queer ideas

The truth about giving compiled from 250 million lines of data

The More Partnership has just published a great (free) booklet that illustrates some important truths about giving. 

The facts you'll find inside are based on analysing the supporter files of 33 British universities. That's a load of data. In just one year, it adds up to 161,000 donors, 1.1 million gifts, 3.8 million solicitations and £68 million worth of philanthropy.

Importantly, for fundraisers who aren't in the academic sector, many of the patterns they identify directly relate to giving behaviour we see amongst donors to traditional charities - particularly with reference to acquisition and retention. 

We all know the importance of loyalty, but this publication points out what it can be worth.

Take a look at these selections and you'll see just how important higher value, long-term donors are in terms of overall income. I should point out that the term 'regular giving' has a much broader meaning in academic fundraising that covers both repeated cash gifts and direct debits.

We see these same patterns in traditional charity files. When managed well, donor generosity builds over time. The more a donor connects with a charity and the more they enjoy the relationship, the more they are likely to give – as long as they are asked for appropriate amounts.

As individuals, we all go through distinct life stages. First we acquire the material necessities of modern life – a house, furniture, a car and the general stuff that we all accumulate. Then we maintain and sustain what we own - upgrading (or downgrading) as we see necessary. Finally we reach a point, where our children are educated, mortgages are paid and we have enough for our lifestyle. It's at this point that many donors (particularly the wealthier ones) start thinking about spiritual matters such as philanthropy and how they want to be remembered. It's at this point that they first start to give significant sums to charities. 

The key problem with this pattern is that if you don't demonstrate that you value donors when they are younger and have less money, they are unlikely to give larger gifts as they age and become more affluent. 

The great thing about universities, is they have always focused on longer-term relationships which lead to large gifts. 41% of all million pound gifts given in 2014 went to universities. 

So if you want to see what can be achieved by programmes that focus on engagement, download the PDF and compare More's figures to your own.

Online donors have letter boxes too

Here's another couple of charts that Damian O'Broin from Ask Direct and I shared at IOF London on our international mystery shopping exercise.

It gives a few more insights in to how charities are integrating email and postal communications.

One of our most surprising findings was that relatively few of the charities we surveyed put a thank you letter in the post in response to an online gift.

Just 5% of British charities did. American charities came next at a little over 20%. Canadians were better at 40%, whilst Australian charities provided over half of online donors with a 'real' thank you.

And when it came to subsequent appeals, things weren't much better.

As you'll see from this chart (showing results just from the UK), emails were often flying thick and fast – though not in all cases. But what surprised me most was that many charities didn't send out any postal appeals in the six to seven months following receipt of an online gift (purple columns).

A number of people questioned this point in our session, asking whether it was appropriate to mail someone who had chosen to given online. And luckily we included a few recent studies on online giving that surprised a few people and demonstrated, once again, that DM is still alive and kicking.

The first is a piece of US research from last year that found that 14% of online donors gave an online donation in response to a mailing pack, whereas just 6% gave in response to an email.

And when it comes to preference, you'll see below that over a third of those surveyed were happiest using a charity website to give to DM appeals.

TNT found UK donors had similar attitudes in a study they also undertook in 2010. You can read more on this survey here.

I'll ensure that we have the complete presentation of the mystery shopping survey up soon.

The anatomy of a failed campaign

A few weeks ago, I questioned the decision of the D&AD to award a coveted Yellow Pencil to a student team for an idea that they developed for Oxfam.

The D&AD asked me to write a follow up piece that you can read here. Or for those who are a little short on time, you might prefer the Reader's Digest version...

The creative process that ignores the needs of donors is a waste of time and money.

It's why I always find the news that yet another charity has appointed yet another above the line agency to develop a mould breaking campaign so depressing.

The fact is, good fundraising isn't actually broken. Even in these tough economic times it still works very well. So rather than rejecting it for the best guesses of people who have never raised money in their lives, I'd suggest that any charity concerned about income should embrace traditional fundraising techniques tighter than ever.

And to help illustrate what might happen if you decide to do otherwise, I'd like to point you in the direction of a rather remarkable but cautionary tale on SOFII.

It's written by Lucy Gower and features an account of ActionAid's failed 'What a Feeling' campaign given by their ex director of fundraising, Richard Turner.

It's remarkable because for the first time (that I'm aware of), somebody has been brave enough to give an honest account of what can actually happen when a revolutionary new fundraising strategy is implemented.

Lucy explains...

"The idea came from meeting supporters. The team deliberately got a diverse group together to hear them talk about ActionAid. What stood out was the way they spoke about what they gained. This tallied with the anecdotal comments from supporters when meeting fundraisers; as a result of donating, fundraising, or campaigning for ActionAid, supporters would frequently describe their feelings. Therefore it was decided that this would be the basis of the campaign - real supporters sharing their real feelings to encourage other people like them to sign up to help ActionAid..."

It was a complex strategy that used a wide range of traditional and new media. This video helps give a flavour of the approach and the thinking behind it.

And the results?

..."Despite the conviction of Richard and the fundraising team that they were onto something great, the campaign failed. ActionAid didn’t reach the targets for sign ups to new direct debits. They missed them by a mile."

You should read the whole article as Richard has obviously thought long and hard about the reasons for the failure, but I'd particularly like to highlight three key points that we should all remember...

1. Spend your time understanding the problems you actually need to tackle (such as high attrition or poor recruitment) before embarking on broad engagement / awareness campaigns.
2. Don't lose focus on the work that donors want to fund.
3. Test your ideas and only roll out once they have been proven to work.

As Lucy points out, ActionAid were actually on to something with 'What a Feeling'. I strongly believe that the emotional rewards we receive in return for helping others is our sector's 'product'.

But my sneaking suspicion is that donors don't really want to think they are giving for 'selfish' reasons. To my mind, this very thought is likely to reduce the power of the feelings that, as fundraisers, we are trying to generate in the first place.

I also think it is worth including the short-lived TV ad produced by OgilvyOne London that followed the campaign's launch. You can find out what happened after this was run here.

A massive, massive thanks to Richard for being so open about the campaign. As Lucy says...

"I hope that sharing his experience will help us all learn, as well as encourage us to be more open about failure in order that we can ultimately all fundraise more effectively for the causes that we are passionate about."

Update: Richard has posted more thoughts on this campaign on his blog. You can read them here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What makes a good banner ad?

I can't think of any areas of fundraising where simple and engaging propositions don't work – and that includes online display ads.

And here's an example to prove it.

You've probably seen the recent fundraising campaign on Wikipedia, where they have tested a number of different creative ideas.

The current winner is 'Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales'.

As you can see from the outcome of one of the more significant tests in this infographic from Information is Beautiful, It seems to be doing very well against some of the slightly more abstratc approaches:
 
It's a personal and direct ask from a real person – Jimmy Wales, the human face behind Wikipedia. And as you'll see, it feature a picture of Jimmy.

Nothing clever, nothing abstract, but rather relevant to the audience.

It was an approach that won when tested in Portuguese, French, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, German and English.

If you'd like to see more, all the results of the tests are available here. The campaign is ongoing and results are regularly updated. You'll see that maybe they have something to beat the Jimmy ad - though it's early days.

You can also find out what landing page worked best (hint: it's one where all superfluous links have been removed and offers the choice of gift amount and giving by PayPal or Credit card - but you knew that already didn't you?). You'll see it uses a long copy approach and the form is on the right hand side. I'd also consider using an image here as well with a traditional charity appeal.

With thanks again to @daria for the heads up on this on Facts are the most stubborn things under the sun.

What should you do with newly recruited Haiti emergency donors?

There have been a number of posts in the blogosphere offering advice about what charities should do with donors recruited in response to Haitian earthquake appeals.

Traditionally, emergency donors are very hard to retain, often only surfacing during the next high-profile disaster.

So any advice on how to improve conversion rates is useful stuff.

Jeff Brooks and Steven Screen dedicate a whole podcast to fundraising around the Haiti earthquake. You can download this via itunes or by clicking here.

Jonathan Grapsas, recommends making the second ask very quickly. His colleague, Sean Triner, wrote a piece for Fundraising and Philanthropy Australia a few months ago that looks specifically at the issue of converting emergency donors. As well as advocating speed, Sean details a five point disaster conversion plan that is well worth implementing.

He refers to the advice of Leo Orland from Australian fundraising agency, Robejohn. Leo also sees speed as essential, recommending donors are thanked immediately. At the same time they should be promised feedback and told when to expect it. Excellent advice.

But I think it is useful to look at what exactly we should be saying in these communications.

With conversion, content really is king and developing the right strategy shouldn't be left to chance.

I've been doing some research on what strategies were used following the tsunami emergency in 2004 to see if there are any lessons to be learned. I've found a great piece by Tom Pope that looks at a number of US organisations and how they approached the loyalty building process. It's a long article so I'm highlighting the key points of each strategy and the results. You should definitely read it in its entirety here as it contains loads of interesting information. Additional material comes from Fundraising Success magazine.

International Rescue Committee (IRC)

Tsunami strategy

• Focused on the organisation rather than the emergency.
• Rather than create a tsunami based emergency recruitment pack, they used a long-standing control pack that focused on work in Sudan.
• They added an additional tsunami focused insert in the pack.
• New recruits were thanked and welcomed to the IRC.
• Feedback was provided by monthly online and DM communications.

Follow up appeals

• Tsunami donors were thanked for supporting the IRC's tsunami relief work and showed how their money had been used before new work was covered).
  
• Non-tsunami donors received the standard communication without the tsunami focused thanks and feedback.

Results (based on response to one DM appeal based on work in Sierra Leone)

• 8.6% response for the tsunami donors
• 4.6% response for non-tsunami donors

CARE USA

Tsunami strategy

• Focused on CARE's wider mission to fight poverty.
  
• New emergency donors were sent "preference cards" so they could control subsequent communications.
• Welcome materials with the message about CARE's wider mission were also used.
• Feedback was provided after 100 days and again at 6 months.

Follow up appeals

• Communications were focused on "Poverty is the silent tsunami".
• The strategy was to "...gain support for any poverty that makes people susceptible to a crisis".

Results (partial year communications only)

• Previous retention rates for emergency donors stood at 22% (compared to 42% for non-emergency donors).
  
• 8% of tsunami donors had made second gift against an expected rate of 9-10% at the same stage in the appeal cycle.
• Predicted 22% normal emergency retention rate would not be achieved.
  
• Adam Hicks, Vice President of marketing and communications thought their approach had improved retention...

"If we weren't doing those things, the responses would be much less".

Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

Tsunami strategy

• Followup communications told the donor "about the organisation as a whole".

Follow up appeals

• CRS had no online programme, so emergency donors were converted to a DM communication stream.
• Communications were revamped. They included:

1. A reminder for donors telling them how generous they were
2. Reports on how money had been used
3. Thank you calls (using a combination of live operator and taped messages).

Results

• 8% of tsunami donors made a second gift against a 'normal' rate of 32% - 33%.
• Second gifts were high with an average of $150 or more.
• Best responders were originally recruited from the web or through unsolicited postal donations.

American Red Cross

No detailed analysis but..

Steve Denne, Vice President for development operations says online donors were opting out at a far lower rate than in previous emergencies.

"They are staying connected with email communications with us more than in the past".

Direct Relief International (DRI)

No detailed analysis but...

41.000 were recruited at the time of the tsunami. Mainly from TV reports. Donors were given access to the standard communications programme of an online newsletter updated on a bi-weekly basis.

No second appeal results but things look positive. Many corporate donors came back to support work surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Over $2.3 million was received without any marketing support.

Strategy to convert online donors was to bond them to the organisation through...

"...direct mail, online strategies and reporting back quickly to them, an in the same way they reached you...when you ask them for a gift, you have to give a compelling story about why the gift is needed, and you have to recognise their help."

Oxfam Canada

Tsunami strategy

Created a separate monthly giving programme that focused on converting emergency donors by highlighting three emergency issues faced by the organisation – immediate response, reconstruction and emergency preparedness.

Follow up appeals

• One month after giving donors received a feedback postcard.
• After two months donors received an in-depth newsletter focusing on Oxfam's response to the crisis.
• After four months donors received a request for a regular gift...

1. Donors who gave via the web were emailed.
2. Donors who gave via the telephone were called.
3. Donors who gave via the web were called.

Results (conversion to regular gift)

• Emailed web supporters - 0.2%
• Telephone supporters who were called - 7.5%
• Web supporters who were called - 13%

So what does all this mean?

One of the ongoing themes of this blog is the concept of donor needs. By answering them, we can build loyalty and raise more money. 

One incredibly important need is for personal growth - in part, this means to reaffirm a donor's self-image. This can be answered by showing them exactly what they helped achieve. This seems to be what the IRC did.

All things weren't equal for charities or their donors, but the IRC found that more emergency donors responded to their first warm appeal than those who were recruited at other times. With an 85% uplift, that's quite astounding.

Other charities that chose to lead communications by telling new donors about the wider work of the organisation didn't do so well.

That's because donors care more about what THEY have personally done, rather than what a charity is doing.

Donors give through charities. Not to them.

It's far too soon to see how donors who have given to Haiti will convert to regular support, but some early data shows that it doesn't seem it will be any easier this time around.

The American Red Cross has done fantastically with their Haiti text donations. $26 million had been raised by Thursday the 21st of January. But only about 5% of those people gave the Red Cross permission to contact them again.

As for my recommendations? You know your donors better than anyone and will probably have your own programmes and tests results to draw on. But, for what it's worth, this is what I would do.

• Thank donors quickly.
• Ask donors what they want and how they want it.
• Update regularly with a focus on what the donor has done.
• concentrate on the benefit to a small number of individuals rather than recounting statistics about tonnes of aid delivered (there's a great piece on the power of small numbers over big ones here via @jeffbrooks)
• Use the web where possible, but make sure your emails are being opened.
• Use highly personal direct mail communications
• Show the donor you know who they are. Remind them of the value of their gift and what it has done in Haiti.
• In all future appeals, continue to write about what the donor has done rather than what you, as an organisation, have achieved.
• Use the telephone to convert donors to regular giving.
• Be creative in how you engage donors. If people aren't interested in setting up a regular gift for general work, offer them alternatives...

1. Consider setting up an emergency fund. Gifts to this will be used for reconstruction and for the next disaster. Feedback on the impact of the donor's actions will build loyalty. From there, conversion to non-earmarked forms of giving will be easier. (I've worked on programmes like this in the UK and they are effective).
   

2. If you have donors giving via direct debit who give to your emergency appeals, consider asking them if they would be willing to have a gift automatically added to their monthly gift the next time a disaster strikes.

Many donors who have given to Haiti might be making their first significant gift to any charity, if we show them the impact of their action and make the experience rewarding, we will do more than raise more money for one emergency.

We will expand the universe of people who give to charity, increasing the effectiveness of the whole sector.

And that can only be good for everyone.

And finally, this approach isn't just suitable for emergency donors. The same basic strategy can be used to convert all new recruits.

Test results: Recession based copy reduces appeal income

I blogged about the effects of directly talking about the credit crunch in appeal copy in early December. I'm now able to share details about the test. It was undertaken with The Prostate Cancer Charity as part of their Christmas appeal.

We mailed two packs that were virtually identical. We featured the same copy, same projects and made the same asks. The only difference was that the test version spoke directly about the effects of the economic downturn.

Nisha Motwani, Head of Individual Giving at The Prostate Cancer Charity neatly sums up the thinking behind the test:

“There seemed to be a lot of charity sector speculation as to whether people will give less in the current climate, but there wasn’t any hard evidence to support this either way so we decided to carry out a pro-active test to see what would the best way to actually talk to donors during a recession.”

In terms of the results, we found that response rates across the file were broadly the same. Where we noticed a real difference was in the average gift for the higher value segments. 

For the credit crunch version:

• the low-value segment generated an average gift £4 lower than the control
• the main mid-value segment generated an average gift £20 lower than the control. 
• the high-value segment generated an average gift a massive 45% less than the control. 

We had speculated that mentioning the impact of the downturn might encourage donors to give a little more. But this wasn't the case. As Nisha says:

“It would seem that if you remind people of the economic situation, it introduces or reinforces any doubts they might have about their own financial security, so they give less.”

Amber Nathan, Bluefrog's researcher, found the results supported her findings from recent (and on-going) interviews with mid-value donors about giving during this recession. Amber's take on the situation is that:

“The economic situation isn’t always front-of-mind. Not because donors aren’t concerned – but because their coping mechanism is to not think about it – in the same way that we might manage any negative thoughts. It’s only when you ask them to think about it that they express concern, as is reflected in the smaller gifts."

This test was obviously for a healthcare charity. Results may be different for organisations involved in other areas of work.