giving completely. Instead they will concentrate their support on the charities that are most relevant to their needs.

Jeff Brooks has some advice on this point that is well worth heeding...

"When you are irrelevant to donors, they seldom complain about it. They just ignore you. Which is far worse than the handful of "too much mail" complaints you're going to get no matter how much or little you mail.

Here are common ways fundraising makes itself irrelevant to donors:

• It's all about the organization -- how wonderful they are in every way. It's not about the donor and her opportunity to change the world.
• It's about things organization insiders care about, not what donors care about. You want to "build sustainable communities." Donors want to save lives. Your work accomplishes both. But the fundraising is aimed at pleasing the insiders.
• It's aimed at the wrong age group. Design, color choice and other elements are what staffers in their 20s and 30s believe they would respond to. It leaves their real donors -- who are typically 60 and up -- out in the cold.
• The segmentation is sloppy. It talks to non-donors as if they're donors -- or vice versa.
• There's no context. The organization only asks, never reports back on the impact of donors' giving."

I'd also like to point out a request for help from Becky Slack of Charity Insight who are monitoring cancellation rates in partnership with Rapidata. She has asked that any organisation who has seen a significant downturn in donations over the last few months to get in touch. Becky can be reached at [email protected]

The problem of face to face attrition

A few weeks ago I was preparing to give a presentation at the PFRA AGM. With a few days notice, I was told I wouldn't be needed. I'm not actually sure why it was decided I wouldn't be required. I've heard that it was in response to complaints that I would be conducting a pitch rather than giving a considered view on what was right and wrong about face to face recruitment.

The only thing I know for sure is that those people who complained are wrong.

I've always firmly believed that the whole sector is improved if we share our learning. That's one of the reasons why all the Bluefrog research (which has cost many tens of thousands of pounds) is available free of charge either through the main Bluefrog site or here on queerideas.

And though the AGM saw some very positive figures being announced with 680,000 donors recruited in the year ending March 2009 – up 16% on the previous year, there have been more recent press releases that shows the other side of the story – attrition. The projections that we will see first year attrition rates of between 55 and 57% perhaps need double checking.

I've seen the actual data from a large number of campaigns and can say that the actual figures will be at least ten percent higher with real attrition for many organisations now standing between 65 and 70% in year one. And yes, door to door attrition is better - but I haven't seen any results as good as this report would suggest.

The fact is that attrition rates have been continuing to rise year on year - recession or no recession. And though it is likely that the recent economic figures have had an impact, they are not the real problem.

When in doubt about any matter, I normally turn to Adrian Sargeant for an answer and way back in 2003, he pointed us in the right direction.

Working with Elaine Jay, they surveyed 657 active and 431 lapsed face to face recruited donors (from a sample of 4,846) and found that people were relatively happy with the recruitment process. They made the point that it is possible to speculate that...

"...whatever reason individuals might give for lapsing, it has little to do with the perceived quality of the recruitment process".

In order to cast a little light on what the actual reasons might be, Sargeant and Jay looked at the ongoing donor / charity relationship and asked respondents how they felt their charity performed on a number of areas relating to supporter service.

This revealed that charities were scored lowest on two areas that in a commercial setting would be corporate suicide...

• making me feel important
• demonstrating that they care about me

I should point out that their research also indicated that donors said that they didn't rate these components of the relationship as being important. So maybe it is something that we can ignore.

Or maybe not...

The most recent research undertaken by Professor Sargeant shows something very different. By making welcome calls, personalising communications and customising newsletters for face to face recruited donors – in short, using standard fundraising techniques that are proven to increase income and loyalty – their retention can be improved.

In the face of this, I don't understand why so much blame for attrition has been focussed on the recruitment process. On one hand it has benefitted charities, resulting in ever larger replacement guarantees being offered, but the downside has been that the motivation for charities to develop retention programmes for these supporters has been reduced.

The result has been that traditional charity communications have been shoe-horned into service. Sometimes magazines and other communications have been re-designed and re-written to make them more attractive to younger donors, at other times specific communications have been developed for sending to supporters.

In hindsight, perhaps more time should have been given to determining whether these were the appropriate vehicles in the first place, particularly when you consider the problem we were trying to tackle - creating engagement.

I've written before about recruitment techniques that don't allow a donor the necessary time to engage with the cause – or the organisation – and the toxic effect that this can have on a database if the right communication strategy isn't implemented.

To create an effective solution,  we need to prioritise the donor's needs, placing their desires and their actions at the centre of the emerging dialogue. Our first step is to increase the personalisation in our fundraising materials (just as Adrian Sargeant points out in his recent research).

But we also have to look at when we act. The majority of cancellations happen very quickly. Our analysis shows that the real danger period is the first few months. The number of no pays and cancellations seen in this period regularly outweigh those seen during the remainder of the year. Our goal must be to engage immediately.

The materials given out at recruitment must drive this process. Simply giving out information on what your charity does (however well designed) or thank you pieces (no matter how fun or nice they are to have) or even free gifts is completely missing the point.

If our goal is to engage, those materials must have one goal – to pull the charity and the donor together.

By that, I mean they must start the donor on their journey of support before they have even got back to their office or home and had a chance to cancel.

And our follow up communications (and that is in the plural on purpose) – whether they are by mail, phone or web – must focus on the exact point where that donor is on the journey.

So what are the key needs we need to tackle? I've posted before about Bluefrog's work on identifying donor needs and would recommend you check out this post if you haven't read it before.

In it you'll see that there are 4 needs that we have to address.

1. The desire to help - show donors what their gift has helped achieve.

Wildlife Direct have a fantastic approach to donor centric reporting back. This piece on their gorilla doctors in Rwanda is right at the cutting edge of web based engagement. Click through and you'll see how Gorillas have been freed from hunter's snares, meet a baby called Umoja who had his life saved through surgery and read about and see others who were helped through different types of medical intervention.

Alongside this report, there is a fantastic opportunity to help by giving monthly or one-off donations that can fund anything from the support of a gorilla orphan to the purchase of an anesthetic dart.

2. Overcome helplessness – give donors a chance to do something that, as an individual, they couldn't even dream about.

The size of a problem can overwhelm individuals. Talking about huge numbers of people living in poverty or who might die from diseases like cancer can simply leave people thinking their ten or twenty pounds is going to make no difference at all – so why give it?

It's why we use shopping lists. It's not just about prompting a gift, it also helps make a gift tangible in a donors mind.

If I give $20 to buy an anesthetic dart, I immediately imagine it flying through the air, hitting and anesthetising a gorilla, making me part of the process of saving his or her life.

3. Help donors grow – whether you are educating or offering a donor increased self-esteem, your goal should be to give the donor a chance to become the person they want to be through their support of your charity.

Effective information provision isn't just down to telling stories in a magazine. If it was, we wouldn't have the attrition problem we see to day.

It's about providing that information in a way that works for the donor - making them feel part of the organisation and recognised for their role. A magazine, for example, shows a donor they are one of many, whereas a letter or highly personalised report, directly demonstrates that the donor is worthy of special treatment. I'm sure you can guess which is more effective at tackling cancellation rates.

Looking at the gorilla doctors page again you'll see that recent donors are thanked by being named on the page and through comments they can communicate with the medical team and each other. It's a simple technique that offers status, information and involvement.

4. Engagement – This describes the entertainment factor - because every aspect of a donor needs based strategy is about generating engagement. This is about gaining and keeping their attention.

By taking care over the way we write our copy, use and share photographs and show video we can make our work exciting, involving and life-changing. Or alternatively we can show our charity to be dull, self-centred and uninspiring.

The donor will let us know what they think of our fundraising and communication materials by voting through their wallets, purses and direct debit cancellation buttons.

Finding out more

At Bluefrog, we are currently carrying out some tests on some very new approaches to tackling attrition based on much of what I've shared in this post. We'll be making these available to charities at a presentation in London later this year. If you'd like to come along, please let me know by emailing me at [email protected] and I'll make sure that you receive an invitation. I can assure you it will be information that will make your fundraising better and will most definitely not be a pitch.

It's the early bird that gets the worm!

Rapidata have released their mid-year update of their direct debit tracking report.

In short, direct debit cancellations are falling – even though the latest figures are still almost 80% higher than we experienced back in June 2007 (before Northern Rock showed us what was in store for us all). 

But with a rate of 4.09% in June we are a long way off the 5.52% we saw in October and 5.63% in January. In fact, as Rapidata point out, we may well be seeing cancellation rates starting to stabilise.

You can see this quite clearly in both the actual rate and in the red dotted trend line on this graph that plots the monthly cancellation rates from way back in April 2003... 

It backs up the findings of Bluefrog's research into attitudes to giving that were published in April. 

The fear and worry that many people felt in the early days of the recession has been replaced by certainty. As a result, we are seeing more evidence of a polarisation in attitudes to giving. Though some donors have decided to stop donating, many supporters now feel confident enough to return to their pre-credit crunch levels of giving. And a significant number are even giving more.

And of course, we must not forget the many record breaking results on warm appeals that we have seen, particularly from those organisations that are recession positive and are able use the down-turn as means to justify increased levels of support – these would be charities working with homeless people and in international development that can, for example, show how exchange rate fluctuations have caused enormous financial difficulties.

Though some people are talking of a double-dip recession, there is a substantial amount of evidence now pointing to better times ahead. And we would do well to remember that if we are not out there making the case for the support of our own particular organisation, there is no way for the newly confident donor to ensure their gifts will come our way. 

You can download Rapidata's full tracking report which includes much more analysis here.

Results from massive research study into why donors lapse

Bluefrog's research into why donors lapse, The Fundraiser's Guide to Lapsers, is now available for download by clicking here.

As mentioned in a previous post, we were fortunate in having Professor Adrian Sargeant review our work and for very kindly writing the foreword. I'd like to offer him my grateful thanks for the significant amount of time he gave to us.

But perhaps more importantly, without the help of the eleven major British charities who gave us access to their current and lapsed donors for the study this research could not have gone ahead. The sector owes them a huge thanks to which I add my own. They are:

• ActionAid
• Barnardo's
• The British Heart Foundation
• The British Red Cross
• Care International UK
• Centrepoint
• Great Ormond Street Hospital
• Marie Curie Cancer Care
• RNIB
• Sense
• SPANA

But as you might imagine, they were not the only charities that were discussed. Their donors – both lapsed and active – had also given (or were giving) to a range of other organisations.

Over the three months of fieldwork, more than 200 people shared their views, their gripes, their experiences and their recommendations relating to over 100 different organisations.

And if there was one thing that summed up our findings, it is the message implicit in a single statement from one of our participants:

"You keep saying this thing lapsed. Lapsed from what? I never felt I was giving anything up."

The increase in cancellations amongst regular givers (Rapidata's recent analysis now shows this is running at approximately 5% each and every month) shows that the sector is not generating the loyalty that it so desperately needs. 

It is too easy and not entirely true to blame the economy for the attrition levels we see today.

Although many donors are very happy with the way that they are treated, many others feel that they lose very little when they withdraw their support. This points to the most important, yet most overlooked element of donor recruitment and development, which is that people give to charities in order to satisfy their own psychological needs – not the needs of the charity.

The answer to this is to place the focus on the donor. Our paper provides seven practical steps that any charity can implement in order to reduce its level of donor attrition and quickly increase available funds. Though much more detail is available in the actual report, the key recomendations are:

• Actively look for ways to start a relationship. Don't just drop new donors into your standard appeal cycle. Engage donors in a dialogue.
  
• Manage donors' expectations.
  
• Don't think about what you want to tell your donors, think about what they want to hear from you.
  
• Concentrate on answering your donors' needs.
  
• Allow your donors to choose how and when they want to hear from you.
  
• Know your donors - listen and remember. And show them that you remember.
  
• If they do go, part as friends. The best chance you have of reactivating donors is if their last experience of you is a positive one.

A more detailed presentation on specific answers to some of the key problems we uncovered is also available and can be arranged by emailing me at [email protected].

How the direct debit cycle works

I posted a piece last week on Rapidata's paper on what's happening to direct debits in the UK. It can be downloaded here.

Have a look. It isn't often you get such a chunk of great information completely free of charge.

But just in case you are too busy, I'd like to highlight one of the graphs that you'll find in the report – the direct debit cycle.

This chart compares the cancellation rate for each month with the average cancellation rate for the whole year. There is obviously some variation between years, but looking at a typical year ( April 05 to March 06) we find an interesting pattern.

I've taken the commentary on the chart directly from Rapidata's paper.

"On average, the financial year starts in April with a cancellations rate that is lower than the eventual average for that year. 

Cancellations rates then begin to increase over the summer, reaching a peak above the annual average in August/September before dipping below average again in November and December. 

Rates rise above average again in January (as we have explained, this pattern is partly due to closure over Christmas and some December cancellations not being picked up until January) before dipping back below average in February and March for the cycle to begin again in the April of the next financial year."

You'll probably be able to use this to improve the timing of recruitment, upgrade and attrition busting programmes.

If you are interested, you'll find the direct debit cycle for the last six years in Rapidata's paper.

Note: zero is the average cancellation rate. Anything above this represents the percentage increase in cancellations over the average – anything under represents a relative decrease in cancellations.