queer ideas

What's wrong with fundraising?

When the IOF were looking for speakers for this year's convention, I suggested that I’d like to talk about what I saw was wrong with fundraising.

I didn’t realise just how prescient my proposal would be.

I don’t blog that much these days, but when I do, it’s normally to highlight a concern. And one of the things I’ve been increasingly worried about is how a significant number of donors are responding to some common fundraising techniques.

I’ve been a fundraiser since 1988 and I have never known the antipathy that is currently directed at my profession.

Things have to change.

We really have to start putting the needs of the donor at the heart of everything we do. Aggressive techniques can – and do – raise money. But when we multiply the use of those techniques across twenty, thirty, forty or more charities, the pressure that some of our most generous donors are facing becomes unbearable.

The good news is that charities have been here before and recovered. In my presentation, I show that the criticism we are seeing is nothing new. But I also show that however aggressive certain elements of the sector might be, we aren’t raising any more money, recruiting any more donors or generating any more regular gifts than eight or nine years ago. It seems that all we are doing is encouraging donors to spread their philanthropic budget ever more thinly – hence the fashion amongst so many charities with expensively built brands to ask for 'just' £3.

That's because a significant number of donors struggle to say no when asked for such a small sum.

Repeated list swaps and multiple asks have driven charities to increasingly focus on people who can't refuse this sort of request for help. This appears to be at the cost of identifying donors who have a real commitment and connection to a particular cause.

The result is that a number of great donors are suffering. It’s a phenomenon known as pathological altruism.

I don’t suggest that I have the definitive solution, but it would strike me that we should introduce four changes that would make a huge difference to the sector's relationship with donors (and the media).

1. We need to offer donors a way of demonstrating they are already giving in the face of a request for support. Back at the beginning of the last century, when you gave to charity, you received a flag to pin to your jacket. It meant you didn’t need to feel bad when you said no to another collector.

Whether this is a badge, a sticker to go in a window or even a numerical code that a donor can give in response to a request for a gift from a telephone fundraiser, we need something that allows donors to say no without feeling guilty.

And while we are about it, why don't we replace the blunt objects that are the MPS and TPS with a means for donors to actually choose who can or can't contact them? Perhaps via a website where as well as getting a 'badge', people can also specify which charities or causes they actually want (or don't want) to hear from.  In reality, some people don't mind having their name shared amongst a few appropriate charities (please watch video 2 to see what I mean).

2. The richest 20% of the UK population give a smaller percentage of their income to charity than everyone else. We need to create a movement where we start promoting the idea that wealthy people should give more – perhaps, 2% of their income. The constant demands for £3 have encouraged all donors to think that charity is only deserving of our small change. This is a sector wide problem that only the sector can change.

3. We need a new type of audit. Each year, every charity should offer all donors (and a number of lapsed ones) the chance to say how they feel they have been treated.

Mailed too much? Called too much? Asked too much? No idea how your gift has been used? We need to agree a series of questions that every charity must ask and report on so we can start benchmarking performance across charities. This survey needn't be too expensive and can perhaps be included with a newsletter mailing  or email.

In these surveys we should also give respondents the chance to flag up charities who they feel have broken the Fundraiser’s Promise – a promise that all charities signed up to the FRSB have agreed to uphold.

This would give us an opportunity to see which charities need more 'direction and guidance' when implementing fundraising programmes.

4. Rather than the current range of mostly arbitrary awards, we need to start looking at rewarding great fundraising performance.

Awards should be given for real achievements such as: best five year net growth rate, lowest attrition, best ROI, lowest complaint rate and best implementation of the Fundraiser’s Promise. And when it comes to innovation, any award should be withheld for three years and only handed over when the great new idea is actually proven to work.

I believe that we have all the regulations in place that we need. We just have to start adhering to their spirit rather than the words. We also need a system to help us identify those charities that let the rest of us down. Hopefully these ideas might be useful in achieving those goals.

Many people who couldn't get in to the room asked for a copy of the deck, so you’ll find it below. Any questions, please feel free to add a comment or tweet me at @markyphillips.

What's wrong with fundraising. IOF 2015 presentation from queerideas

 Video 1 - The Tragedy of the Commons

Video 2 - This morning, 1 July, 2015

Video 3 - Old Spice ad

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.

Facebook is the future. No it isn't. Yes it is. No it isn't!

On Monday, I shared some thoughts on social media, with a particular focus on Facebook and Twitter.

My central point was that there are better routes to leverage the power of our social instinct than these two behemoths of the internet.



Beate Sorum, of the digital fundraising consultancy - b.bold - disagreed with me. As you'll see from her blog post, she thinks Facebook can be a great fundraising medium. And just because most charities don't have a Facebook plan, show very little care about what they post, fail to engage with followers and have no recognisable personality, it doesn't mean the channel itself is flawed.

Now, I think Beate is fantastic. If there’s one person you should listen to about digital fundraising it’s Beate. If I know she’s going to speak at a conference, I’ll be in the room, frantically tweeting ever drop of wisdom she shares.

And I think Beate is right on many points in her post. Facebook can be improved if fundraisers use it more effectively.


But that doesn't mean I've changed my mind.

We can do better than Facebook.

I'm not saying we turn our backs on it, but our ambitions shouldn't be restricted by what Facebook (or Twitter) can offer us.

As I say in my original post, I don't have an argument with recruiting donors and volunteers through Facebook advertising. We do both at Bluefrog for different clients. It can also be great for campaigns (as I also said). So no problem there either.

But the fact is, Facebook isn't designed to build engaging relationships with donors. And as such, we are working within an environment that restricts us – no matter how hard we try.

Wouldn't it be great if we could give our donors a place where they felt special?

Where they could be part of stories that unfold over time that show them what they have helped achieve?

Where they could be effectively recognised and rewarded?

Where we could manage cancellations?

Where we could give them a chance to upgrade their regular gifts or give additional donations with a few clicks?

Where we could look at their on site behaviour and construct communication materials that take those actions into account?

Just because we have Facebook, it doesn't mean that we should stop striving for better.

The Forrester report that sparked my original post showed that much of the money and resources expended on Facebook was wasted. It also showed that branded social hubs were better at engaging people. And that has been my experience with social sites created for charities – with one caveat.

And this is where I firmly agree with Beate. Any medium will fail unless we deliver content that is valued and relevant. If we don't provide that, it doesn't matter how great our channel is, it will sink without trace.

If Facebook isn't the future of social marketing, what is?

There was a short but intriguing article in the Ad Nauseum column in Private Eye last week. It suggested that some unnamed ad agencies were trying to bury a Forrester report that demonstrated that both Facebook and Twitter were pretty poor at providing an engaging brand experience.

The report highlighted research that indicated that years of advice to engage with ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ had been “wasting significant financial, technological, and human resources”.

Customised Facebook advertising is relatively useful for recruiting donors and volunteers and we’ve seen how online events like the #icebucketchallenge and #nomakeupselfie have exploded across the globe powered by social media. But when it comes to engagement, I’ve always thought the big two social media tools have been a couple of blunt instruments that simply can’t drive the levels of loyalty that charities are looking for.

So, I took a hefty whack on the credit card and downloaded the report to see what Forrester had to say about social marketing.

In short, their research shows that Facebook and Twitter aren’t the centre of the social universe. The average post reaches about 2% of fans and followers. More worryingly, less than 0.1% of them will actually interact with a post. And if someone wants to keep in touch with a brand, they prefer to do it via an organisation's website rather than Facebook or Twitter.

It backs up what we've found online at Bluefrog. For example, we’ve helped recruit over 17,000 supporters for lendwithcare.org but only 4% have been driven by social media shares.  Compare that to the 15% that signed up after a direct recommendation from a friend and 15% who signed up after being bought a gift voucher and it starts to put the power of Facebook and Twitter into context.

So what of the future for social marketing?

Though Forrester predict that Facebook is likely to become "nothing but a repository for display adverts", they don't think social media is dead. Far from it. They see the future as being based on smaller networks, branded communities and branded social hubs.

It's good advice. Though not all donors want a high level of engagement, a significant percentage do and branded communities are ideal for them. For World Animal Protection's, Animal Protector site we've found that the most engaged supporters will visit 3 or 4 times a week, every week.

Even though updates happen only once every two or three weeks, donors want to find out what other supporters think and do in response to the project updates. And that keeps them coming back. World Animal Protection's content is only part of what donors value. The chance to engage with other likeminded supporters (who are not Facebook friends) offers a sense of community that Facebook or Twitter can't hope to replicate.

Facebook and Twitter are not designed to be vehicles for charities to engage with their supporters. They might help us start a campaign or get a message out, but trying to build a relationship with donors via a system where even a large charity is going to be a tiny cog in a huge wheel is not going to be sustainable. Even if there is now some photographic proof that Likes are finally changing people's lives.

Why do so many fundraisers like asking for such small gifts?

When Mark Astarita recently compared some charities to pound shops, he was right on the button.

Just like the pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap stores found on our high streets, charities have jumped on the discounting bandwagon.

You'd like to inoculate a child? Yes ma'am. That'll be £3 please. Kerching!

It's never been easier - or cheaper - to change the world. See an ad, call or send a text and within seconds you're being told that you've done something amazing. All you have to do is click on a link to the YouTube video to see the proof.

Why pay more?

And that's the point. Many people won't.

According to CAF's 2012 UK Giving report, there's a large number of people who appear to be acutely price sensitive when it comes to giving to charity. Just look at the 41% of donors who give under £10 each month. Millions of people, but they account for only 5% of the sector's voluntary income.

Whether they can't afford to give more or they don't really want to, the £3 offer seems to be aimed firmly at this price sensitive segment of the market.

Ask for £4 or £5 – as a one off or a monthly gift – and you'll see response rates fall dramatically.

And that's a problem. Just like the pound shop that depends on high volume sales to make a profit, the charity that follows a discounting model needs a large number of donors to make the strategy worthwhile.

And the easiest way to achieve this is to embark on a race to the bottom, where the charity with the lowest priced offer wins – at least in the short term.

After recruitment, the donors are called and converted to regular giving or upgraded. But because it was a low value appeal that drove the first gift, a request for more money tends not to generate a particularly positive response. The result is low conversion, low upgrade values and high attrition.

Take mobile giving for example. What do many £3 donors do when we give them a chance to skip or stop their regular gift? They skip and they stop. And they are doing it in ever increasing numbers.

And just as a pound shop budgets for a high percentage of its cheap and cheerful stock to malfunction and be returned, so the charity starts to look at attrition as a number that needs to be factored into a financial model rather than an indication that something is wrong.

High attrition is nature's way of telling you that your approach to fundraising is based on recruiting a large proportion of people that don't care about your cause. And if people don't care, it's very hard to engage them. People who don't care aren't going to read the communications that you send them, either online or offline.

The result is that a significant number of the donors that stick with you are not active supporters, passionately engaged with your work. Instead many of them are simply people who can't be bothered to cancel. After all, it's only a few quid a month.

But why has discounting exploded across the sector? Why do we ask for so little?

First off it's easy. All you need do is reduce the amount you ask for. Anyone can do it. It helps if your £3 will pay for something tangible like a mosquito net, a blanket, or inoculations, but that's not always essential.

Second, it's perhaps a reflection of the economic times. If people haven't got much cash, surely it's better to reduce the amount we ask for?

Perhaps. But when we see figures from that the Equality Trust showing us that income inequality is at a level last seen at the time of the first world war, it makes you wonder why so many charities are focussed on the most price sensitive sector of donors rather than looking at what the increasingly affluent top 10% of the population can afford to give.

A review of charity fundraising advertisements from just after the first world war shows us that the typical value of a prompted gift amount then was 10 shillings (or 50 pence in today's currency). To place that into context, you could buy 20 pints of beer for 10 shillings in 1920.

With the average pint in 2014 costing the best part of £4, that would be like us asking today for £70 to £80.

That's not something you see very often is it? And I don't really understand why.

For all the talk of an economic revival, the numbers show that it's only really the richest people who are benefitting. Currently the wealthiest 1% of the population hold more wealth than the poorest 50%.

Speak to this affluent group about their attitudes to giving and you'll find their hearts aren't made of stone. They have the same desire to help others as the rest of us. But one fact comes shining through. They don't think that the vast majority of fundraising materials produced by charities today are aimed at them.

So not surprisingly they rarely read them and they rarely respond.

One of the key reasons for this is that charities simply don't ask them for enough. £3 is seen to have such a small impact that it doesn't engage wealthy people either emotionally or rationally.

The other reason is far more worrying. And is down to the fact that price sensitive donors give so little and their attrition is so high, that success often depends on reducing costs.

As a result, thank you and upgrade processes are automated and regularly contracted out. That means that much of the human element is lost. Thousands of new donors are acquired who will never receive an individual and personal communication from the organisation they support.

This leaves the charity without any real idea of the full potential of the donors they are recruiting. But what's much worse is these donors have an experience of giving that is likely to leave them thinking that they aren't really valued – or needed. It's a vicious circle. Donors don't give enough to warrant special treatment, but without special treatment, the donors who can afford to give more, simply won't.

So rather than looking at how we recruit the largest number of donors as quickly and cheaply as possible, we should look at balancing our portfolio of supporters by focusing on what the donors who can give the most, actually want. Particularly when you remember that it's just 6% of donors who give 40% of all voluntary income to charity.

This will be a problem for many charities because it is expensive. It will require them to provide detailed information on the nature of their work, it means they will need to be able justify asking for a large sum and, above all, it will mean changing the way they treat donors. The general thank you letter, email or text with a link to a YouTube video isn't enough. Instead charities must re-learn how to communicate like human beings and show the donors that they are actually valued.

Just as there's no skill required to open up a pound shop, there's no skill required in asking people for very small gifts. Anyone can do it because it's doesn't take a great deal of imagination.

What's harder is creating an offer that supporters will pay a premium for. It might not bring in as many donors as discounting, but the long-term value and loyalty of the donors it does attract will far outweigh the quick wins of being just another charity that drops the donor focus in order to join the £3 a month club.

This is a slightly adapted version of an article I wrote for the September 2014 edition of Third Sector magazine.

£1 Shop photograph adapted from an original by Emily Webber from London Shop Fronts.

How soon does the sorry window close?

When a friend or colleague is bereaved, it can be hard to know what to do or say.

The struggle to find the right words can even end up in avoidance; all because you don't want to upset them through saying the wrong thing.

The fact is, grieving people need to be allowed to be upset. They need to be allowed to come to terms with the death of someone they love. They need to be able to remember them in the way that helps the most.

And as a friend, one of the very worst things you can do, is to do nothing at all.

And what works on a personal level, also works for fundraising. Let me illustrate what I mean with a story about what happened to me when I made my first in-memoriam gift to charity.

When my mother died, instead of flowers, I asked for donations to be given to a major UK charity in her memory. After her funeral I sent the charity a four figure sum accompanied by a letter where I explained that I would be more than happy to give an additional gift after I had finished the administration of her estate.

In response, I received a very simple thank you that served to demonstrate that no one had actually read my letter. I never heard another word from them.

I have always wondered why. I couldn't have made it clearer that I would give again. I've sent them the odd gift over the years but It hasn't really made much difference. They don't seem to value me or my mother very much at all. As a result, they are at the bottom of my list, even though I still care about their work.

But there was an upside. This bad experience sparked an interest in in-memoriam giving.

To my mind, the more emotionally engaged in-memoriam donors can be some of the best donors that you'll ever have. They start with a connection to your cause, they have actively searched you out and, when treated well, have a lifetime value that significantly outweighs most other donors.

I couldn't understand why every charity wouldn't invest heavily in them and give them special treatment. So to find out if my experience was a one-off, back in 2012, Bluefrog undertook a mystery shopping exercise where we sent in-memoriam gifts to 67 household name charities. The results were eye-opening....

• Six charities didn't do anything other than bank the cheque.
• Three dropped us into the standard appeal cycle without saying thank you.
• Twenty Nine (44%) sent just a single communication (usually a basic thank you).
• Just four organisations were responsible for 25% of all communications received from all 67 over the following ten months.

It astonished me that my experience seemed to be normal.

So I contacted a few fundraisers to see why this potentially very valuable group of donors simply weren't being acknowledged.

I found that many fundraisers felt uncertain about what they should do after receiving an in-memoriam gift and erred on the side of caution. They didn't want to upset a bereaved relative with further requests for cash.

My own experience made me think that this approach might be a mistake so we spoke to a group of recent in-memoriam donors about how they felt about being asked for additional support.

You might be surprised to hear that every single one of the 130 people we interviewed said that they would be happy to be asked again. 

What concerned them was the timescale. As this chart shows, a few recommended asking six months after the initial gift. A third thought a year would be best with a small number stretching this period to two years.

Most donors, however, couldn't suggest a fixed period. For them, it wasn't when you asked but why.

A communication was acceptable if it was relevant to them or the person they had lost. That's half the reason why so many people suggested waiting a year. They thought just after the anniversary of the death was a meaningful time to get back in touch. Others mentioned birthdays, anniversaries or even Christmas.

Memorial services were also important. Those that had attended a charity service spoke very highly of them. 

So how can we be sure when is the right time to get in contact again? The answer was actually suggested by many donors. 

We should ask them when they might be happy for the charity to get back in touch. This can actually be undertaken within the thank you process. Ideally on the telephone, but also as part of any written communication.

Without exception, all donors said that the in-memoriam gift was important to them. Because of this, they all felt comfortable talking about additional support when the time was right. 

We don't need to guess when the time is right. We simply allow the donors tell us.

The 'sorry window' varies for everyone. And, as Larry David found out, the implications for getting this wrong can be painful...

 You can find out what happened next here.

Why don't all donors care about impact?

A new report on donor attitudes has just been published by Ipsos Mori. Undertaken on behalf of New Philanthropy Capital, the survey looks at issues of trust, general levels of satisfaction, thoughts on CEO salaries and the importance of impact.

It was this final area that caught my eye. As part of the survey, they asked "How much attention, if any, do you pay to evidence that the organisation is having an impact when you give to charity?".

I was surprised to read that only 9% of the respondents said they paid extremely close attention to impact whereas 50% didn't seem to care that much about how charities use their donations at all.

So maybe we should put less effort into feeding back and use the money elsewhere?

I think that would be a mistake. In my experience, when you show donors how their donation makes a difference, levels of income, loyalty and satisfaction all go shooting up. Supporters also regularly mention feedback as being valued in research. So why does this study suggest so few of them care about what their donations will achieve?

If we look at the data tables, it gives us a few clues.

Interest in impact increases with affluence – from 38% of people in socio-economic groups D and E to 56% amongst ABs. It also increases with age – from just 41% for those aged 18-34 growing to 55% for people aged 55 and over.

It appears that if you are rich in both time and money you are more likely to care about impact.

And that's the point. I'd suggest that what we are seeing here is a distinction between those donors who give small, ad hoc gifts and those who give larger, considered ones.

One wealthy donor summed up this phenomenon quite neatly in a Bluefrog research study a few years back when they compared the difference between giving a 'tit bit' gift and a substantial one...

“I would rather give to a sort of project where you can see the path instead of tit bit amounts, like when they buy a Christmas dinner or a vaccine. I do them all, it’s fine, I know it’s irrational but in my mind I prefer to do one big one, because then I can think about it if I want to."

It's an important point to remember. Small gifts of £2 or £3 don't matter that much simply because the amount is so small. As a result, feedback isn't seen to be that important. But when it comes to larger gifts, the reverse is true. That's when you'd like to know that you made the right decision when you decided to give.

Which raises an interesting question. Just 9% of the population undertakes two-thirds of charitable activity in the UK. How are we going to increase the size of this charitable core, if the vast majority of donors who give smaller sums have no real interest in finding out more about the work of the charities that they support?

The 2014 fundraising decision making flow chart

At the heart of any fundraising programme lies a plan.

That plan identifies an audience, details what they will receive, through what communication channels, timings and what actions the recipients will hopefully take.

They can be hefty documents akin to a telephone directory or something a little more accessible. The Children's Society for example, has been able to refine their fundraising strategy to the point where it fits on a business card.

But no matter what size, a plan is essential. And if you are currently looking at your charity's fundraising plan for the next financial year, you might find this flowchart useful. We use a similar one at Bluefrog to help charities break free of the but that's how we've always done it syndrome.

As you'll see, if you have legions of fully committed donors who give to every appeal and have pledged huge legacies you carry on just as you are.

But if your charity's income is flatlining or in decline, if your second gift rate is poor, if your expensive new donors are leaving you, if your direct debit attrition rate is far too high or your legacy pool is shrinking, this flowchart might just help you to make a very difficult decision.

To do something different.

All too often, change (at either a tactical or strategic level) is doing the same thing in a different guise.

After all, a request for a cash gift, a direct debit, an SMS gift or even a legacy is still just a request for a gift.

As a result, many strategic plans are often underpinned by fundamentally very small changes which result in simply asking for a gift in a slightly different way. Perhaps three of the most popular approaches are...

• Asking for smaller gifts
• Asking more often
• Asking people to give to a different area of work (often following a rebrand)

And because the strategic change is so small, it rarely generates much positive impact. As a result, it can be soon forgotten and another round of consultation takes place that will have the much the same result.

So what change will make a difference? What can be done without a major strategic overhaul that can make a real difference to the bottom line?

Here are four suggestions that are worth looking at.

1. Put recruitment and development in the same team

It can seem a sensible division to make. One team focuses on recruitment. Then once the new donor is signed up, they are handed over to the development team who manage the relationship from then on.

The trouble is, if you are judged on how many people you bring through the door and at what cost, you might not be that focused on the long-term potential of your new recruits. The result is that the development team can find themselves struggling with donors who simply aren't interested in any sort of relationship.

All acquisition should be focused on donors that are going to keep on giving. By having recruitment and development as part of a single process, the focus remains very firmly on the long-term.

2. Thank well

One of the simplest ways to improve retention is to look at your thanking programme. Keep your thank you letters fresh and different. Keep updating them and make them relevant to each appeal. And thank in real time too. If you have an email address on file consider thanking donors twice – once via email as soon as the cheque arrives and then by post as soon as your systems allow. And whenever you can, add a handwritten comment. It makes a huge difference to lifetime value.

And don't forget the telephone either. Penelope Burke found that donors who received a thank you call within 24 hours of the receipt of their gift were 39% more likely to give again than those who weren't called.

3. Asking again when you thank

Don't be frightened of offering people an opportunity to give again in thank you letters. It might not be for everyone, but I've seen response rates of up to 26% from a well constructed thank you. This piece on asking again from Derek Glass is worth a read. It can dramatically improve life time value and retention.

4. Don't make giving easy. Make it attractive.

There's a great deal of talk about making giving easy. Of giving people the chance to give without hassle. A very low value ask, a simple click button on a website or a text giving option can all help in driving response. But don't stop there. Rather than build strategies around making giving easy, focus on what will make giving attractive. The question that any great fundraiser needs to answer is  what will encourage a donor to give more?

What happens when Stephen Fry actually does mention you in a tweet?

Sit in any discussion about how a charity can promote a campaign on social media and it won't be long before someone suggests asking Stephen Fry to tweet about it.

Being very kind, intelligent and rather lovely, he is known to tweet on behalf of a wide range of non-profit organisations. And with over 6.5 million followers, he can drive some serious traffic to a website.

So what does happen when Stephen mentions a campaign or a cause in a tweet?

Stephen mentioned wecometogether.org in this tweet on Monday the tenth of February at 5.57pm.

The site went crazy. Within two minutes we'd had over one thousand hits. And three days later that single tweet is still driving traffic.

From the initial spike the number of hits settled down to about sixty a minute which continued until late in to the night. Here's a screen grab that shows the number of hits over the first hour.

We are currently standing at well over 21,000 hits and we can't see the flow stopping.

But what about conversions?

And that's the point of this post. Too many people think that social media is a magical panacea for a fledgling campaign. It's not. It can help, but without a great offer, you are never going to be able to generate significant levels of income.

People will come and have a look and then simply click back to see what else is happening on Twitter.

The conversion rate we've seen is comparable to a good press insert in a good publication.

That's very pleasing. The danger of our approach was that people might just come and have a look at the TV ad and then disappear. That's not the case. People are looking and sharing. But, most importantly, we are generating donations.

Our goal now is to see what worked for this test and what didn't and develop the product from there.
And of course, if you are looking for a St. Valentine's Day present for someone special, you've still got a few hours to click here to get something rather unusual for them.

Sex sells, but can it help raise money?

Friendly advice for some of my more sensitive readers – the following contains adult themes and language.

Last summer, we were sitting on the roof of Bluefrog towers brainstorming ideas for a new digital product for a pitch for the International HIV/AIDS Alliance.

For those who haven't heard of them, The Alliance is a group of non-profit organisations from around the world that have one goal – to bring people together to end AIDS.

As anyone who has ever attended a Bluefrog brainstorm will know, the sessions can be a little irreverent. The rule that no idea is a bad idea is pushed to the extreme and we actively encourage stupid, disconnected and completely off-topic conversation.

As part of this process, we started digging deep into the psyche of those nice left-wing Guardian and Independent readers and looked at the triggers that would get them to do something more than give a glance to an ad before turning the page or scrolling down the screen.

We looked at what needs they might have that an International HIV/AIDS charity could answer. And, as ever, we didn't focus on what the charity could ask them to do. Instead we asked what the charity could do for them?

"Spicing things up things in bedroom." was the first suggestion.

"A sponsored orgasm-a-thon." was the response.

Finally, came the home run. "Let's get them to give a fuck."

With much laughter, the conversation exploded into comparisons of virtual goats, drilling wells, gushing water and planting seeds. Anyone who has ever been a thirteen year old, will be able to have a pretty good guess how things continued for the next half an hour.

It was a frantic thirty minutes. But at the end, we thought that we might have the basis of an idea.

We would create an event where we would ask people to have sex for charity. Not just any old sex. Great sex. Mind-blowing sex. Earth-shattering sex. But most importantly, safe sex.

The working (and final) title was Come Together.

Rather than just put out another welcome pack, we decided to create a very special welcome box. Inside would be everything you need to have a great night –  a tickler, a blindfold, a condom, some lube and most importantly a series of sex games that would be fun and informative, showing you how to use a condom properly.

In return for an online donation, the donor would get the box as a thank you. We'd create something that people would want, we'd spread the safe sex message and we'd raise money for The Alliance's work. The plan was to create one of those win/win situations that people sometimes talk about on the TV.

And that was the concept that a rather amazing group of people at The Alliance chose to develop.

The next question was how should we promote it?

We didn't have much cash for the project. Budgets were tight. So we decided to produce a TV ad. An ad that would only be shown for one night only. An ad that would hopefully generate conversation and interest that would go beyond the reach of a late night TV slot.

So we set out to push the boundaries of what the people at Clearcast would let us get away with.

With the amazing Greg Masuak as director, working alongside the fabulous team at Toast, we put out the casting call for a range of people to represent every sector of society – all races, young and old, male, female and transgender. Everyone was welcome. We set up the shoot in the Dragon's Den studio and developed the first version of the ad.

Then the debate with Clearcast started. Emails started coming in with requests like, "Can you delete the gent in glasses at 40 seconds. He's obviously being penetrated."

At the end of the process we got an ad with clearance for broadcast after 11pm. And following a few conversations with various TV channels, we actually managed to get four to run it. It launches on Channel 4, where you can see it on Friday night at 11.45.

With a little help from the people at UNITY, we've seen a buzz start to grow around the launch. Perhaps the most pleasing was an article featuring the ad on the front of the Independent website that within a few hours had over one thousand shares and the first boxes were being ordered for delivery for Valentines Day.

So will it work?

We think so. We hope so. But we don't know.

That's one of the problems with innovation. When you are doing something without any real precedent you can never be 100% sure.

The success of the campaign depends on people like you. If you share or – more importantly – if you visit wecometogether.org to donate, you'll get a Come Together box for someone special in your life and hopefully have a very pleasant St. Valentine's Day as a result.

Fingers crossed. x