queer ideas

Three things you need to get right in mid-value fundraising

There has been a surge of interest in mid-value fundraising over the last year, so I thought it might be worth sharing a few thoughts about the technique.

For those who don't know, mid-value fundraising is a focused, engaging and highly personal version of direct marketing that asks wealthier (or more generous) people for gifts of between £250 and £5,000 ($500 to $10,000).

I've used this approach for appeals since way back in the early 1990s when I worked for YMCA England. We developed a cold mailing pack asking for £5,000 that generated an initial ROI of 15:1. But more importantly, the donors were exceptionally loyal (and often very generous). The highest gift that was ever given by a donor originally recruited by that first pack was £5,000,000.

So it's a powerful technique. However, you need to use it with care.

As well as seeing plenty of successes, there have also been a few failures. And if you are thinking of testing whether it is right for you, you'll need to know that it's important that you get your approach right. To help, I thought I'd share the Bluefrog mid-value triangle that focuses on the three key elements we've found to be a major driver of success.

Audience

Who are you writing to? Get this wrong and you could be facing a disaster.

You can obviously source prospects from third-party list brokers, but they need to be squeaky clean in terms of accuracy. In the good old days you could get names from registers of share-holders and you were pretty certain just how wealthy they were. This is no longer the case. Nowadays, most lists of 'wealthy' individuals are compiled from a range of sources and sometimes those lists are not quite as good as you need them to be. At Bluefrog we aren't currently engaged in any cold direct mail aimed at mid-value donors because of this risk.

This leaves you with your current supporter file. This is a great place to start but please remember, just because someone has given you a large gift once, it does not mean they will – or can – again. We've had to develop some very sophisticated propensity models to identify those donors who can afford to give more and actually want to.

So, be very careful who you ask. Many large gifts from individuals could well be the result of in-memoriam collections or community fundraising activities. So look out for unusual amounts in your data. Anything like £870, £2,145 or even £2,783.48 should raise alarm bells – particularly if you've never asked for gifts of that specific size before. If in doubt, call the donor up and ask why they gave before you mail them again. It can save a great deal of upset.

And, on the other side of the coin, if someone gave a large gift once and they were dropped into your standard mailing programme or passed to the high value team where they were lost because they hadn't given quite enough, they may not have a very high opinion of your charity. The sudden appearance of appropriate asks – even in a very good mailing pack – may not actually be noticed or welcomed. All is not necessarily lost, but you may have to kick-start the relationship again before making a request for a significant sum as the donor may well feel unappreciated or unrecognised.

Further to this point, a regular mistake that people make is to mail this pack solely to high value donors that the major donor team has been unable to motivate to give. Don't! You need engaged donors for this to work well. If you aren't willing to focus on your best donors, don't even test it.

Signatory

Who asks matters. I've seen a change in signatory to an appeal dramatically improve and dramatically reduce income on more than one occasion. Your CEO is not always the best person to sign your letter. Wealthier people are much more likely to give if someone they know – or know of – asks for their help. This is particularly true if that person moves in the same social circles as the potential donor or works in the same industry.

And remember, you don't always need to restrict yourself to one signatory. A mid-value mailing can include more than one letter or even have multiple signatories.

Offer

Why you need the money is very important. A general appeal for unrestricted funds is highly unlikely to work. You have to feature projects that a donor will be interested in and be inspired by. I've seen mid-value appeals fail because an initial project that sounded exciting was watered down to the point that it failed to convince a donor that their money would do anything useful at all.

Even if you are focusing on a real project, choose it with care. Not all projects are equally valuable to a donor. Try to focus on work that you know they will want to fund. You need something that will excite and engage. For example, funding the training and equipping of a rural health worker is highly likely to generate a much better response than training an urban social worker in rights' provision.

Once a mid-value donor is engaged they may well give you unrestricted funds, but, it is highly unlikely this will happen with the first mid-value gift. So focus on the donor's specific needs first. And remember, with appropriate treatment, they may even move to regular giving, but only after a relationship exists.

Is it for you?

If you still think the mid-value approach is right for you and your charity, please test first. A mid-value focus can dramatically change the relationship your donors have with you. And once it works, you can even use your appeals for donors who have given smaller gifts as well. It also helps to have a custom landing page as increasing numbers of mid-value donors may well be prompted to give by a mailing, but the process of giving is often undertaken online.

My final advice is to move forward carefully, particularly if you can't meet every requirement in the triangle. Asking for a large gift will make you stand out from the crowd. Just make sure it is in a good way.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past are a Fundraiser's Best Friends

Christmas is the time when fundraisers get excited about the sound of a man or woman trudging through the snow struggling under the weight of a sack full of gifts. Only for us, it’s the post delivery that gets our hearts beating a little faster. Not the thought of Santa Claus.

That’s because Christmas is the season of goodwill. It’s a time when we can expect our donors to be at their most generous. CAF in the UK have found that as Christmas appeals start dropping through letterboxes, the number of people giving rises to over 57% of the population (and to almost 80% of the over 65s).

But why does Christmas have such a big impact on our attitudes to giving? Of course, the celebration of Christ’s birth is hugely important, but in the secular society within which we live, is that explanation enough?

Not to my mind.

Christmas is far more than a religious festival. It is a multi-dimensional event that has happiness as a supreme goal - often defined by consumption. But to fully understand what constitutes a happy Christmas, we have to identify those factors that actually do make us happy.

Tim Kassler and Kennon Sheldon of the University of Missouri looked at this very subject in their 2002 paper, What makes for a Merry Christmas.

They found that “Despite the fact that people spend relatively large portions of their income on gifts, as well as time shopping for and wrapping them, such behaviour apparently contributes little to holiday joy”.

What mattered most was celebrating with close friends and family. And the focus on materialism did nothing more than distract “people from the true meaning of the season.”

This was particularly pronounced amongst older respondents who reported greater feelings of happiness largely explained by the opportunity of spiritual and physical reconnection.

And in my considered opinion, the chance to reconnect is why Christmas is such a powerful driver for giving to charity.

If you were brought up in a Christian country, you’ll have many memories of Christmas. And when any of us think about Christmas, we think about traditions. Not just national traditions, but, more importantly, family ones. Where were your presents going to be on Christmas morning? Under the tree? In stockings by the fireplace? In a sack at the foot of your bed?

What time do you open presents? As soon as you wake up? After breakfast? After church? After lunch?

Do you have Christmas dinner or lunch? Do you make a toast before you eat?

The list of traditions that families adhere to is almost endless and it’s very rare that any will be broken without good reason. Even though there’s obviously nothing stopping us from changing the way that we celebrate Christmas other than that profound and deep link to the past.

And as fundraisers we should learn from this. This need for tradition can be a very powerful driver for giving.

Let me give you an example.

For several years at Bluefrog, we have included a sheet of sticky gift tags with a Christmas appeal produced for one particular client. Though the appeals differ, each year the stickers are the exactly same. They feature old fashioned, cheesy images of snowmen, reindeer and Santa Claus.

A few years back we were asked to bring them up to date. We created a modern set that many of the younger people involved in the project loved. Luckily we tested them alongside the traditional design. The new stickers suppressed response by a significant margin.

Why would a new set of Christmas stickers have such a big impact?

The answer is simple. Many donors had incorporated the use of our stickers in their Christmas traditions for many years and by changing them we had broken a link with the past. The tags helped make the giving of presents a richer experience because they bridged the gap between the commercial and the charitable sides of the season. And the new design simply didn’t have the same resonance as the original version.

By responding to this need to reconnect with the past, we can create far more powerful appeals than those that simply present a request for help. We can actually offer an antidote to the commercialisation of the season that so many donors (particularly older ones) dislike.

So my first piece of advice is to pull out your archives and guard books. And use them to build an appreciation of how your donors have previously engaged with charities over the years. If you haven’t got an archive of your own, take a look at SOFII or visit this Pinterest board which features hundreds of ads going back almost two centuries.

You’ll see similar themes repeated decade after decade. Themes that when incorporated in your appeals, can significantly increase your income.

Take this advertisement from Barnardo’s from 1927 asking donors to play the role of Santa Claus and buy Christmas food for an orphan or destitute child. Alongside it is an advertisement from the NSPCC produced in the 1990s that has a similar message. It might not be particularly innovative, it might even seem boring to some, but it’s just what many donors - particularly older ones - find motivating.

Even now, the Salvation Army in the UK uses a similar technique. Each and every Christmas they ask their donors for exactly the same thing - to buy a Christmas meal or box full of food and toys for poor families. Just take a look at their annual report and you’ll see that they generate an ROI from their donors that puts most (if not all) big British charities to shame.

As I’ve already said, there’s nothing particularly clever about the technique. But it taps into, and helps satisfy, the donors fundamental need to reconnect to their past and the true meaning of Christmas. I am still surprised that it isn’t more widely used. But I’d imagine that there are few organisations willing to stick with an approach for the necessary number of years to turn it in to a tradition in its own right.

And that’s the problem.

There are many similar ideas just waiting to be rediscovered and developed. But your starting point when developing a new idea should be to reject the idea of producing different appeals each year. Instead I’d advise you to focus on developing a campaign that can underpin your Christmas appeals for a decade or two.

In my experience, the more you use an idea, the stronger it becomes. Yes, creative will need to be refreshed, but as long as the core approach and visual identity remain the same, it will grow and grow, year after year.

So as with shopping, start planning for Christmas 2015 early. As soon as you get back to work in the New Year, start to learn about what Christmas really means to your donors and find out what they feel it lacks. Then build a campaign aimed at giving them just what they want.

It won’t be easy. It will certainly require a great deal of hard work. But if you can develop an idea that cements your charity into your donors’ psyche as truly part of Christmas, you’ll be repaid many times in terms of extra income and engagement in the coming years.

It seems apt to leave the final word on this matter to Charles Dickens, who helped invent so much of what we take for granted about the season. He summed up it’s power quite neatly when he said, 

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!”.

This blog post was originally published on 101 Fundraising as part of a series on the theme of the Ghosts of Christmas. Click on the respective link and you can read about the Ghost of Christmas Present by Tony Elischer and the Ghost of Christmas Future by Rory Green.

Write a soap opera, not a news story

For the best part of thirty years, Eastenders has dominated the TV ratings.

The Christmas episode from back in 1986 attracted over 30 million viewers and still retains the record for Britain's most watched TV show. And I bet this Christmas, it will be there at the top of the ratings yet again.

As fundraisers, it's not something than we should ignore.

Since the days of Aristotle we've known that to emotionally engage an audience, a great story needs three important elements – a beginning, a middle and an end.

• At the beginning we'll meet the hero, the figure on whose fate our interest in the story will come to rest.
• In the middle we see our hero overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of his or her goal.
• And finally, we get our pay off and we find out whether our hero succeeds or fails.

Syd Field, who is seen as the godfather of Hollywood's story template created a paradigm to help illustrate how this three-act structure works for successful films. Here's an example featuring Star Wars...

You'll notice that the middle – the confrontation – is twice as long as either the beginning or the end. And there are two plot points designed to capture the audience's interest to ensure they carry on watching as the next act begins.

Take any soap opera and you'll find a never ending stream of stories that follow this simple structure, which leaves me wondering why fundraisers don't borrow this approach when building communication programmes for donors.

Any decent appeal will usually have a central character who is in need of help to overcome a problem. The pack or website will introduce them and give us a good description of the perils they face as they fight a disease or struggle to overcome poverty. And...well...that's usually it.

The donor will send in a gift and perhaps receive a thank you letter or email that was written a few months (or years) ago. If they are particularly lucky, they might find out more about the project from a newsletter sent later in the year.

But more than likely, the next communication will be another pack asking for a donation that features a different area of the organisation's work.

And that's the problem.

Fundraising stories are a little more complicated than those used by the entertainment industry. That's because the hero is actually the person who is reading our appeals – the donor.

When they are repeatedly refused the chance to find out what happens in the third-act, they can justifiably feel unsatisfied.

It would be a little like your mum coming in and turning off the TV just as the Rebel Alliance is about to attack the Death Star. Yes, we can probably guess what happens in the end. But it's not the same is it? Particularly if we think we are in the seat of Luke's X-wing fighter.

So why does it happen?

Far too often, appeals are so packed full of stats and factual information that we can forget that we aren't just informing, we are engaging as well. And no amount of statistics will beat a great emotional story when it comes to raising money.

Which brings me neatly to a rather important statistic that's just been published by nfpSynergy.

61% of the people they questioned said the thought that too little of their donation was going to the cause put them off giving.

Because they didn't know what happened to their gift, they thought the worst - that it was mis-used or wasted.

It's pretty damning, considering how sophisticated fundraising has supposed to have become over the last few decades. It indicates that we are still getting the basics wrong.

But perhaps Eastenders might show us a solution?

It features a cast that we care about. The production team introduce new characters carefully and sparingly. And rather than have a different story for every episode, the series is paced so plot lines develop over weeks and months. As a story reaches it's climax and comes to an end, one or two more are bubbling away, ready to take it's place. Though story lines finish, the show never does. And viewers stick with it week after week, month after month and year after year.

So rather than constantly introducing completely new projects and building communication programmes based on when we need to ask for donations, or when we want to send out newsletters or launch a new campaign, we should build an emotional journey that carries the donor along with us, placing them at the centre of what we do.

That means featuring the same work in appeals, newsletters and on the website. It means we focus on building a narrative over time. And, as a result, it means showing donors the outcomes that are relevant to their experience of the organisation – what they have given to.

That way we might just get donors looking forward to our appeals.

If it's good enough for Dot Cotton, it's good enough for us.

What's wrong with charity advertising?

Howard Gossage is my favourite Mad Man. If I have an advertising hero, it's probably him.

Howard didn't particularly enjoy coming up with ways to sell more cars and airline tickets, he was just rather good at it. What interested him most was making the world a better place.

So when David Brower of the Sierra Club asked him to help prevent the Grand Canyon being flooded through the building of the Glen Canyon dam, you'd have thought Howard's response would be an automatic yes.

But it wasn't.

David asked Howard's agency, Wiener and Gossage, to lay out an open letter he had written to US Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall. It was his last ditch attempt to try to stop the construction going ahead.

Howard read the letter and concluded that it was over elaborate.

To use his own phrase, he thought David was "putting raisins in the matzos" by going into too much technical detail.

In his opinion, this was the same mistake that far too many charities and cause-related advertising made. The ad talked at its audience and in doing so alienated the people who were most likely to help.

As Gossage explained...

" When they [The Sierra Club] came to us for counsel I happened to mention this to them and said, 'What you've got to do is give people recourse. You've got to give them something they can do so they don't feel guilty and, therefore hate you for making them feel guilty'."

Brower wasn't persuaded, so a test was agreed. One million editions of the New York Times carried his open letter ad and one million carried Gossage's ad.

I haven't got the final results, but Gossage's ad (below) outperformed Bower's ad "enormously" (you can find a readable version of the ad here).

As you'll see from the number of coupons, Gossage's aim was to drive response. Each carried a message that could be sent to the US President, the Secretary of the Interior, the Head of the Interior Committee of the House of Representatives, the reader's Congressman and the reader's two Senators.

As copywriter Jerry Mander admitted, it was the coupons that made the difference...

"Gossage did the important, brilliant thing with those multiple coupons. That had never been done before. They were very, very important because in those days people used coupons; they were their internet."

Brower's original target, Secretary Udall, sums up the impact of the campaign rather neatly...

"That was really a stroke of genius. Of course he knew how to put the heat on you. If you were in my position you had to react."

As a result, support for the Sierra Club doubled from 39,000 to 78,000 and the bill that would authorise the construction of the dam was defeated.

It was the interactive nature of Howard's approach that worked. Rather than lecture, he wanted readers to participate in the ad. This created a connection that meant the brand and message were much more likely to be remembered.

It was an approach that made him different.

He believed that too many agencies suffered from a lack of both creativity and information. Instead they relied on repetition of the same message in the hope that it would finally break through to consumers.

It sounds like much of the charity advertising that we see today – campaigns are praised because the ads look alike and say the same thing.

But when you think about it, this approach is akin to admitting defeat.

We've decided that the only way someone is going to take in our message is if it is constantly paraded in front of their eyes (or ears). That might be acceptable if we're selling something as ordinary as baked beans, but when we are fighting global poverty, tackling climate change or even searching for a cure for cancer is it the best that we can do?

Gossage summed up the problem quite neatly when he said....

"The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad."

And that's the point. We need to focus on what interests our donors – not on telling them what we want them to think.

That was exactly what Gossage did with his ad. He gave everyone the chance to protect something that they valued. As a result, the Grand Canyon is still an incredible place for us all to enjoy.

It's a rather amazing story, but it doesn't end there.

You might have thought that after this success, the trustees of the SIerra Club would have been incredibly happy.

You'd be wrong.

They weren't sure that they actually wanted all the publicity and controvercy stirred up by Gossage's campaign.

David Brower disagreed with them. The result was his resignation.

Brower's next job was based in Gossage's office where he set up a new environmental pressure group. After a little debate, a name was agreed - Friends of The Earth.

Hat tip to @HayesThompson for recommending Changing The World Is The Only Fit Work For A Grown Man

The day George Smith showed me the finger

I've not always been the all knowing guru that I shamelessly pretend to be on this blog.

It may be hard to believe, but I was once a fundraising cretin who thought that putting a good appeal together was simply down to listening to your gut.

And sadly when I look back at some of the things I said and did at the very beginning of my career, it was obvious that most of my thinking was happening at the far end of my alimentary canal.

Heaven knows what the poor account handlers and creatives who had the misfortune to work with me must have gone through, but just thinking of some of the absolute rubbish I spouted as a young client is painful enough to make me physically cringe and groan out loud.

As a result, I'd like to make a public apology to the staff at Yellowhammer Direct, Grey Direct, Burnett Associates and FCB Impact for the many, many stupid things I said over the years (including once even complaining about the shape of a D - what was I thinking?).

But before I get completely off the point let me get back to the real reason for this post.

I wanted to share a short story about how George Smith influenced my career. Unfortunately I didn't know him very well and can add very little to the tribute from Ken Burnett in The Guardian and those from his many friends and colleagues that can be found on SOFII.

But I thought this recollection about how he changed the way I looked at fundraising might serve both as a thank you and a cautionary tale to young fundraisers tempted by the dark side.

The first time I met George was back in the early nineties when I paid my only visit to the Smith Bundy offices in Kennington. I was an over-promoted Head of Direct Marketing at YMCA England and we were looking for a new agency.

It wasn't long before I started sharing my frustrations that fundraising was broken and we had to re-invent it.

As the meeting went on, George seemed more interested in the surface of his desk than in what I had to say. As I watched, he slowly started tracing the grain of the wood with his finger, finally looking up when my lecture finished.

He smiled, then wished me the best of luck in searching for this new approach and assured me he'd love to hear the results when they were available.

Needless to say, we didn't end up working with Smith Bundy.

But his influence stayed with me. He'd been polite, but without saying a single word had told me he thought I was being bloody stupid.

It got me thinking. And reading. What did he know that I didn't?

I kept an eye out for George's articles in industry publications and started ordering books written by old school fundraisers and direct marketers – many from the USA. My reading list included Ken Burnett, Drayton Bird, David Ogilvy, Lester Wunderman, Harold J. Seymour, John Watson, Jerry Huntsinger and Denison Hatch.

George's Asking Properly became one of my favourite publications and still holds the record as the book most likely to be stolen from the Bluefrog library. I trawled our building this afternoon trying to find a copy only to discover there wasn't a single one to be found. As a result I've just put my order in to the White Lion Press for yet another copy. How long it will last is anyone's guess.

The result of this research was that I worked out what George knew that I didn't – fundraising wasn't broken. We just hadn't been doing it very well.

So we started writing and designing our own appeals based on what we were learning from George and his peers and our packs worked. Often very well. We even won an award.

As a result, I received a number of phone calls from different charities asking who was doing our creative work. They gave me the confidence to resign in 1997 and set up Bluefrog.

All because of George's finger.

Many years later, George visited the Bluefrog offices to chat with us about our work. it was a great opportunity and I wish I could have spent longer with him but 'urgent' meetings on long forgotten campaigns got in the way. I thought about sharing this story with him, but we'd run out of time. It's something I imagine I'll always regret.

Luckily George wasn't like me and regularly shared his thoughts in his writing. And for those of you who never got the chance to chat to George, you can do yourself a massive favour and read George's last publication, Up Smith Creek which features a selection of his writings going back to the 1970s.

It's not as concise as the advice George gave me with his finger but it's every bit as valuable.

Why giving to charity can be like buying a Polaris submarine

My dad was a printer. When he worked night shifts on the national newspapers I always went to bed very excited. That's because I knew he'd come home with a gift for me. As soon as I woke up, I'd rush downstairs to find a toy car, a model plane or an American comic sitting on the kitchen table.

The American comics were perhaps the most exciting. Unlike British comics, they had glossy covers and featured exotic characters like Richie Rich or Casper the Friendly Ghost.

As well as the stories, they were packed full of ads that featured the most amazing products that seemed perfectly designed to separate a seven year old boy from south-east London with his hard earned pocket money.

The choice was mouth watering. Within a few pages you could find 'Real' X-Ray spex, instructions how to build a 'working' laser pistol, a 100 piece plastic soldier set with tanks, ships and planes packed in a footlocker, or the ultimate toy - a Polaris nuclear sub - that at over 7 feet long was "big enough for 2 kids".

To my young mind, this submarine was fully functional. The advert described it as the "most powerful ship in the sea". You could actually release nuclear missiles and torpedoes (if you were so inclined). And encased in "200 lb test material" you'd surely be safe at the bottom of the ocean.

All this was available at $6.98. The only thing that stopped me from buying one was the fact I had no idea how to get hold of a dollar money order.

Instead I was left imagining the thousands of Polaris submarines containing children of my age that were undoubtably a hazard to shipping all along the US coastline.

It wasn't until much later (after I met real Americans) that I found out that most of these toys were little more than cheap junk. The soldiers weren't a patch on our own homegrown Airfix variety and the submarine was actually made from cardboard. A mild drizzle would see it turn into a pile of sodden pulp. The fact that the missiles were fired by a rubber band would also mean that the world's population could sleep soundly knowing that a rapidly emptied money box wasn't going to bring about a nuclear winter.

If I had managed to get hold of $6.98 (plus 75c to help cover shipping charges) I'd have spent the weeks waiting for delivery in breathless anticipation only to be left with a huge sense of disappointment once the "best toy you ever had" arrived ready for assembly but not for a quick trip over to France from Hastings beach.

Such was the seductive power of the ad, even the fact I could get my money back wouldn't have erased the pain of the unfulfilled dream of sinking slowly below the browny-green waves of the English Channel in search of pirate treasure.

I'm a little older now, but I still have dreams. And, like many other people, I try and make those dreams come true by supporting charities. A cure for cancer, the end of poverty and prevention of animal cruelty are all on my list, but just like buying a submarine, the result of giving often leaves me feeling a little flat.

Instead of being invited to be part of something life changing, I get a polite and formal letter that informs me that my money has gone in to a big pot and will do something good, somewhere at some point in the future.

I'd like a little more than that. And when we see just how few people give a second gift in response to cash appeals, it looks like I'm not alone.

Fundraising isn't just about asking. If it was that simple, charities would be awash with money. It's about giving something to your donors that they need and value.

That doesn't mean simply telling donors what your charity does (yet again) in a welcome pack.

It's about grabbing the one chance when you are virtually guaranteed that a donor will open your communication and read it. You can then give them just what they want...

• Recognition for what they've done.
• The opportunity to demonstrate that fact to others.
• Authentic, personal treatment.
• A reason to smile (or cry).

If we do that, we'll find people will actually want to open our appeals. And though they might not get as excited as I did about the thought of my own personal submarine, it will go a long way to encourage a one-off donor to become a long-term supporter.

If you'd like to dig a little deeper into the world of comic book ads, this is a good place to start.

Five things we learned at the IFC

Following a very enjoyable few days at the International Fundraising Congress in Amsterdam, I've put together my key take aways from the event.

1. There's loads more to data than just numbers.

Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud's chief scientist, has a job where he can crunch millions of numbers from a huge range of charities. If a question pops into his head, it doesn't take him long to find the answer.

In his session, Chuck shared some of his findings which included the following juicy nuggets…

• If someone calls you to change their address they are TEN times more likely to leave you a legacy (or upgrade, or set up a regular gift or anything else you might ask them to do).
• Donors who tend to give uncommon amounts (e.g. £32) are much easier to upgrade than those who give common amounts (e.g. £25).
• Donors get hooked on giving amounts. After 4 years they are 80% more likely to stick to their preferred amount rather than increase their gift (rising to 90% after 5 years).
• Calling a donor to thank them (whether you speak to them or just leave a message on the answer phone) can increase their next year's gift value by up to 40%.
• Misspelling someone's last name can decrease gift size by up to 12%.

2. Old school communications are the best for building deep engagement

AJ Leon is Chief Maker of Trouble (that's a real job title) at Misfit Inc. in New York. AJ told a story of how he helped raise $72,000 for a total cost of $250. He included a few key insights too...

• Stories have to have conflict. If Frodo had just skipped into Mordor and tossed the ring into the volcano, no one would have cared.
• The tools of fundraising are changing, but the principles of engagement are the same.
• People don't automatically trust big brands any longer - including charity brands.
• Never let your organisation get in the way of a good story.
• When launching a campaign always ask which bloggers you can link up with.
• Social media has made donating even more annoying.
• Management boards kill great ideas.
• Things are moving so fast that spending time writing a ten year strategy is worthless.

You can see AJ's presentation here. And you might like to read Paul de Gregorio's thoughts on it here.

3. The recession is here to stay

Tony Elischer (amongst others) pointed out that the recession is going to be sticking around for a long-time yet but that was no reason to accept poor results. He highlighted the fact that over 60% of donors only give once, describing it, quite rightly, as shameful...

"That's not the fault of people who are giving. That's our fault. We're still not getting that second gift."

He showed how organisations like Christian Aid have bucked the trend by fundamentally changing their fundraising offer, recruiting donors by focusing on work that donors want to support and allowing them to give in the way that works for them.

4. Rubbish in = rubbish out

Direct Mail is working. Digital is working. Mobile is working. The trouble is they don't work if the underlying idea, content and offer is rubbish.

5. Everything on the internet is just speeded up direct marketing

Beate Sorum of the Norwegian Cancer Society put together a great presentation that tackled one of the ongoing myths of the fundraising world – that digital fundraising is magic. It isn't.

What was particularly interesting about Beate's presentation was the distinction she made between communicating online and through a press ad or DM pack. The difference is one of size. And that's the problem...

"On the internet we can put up any crap...so we forget to prioritise, we forget to ask and we forget to rigidly monitor and analyse".

Her advice was that we should re-learn our direct marketing and remember to test what we ask for, how often we ask and who we ask.

Or in other words, we need to give donors an opportunity to do something they want about something they care about.

You can see Beate's presentation here.

Are you suffering from a royal wedding hangover?

Having analysed the results for a number of appeals and spoken to fundraisers from throughout the sector, it looks like we are suffering from a royal wedding DM hangover.

Fundraising campaigns that were mailed in the run up to Easter or shortly after the wedding (29th of April) seem to have generated some pretty rotten results.

Year on year comparisons of warm and cold campaigns are showing a significant downturn.

Though we can't ignore the economic situation, I think there are three environmental factors surrounding the wedding that have combined to create the problem…

1. People took the opportunity of the late Easter, May Day and wedding holiday to take ten days off work for the price of three.
2. Post was slow (postal staff take holidays too) resulting in many mailing packs being stuck in the system and not dropping until the second week in May.
3. Many charities rushed to beat the Royal Mail price rise deadline (May 7th) increasing the glut of mailing packs hitting the mat in that same week.

Tania Cohen mentioned on Twitter that she remembers poor response rates being discussed the last time Easter was close to May Day (2000). She also pointed out that it wouldn't be until 2038 that it happened again.

It's a shame about Ray

Data Mining for Fund Raisers by Peter B. Wylie is one of the best introductory guides to the effective use of data that you'll get your hands on.

It's pretty hard to track down in the UK, but you can get it from CASE in the USA.

But luckily for us, Peter has also published a number of papers that you can find quite easily on SupportingAdvancement.com (scroll to the bottom of the list).

Once there, you'll find one particular study that helps demonstrate something rather interesting about data use.

It compares giving behaviour with the length of a donor's name. The file in question was predominantly male. Analysis showed that a number of donors were recorded with either an informal of formal first name…

1. William or Bill
2. Robert or Bob
3. Richard or Dick
4. Edward or Ed
5. Kenneth or Ken
6. Michael or Mike
7. Ronald or Ron
8. Thomas or Tom
9. Donald or Don
10. John or Jack
11. James or Jim
12. Raymond or Ray

Lifetime giving analysis showed that in 11 out of the 12 pairs, donors with formal names had given considerably more than those with informal names (Raymond/Ray was the only exception).

The probability of this having occurred by chance is less than one in four thousand. So what does it mean?

After some more digging, the analyst found evidence of a link between the amount of information held about a donor and their propensity to give. In short, more information equals more money.

It's almost a no-brainer. Virtually all Bluefrog's data propensity models take this into account when predicting the likelihood of someone leaving a legacy or upgrading a committed gift.

So what's the point of highlighting this finding?

Its very nature tells us something that is going to be of growing significance for fundraisers.

Non-financial data can be used to enhance financial data when modelling future giving behaviour.

And with the growth in the number of ways donors can interact with charities, we need to start paying more attention to the huge amount of non-financial information we have and how we collect it (obviously with permission).

And to start you off, perhaps you should take a look at your supporters who make comments on your website. You might be pleasantly surprised by just how lovely these people are when added to an appropriate communication programme.

Are you a writer or communicator?

Bill Bernbach was one of the original Mad Men. The founder of DDB, he created some of the most famous lines in advertising.

Bill appreciated that great ads came from an understanding of human motivations. And, in that respect, he didn't necessarily think that facts and figures were particularly important. As he explained when asked about the qualities that make a great communicator...

“The writer is concerned with what he puts into his writing.

The communicator is concerned not just with what he puts into a piece of writing, but with what the reader gets out of it.

He therefore becomes a student of how people read and how they listen. He learns that most people come away from their reading not with a clear, precise, detailed registration of its contents on their minds but rather with a vague, misty idea that is formed as much by the pace, proportions and music of the writing as by the literal words themselves.

And he learns that the reader reads with his ego, his emotions, his compulsions, his prejudices, his urges and his aspirations. And that he plots with his brain to rationalise the facts until they become the tools of his desire.”

And that's one of the problems of working with strict brand guidelines that direct what must be included in appeal letters - they tend to miss the point.

Great fundraising copy is primarily about the reader. It's an offer – not just an ask – an offer to meet a donor's needs through supporting the work of a charity.

And, as Bill explains in the video, that rarely comes from the intellect. If you want to persuade someone to act you do it through their passions.