queer ideas

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.

Charity ads from the archives

I recently signed up to Pinterest and soon realised that it was a great way to put my archive of charity advertisements online.

It goes back to the beginning of the last century and features ads from Save The Children (UK and USA), Oxfam, The RSPCA, Salvation Army, Scope, ActionAid, The Sierra Club, Christian Aid, NSPCC, The Red Cross and The YMCA (along with those of many other organisations).

Hopefully you'll find it interesting to see how creative approaches have developed over the years. There are some great examples of technique on show (check out the YMCA ad from 1916). Sadly, you'll also see how some organisations lost their way in the 1970s and 80s as 'real' ad agencies started to get involved.

I've uploaded 75 ads so far and I intend to add to the resource over the coming weeks and months.

If you follow me on Pinterest, you'll have the ads delivered to you as and when I get the time for a big uploading session.

You can see them all by clicking on my Pinterest account here.

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

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.

Using mobile to make press ads speak

Interesting use of mobile / QR codes to turn a press ad into a multi-media experience.

 The original inspiration looks like it came from this idea used to spice up a CV.

Does religion make people nicer?

Take any mainstream charity and you'll find that a significant number of people on the supporter base regularly attend a place of worship.

But does that mean religious people are nicer than everyone else?

After reading Deepak Malhorta's study on religious salience, it seems the answer might be sometimes - particularly if that time happens to be a Sunday.

Professor Malhorta undertook a study that looked at the factors that might encourage participants in an online charitable auction to continue bidding.

The experiment was based on sending two different kinds of emails to the participants. The 'charitable' email included the following message...

"We hope you will continue to support this charity by keeping the bidding alive. Every extra dollar you bid in the auction helps us accomplish our very special mission."

A second email, encouraged people to bid again with a 'competitive' message...

"The competition is heating up! If you hope to win, you will have to bid again. Are you up for the challenge?"

The results showed that religious people were more likely than non-religious people to respond to an appeal 'for charity' but only on the day that they attended their place of worship. On other days of the week there was no discernible difference between the two groups.

 

The 'competitive' email was more effective on religious bidders than non-religious bidders, but there was no 'Sunday effect'.

So, in short, it seems attending a religious service primes people to respond to a request for help from a charity. That might help explain why our ads in the Sunday press normally tend to work better than those run during the week.

You can download Professor Malhotra's paper here (PDF).

How many times do you have to ask for help?

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

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

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

The charity was worried.

They ran some more ads to double check the results.

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

Results improved again. More ads were run.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simplify

Hey Whipple, Squeeze this! is one of my favourite books on advertising.

Whether you work for an agency or employ one you should read it. It will point out what you are doing wrong and show you how you can do things better.

It was written by Luke Sullivan, a copywriter with over 30 years experience working for some of the biggest agencies in the US.

It will make you laugh and cringe, particularly when he shares some painful examples of the stupid people he's had to work with (watch out for Mr. Froggy).

He doesn't talk much about charity advertising, but so much of what he says can be used to develop great fundraising materials.

Today on Adland I found a film of Luke presenting his thoughts on simplicity in advertising to a group of students. It runs for over an hour but should be considered required viewing for anyone whose job involves communicating with donors and working with agencies.

Luke Sullivan from Mediastash.tv on Vimeo.

Another lesson from history

I've just come across another ad that shows us how to do it.

Produced by Dr. Barnardo's Homes (or simply Barnardo's as they are now) in 1931, it has a huge amount that today's fundraisers could learn from.

It shows a single child who was "once destitute". 

The picture of a healthy looking boy is great. It might be better if there was more direct eye contact, but it – along with the claim that "Barnardo's are making a man of him!" – powerfully demonstrates success. The emotion in the face overcomes the need to show graphic poverty.

The image is supported by three simple statistics:

108,500 children admitted – showing experience and expertise.

8,000 children being supported – showing need.

5 come in daily – If the preceding numbers could induce feelings of helplessness, this helps overcome them by presenting a number of children that can be comprehended and helped.

Finally, a great call to action:

10/- will feed one child for ten days.

I'd have used a coupon, but in 1931 those donations probably arrived accompanied by a carefully written letter with contact details included.

Even the instructions for the cheque lends to the power of the appeal. It needs to be written to "Dr. Barnardo's Homes Food Fund". There is the basis of a product in that name alone. I'd love to know how it was followed up. I wish some of these old fundraisers wrote their autobiographies. They would make fascinating reading.

The ad is beautifully focussed. It benefits enormously by not being cluttered with descriptions of wider work, mandatory copy statements or disclaimers. It is however powerfully branded.

If you are interested in seeing other examples of great fundraising ideas from history you could have a look here or here or, even better, take a trip to sofii.org. You'll find loads of amazing ideas. if you are a fundraiser it really is required reading. 

Note – 10/- or 50 pence was a huge amount of money in 1931 - it was the equivalent to a widow's pension or almost two days pay for an agricultural worker.

Forget toxic assets. It's toxic donors that we need to worry about

How can some donors be toxic? Aren't they all the same?

 

Sadly, the answer is no.

Just look at attrition rates of regular givers. Some of the most recently adopted recruitment techniques have very high levels of attrition – face to face, TV and telephone recruited questionnaire donors can all demonstrate a toe-curling number of cancellations. 

Whereas donors recruited by routes such as press (and increasingly a number of online routes) can be very loyal.

If we look at how people make the decision to give, it is easy to see why.

Traditionally, a giving decision depends on knowledge prompting action – the bulk of thoughts and feelings happen before we put our hands in our pocket.

I've had direct experience of what happens when we removing this thinking time from the giving process...

Years ago I worked at a charity where press was the main form of recruitment. The organisation had a very long running press campaign that was stopped for a period of about six months. When the ads started running again they didn't work – and I'm talking about proven ads in proven titles. 

There was little alternative to keep running the ads as many had been booked well in advance. 

And what happened was that the ads – over time – started working again. 

The ads had a slow burn impact on the readers. They saw the need, thought about it, took in information from third party sources and (after what was a surprisingly specific number of opportunities to see) finally made the decision to give. As a result, they were very loyal.

The newer acquisition routes, however, compress the time for consideration into a few minutes. This means that emotion is the primary driver of action and the thinking time happens after giving.  

   

If we choose to use techniques that compress thinking time to fit the length of a TV ad or a conversation on a street corner we need to take into account the psychological position that we place the person who is giving. 

After signing up, they are wondering if they have done the right thing. They don't know if their money or they will be appreciated.

As a result, we can't simply drop them into standard donor communication programme. These aren't designed to engage people struggling with a level of doubt.

If we do, we are largely dependent on what Professor Adrian Sargeant describes as passive commitment – a term that refers to the disempowering fact that we are left simply hoping that donors can't be bothered to cancel.

Unfortunately many can be bothered – particularly at times of financial stress – and we are left with growing attrition rates as a direct result. 

So what do we do?

Doing nothing isn't an option. Attrition rates are already too high.

One route is to enter into PI deals with media owners or demand ever larger guarantees from the face to face companies.

The success of this strategy depends on increasing the chance of finding those people who are happy to passively commit. But with tightening belts, this number is dwindling.

We need to recognise that there are a large number of people who will give if we start putting some effort into the relationship. We must actively take their needs into account – otherwise they are simply going to continue to ignore our communications until we get fed up and leave them alone. 

In doing so they'll become toxic, representing a cost rather than an asset. What's worse is that their memory of the charity could be tainted by their experience. Something – just like DDT – that could last in the system for years.

Donors like these are hassle. It's not their fault. Nor is it the fault of the recruitment channel. They are great people. They just need to be understood.

If you aren't willing to take into account the psychological position of the donor when they are recruited you are restricting your acquisition options and should avoid some of the most emotionally powerful recruitment vehicles. 

Otherwise, you might end up costing your charity money. 

But if you are willing to meet a new donor where they are when they first join. If you are willing to respond to their needs. If you are willing to put the time into developing relevant communications. And if you are willing to accept that recruitment starts at the point someone signs a direct debit form, then you've got the chance to achieve some amazing things – no matter what the economic situation we are in.