Thank You, Thank You!

January 31, 2011 Leave a comment

Two little words that are probably the most important in the whole arsenal of tools, techniques and tips available to fundraisers.  If anyone gives you support – no matter how small – say thank you.  Don’t leave it months until you finally mail out a response to their gift, don’t add them to a mailing list for a future event as a thank you.  Get the gift, add their details to your database and send out a thank you letter as soon as possible.

Of course, you may not have the resources to write tailored, individual thank you letters to every donor you have – particularly if you have a large number – but you should at least endeavour to make it look like it’s a tailored response.  Use their name, spell it properly, get their address right, make sure you know how much they gave and to what.  Don’t write ‘Dear Friend’/’Dear Supporter’, don’t ask them for another gift in their thank you letter, don’t leave it too long to send it.

SOFII (Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration) runs a thank you letter clinic which is well worth a look if you need some ideas – and you can even submit your own letters to receive comments back and help you make sure you are thanking people in the best way possible.  It is, after all, the way that you will encourage people to continue to support you and perhaps give more – and it’s always easier to raise further gifts from existing or previous donors than it is to win a new donor in the first place.

Thank you, by the way, for reading this post!

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Successful Fundraising

January 28, 2011 Leave a comment

In amongst all the doom and gloom predictions about fundraising – and in particular, fundraising for arts organisations suffering thanks to government cuts and the recession – comes the positively uplifting tale of the Staffordshire Hoard, which featured on SOFII’s blog today.

It’s a shining example of what can be achieved in an emergency fundraising appeal which provides a call to action that captures the public imagination and encourages them to support a cause.  Arts fundraising is not known for its emergency appeals so it is good to learn about successes such as these, which not only saved an artwork for Staffordshire by raising £500,000 from philanthropic sources but actually achieved £600,000+ ahead of schedule.

I hope, however, that emergency fundraising doesn’t become the norm – particularly in the new era of austere cuts.  While we can learn a huge amount from this successful campaign, planning and relationship building are preferable ways to raise income – both ongoing funding and for larger campaigns – rather than sourcing funding to tight deadlines in an ’emergency’ style operation.

freelance fundraiser

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Crowdfunding – the Power of Many

January 27, 2011 4 Comments

I’ve blogged before about social media and fundraising – in particular looking at crowdfunding to support charities.  So I was interested to read in Charlotte Higgins Culture blog on the Guardian online about a new website that launched this week – WeDidThis– which aims to enable arts organisations to fundraise for projects with donors receiving a reward for every successful campaign and a refund if the campaign doesn’t meet its target.  How’s that for incentivising the fundraising team to reach their target? 

I think it’s a great idea – particularly for smaller, non-venue based organisations where traditional friends schemes are often unworkable or don’t necessarily ‘fit’ with their brand.  This type of project based fundraising helps donors to connect directly with the work an organisation is doing while also connecting with them possibly in a way that they are used to. 

Crowdfunding was born in the US (what fundraising technique wasn’t – I hear you ask) and sites such as WeFund and the US based Kickstarter have adopted this approach to encourage large numbers of people to donate small amounts to particular projects and campaigns. 

With an increasing emphasis on fundraising – particularly in light of recent and future cuts in statutory income – this provides another way to engage with donors and build donations in a low resource intensive and cost effective way.

Arts organisations are increasingly using social media to communicate with their audiences and websites that allow a similar approach to fundraising work well alongside this.

It will be interesting to see how this develops and who capitalises on it successfully – but I’m sure that it will affect the way organisations fundraise in the future and, in particular, engage with individual donors.

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Flexible Working

January 25, 2011 Leave a comment

Not one to blow my own trumpet but sometimes you have to – particularly if you want to win work – there’s a feature about me and how I got started as a freelance fundraiser on Family Friendly Working today (25th January).

Starting out in August 2008, there were two main motivations behind my decision – one was entirely personal and driven by my family circumstances and the desire to stop the long commute and make a few more events in the lives of my children.  The second motivation was that I wanted to use the skills and experience I’d gained over years fundraising for a range of organisations to work with smaller charities – particularly those who are either keen to start fundraising; want to make their fundraising more effective; or are trying to refocus or build their fundraising programme.

It’s been an interesting couple of years – smack bang in the middle of a recession has made it a bit nerve wracking to say the least – but I wouldn’t change my decision or go back to the day job.  I’ve met fascinating people; worked on projects as diverse as employability initiatives to children’s arts organisations; photography galleries to tourist attractions; and I’ve learned a huge amount along the way.

In fact, if you’re considering going freelance or setting up your own consultancy, and you love a challenge and meeting new people – go for it!

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Can the UK mimic US fundraising?

January 24, 2011 Leave a comment

A former colleague of mine tweeted about this Civil Society article last week where the chair of the Philanthropy Review called for the UK to mimic US charitable giving.

For those of you who don’t know, the US are a very charitable culture with a long established reputation of the rich giving vast sums of money to support everything from the arts to universities – and everything in between.  And of course, the reasons the UK is keen to promote and adopt the model is the dire situation we find our economy in.  But, first of all, the US have a tax system that is very nice to donors where there are substantial benefits to be had from giving money to charity.  The UK doesn’t and, in the current austere climate, how likely is it that the government will forgoe some of the tax they take from people?

And secondly, surely it’s all to do with culture?  The culture in the UK is completely different to the US.  We don’t have a long established reputation for supporting charities through donations – we have tended to provide (or at least consider that we provide) our support through the tax system with the government taxing our income to pay for universities, schools, arts organisations and the like.  Of course, with the huge deficit, the tax system is finding it can’t ‘do it all’. 

It’s clear that something has to give but I’m not sure that – even if we were to adopt the US model – it would happen quickly enough to support our already strapped for cash charitable sector.  So the big question is, who is going to support it in the meantime?  Or are we just going to watch good charities go to the wall with the government blaming us for not being more charitable and us blaming the government for continuing to spend on unpopular areas while cutting others?  One thing’s for sure, I don’t think the answer to the question is going to be painless.

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Does Social Media Work?

January 21, 2011 1 Comment

Much has been written about the use of social media in fundraising – as well as in life in general.  After all, there are probably very few people who own a computer that don’t tweet or post on Facebook – or both!  But I’m interested to know how many charities proactively use social media to fundraise – and if they do, how successful is it?

I came across a nifty little piece of software the other day (www.fundrazr.com) that makes fundraising – and encouraging donations from your ‘friends’ – a straightforward process.  Now this isn’t a review of the software – I will state now that I’ve never used it – but it seemed to me that on reading the information it was not only a good way for individuals to raise money for charities close to them – say if they were running a marathon and seeking sponsorship – but it also might give small arts organisations and charities a good way of raising small gifts from a large number of people.

Crowdfunding is another way to achieve similar results – raising many small gifts – and there is no doubting the power of social media when it comes to making a campaign go viral.  I’ve read lots about how social media can be used to fundraise and how effective it is in the US – but I haven’t seen many examples of it being used in the UK.  Or maybe I just haven’t been looking hard enough!

Personally, I think social media is a great way to achieve results and get people commenting and engaged with your organisation.  And I am particularly interested to find out whether, in these cash strapped times, as organisations develop new, creative ways to reach potential donors, whether they have used social media to achieve this successfully?

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How my blog did in it’s first 2 months – hmmm, not too bad but room for improvement!

January 20, 2011 Leave a comment

Well, apparently, these are my blog statistics for last year from WordPress.  They all sound very upbeat but I’m sure I could do better in 2011.  However, credit where credit is due.  I did only get the website and blog up and running in October from a background of no experience whatsoever in writing a blog or a website – so I am going to be quietly proud.  And now I’m going to go off and do some work!

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,000 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 3 times

In 2010, there were 39 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 53 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 4mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was October 6th with 65 views. The most popular post that day was Home.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were WordPress Dashboard, twitter.com, networkedblogs.com, facebook.com, and winonline.ning.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for activate fundraising, fundraising campaign, freelance fundraiser scotland, activate fundraising.com, and writing a capital campaign fundraising plan.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Home September 2010

2

About September 2010

3

Contact September 2010
1 comment

4

Services September 2010
1 comment

5

Testimonials September 2010

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Want to Raise More Money?

January 12, 2011 Leave a comment

OK, I’m a bit late here – mainly because the schools in our area didn’t go back until 11th which meant a spot of childcare was required – but I wondered what New Year resolutions you had set for 2011.

Personally, I want to run another 10K (as my training has gone a bit off track recently) and I’d like to spend more time with the children – over and above doing homework and taking them to and from school, that is.  On a business level, I’m working with a number of new clients already and am looking forward to developing these relationships over the next 12 months.  I’ve also been developing new services for clients and I’m looking forward to launching these in the next few weeks – watch this space!

But what about your organisation?  Have you thought about what your New Year resolutions are going to be in terms of fundraising?  Perhaps you want to raise more income or maybe diversify your income sources to help spread the risk across a number of different areas?

Now is an excellent time to look at how your organisation has been performing in terms of making approaches, signing up donors and, perhaps most importantly, looking after them.  Although I do recommend that organisations look at these areas regularly, there’s nothing like a new year (and a new decade in this case) to provide some focus.

Have a look at our tip sheets to help, starting with our Top 10 Fundraising Tips before checking out our research and project development recommendations to really help you get your fundraising on track.  And of course, if you’d like us to take a look at your fundraising, please get in touch for a more indepth chat about how you can raise more money in the future and put your organisation on a better footing in 2011.

fundraising, freelance fundraiser, fundraising consultancy

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Businessmums Blog

November 22, 2010 Leave a comment

As someone new to the world of blogging, tweeting and social media in general, I recently took part in a blog carnival.  The idea is (I think) that one person hosts the carnival on their blog while others submit links to posts on their blogs that are relevant to the overall subject.  I took part in the Business Mums Blog Carnival on 15th November and, despite not really knowing what was going on, I really enjoyed it. 

It was a good opportunity for me to think about what a different audience might be interested in reading about and it was fascinating to read about the experiences of those taking part – from going freelance in the first place, why they work for themselves, what they enjoy, and how there isn’t any time to shave your legs!

I’d definitely take part again and would recommend others new to the world of blogging to roll up their sleeves and get writing.  You never know who might read your article and, more importantly, what you might find out from reading new posts that you don’t already follow.  I’ve signed up to host the carnival taking place next May (which I know from experience seems like a long way in the future but will be here before we know it!).

So, why not put the kettle on when you get a spare five minutes and read through this month’s Business Mums Blog Carnival.  Or, put blog carnival into the search engine and see if there are any that you could take part in that might be relevant to your business.

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The Kitchen Table Entrepreneur

November 8, 2010 Leave a comment

I’ve just realised that I am officially (and literally) a kitchen table entrepreneur – mainly because, after working for a few months in the home office, I began to slowly migrate to the kitchen one book at a time.  First of all, I’d use the kitchen table when I needed more space, using it to spread out books when I was writing or review reports, proposals and strategy documents I’d prepared by laying them out across the table, red pen at the ready. 

Before I knew it, my laptop, books, phone and stationery had all set up permanent residence at one end of the table.  My takeover was complete when I bought a shelving unit for the kitchen which has storage for all my work things. 

However, fed up with shuffling things away at the end of every working day, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and ordered a fold-away desk from IKEA that will fit into the kitchen-diner so my laptop can stay there for good. 

I’m still not sure that I will completely manage to wrestle myself away from the large, solid, kitchen table though.  We’ve become rather attached over the past two years.  It’s large enough to spread out all of my work things and has a view of the garden – which is perfect when I need space to think. 

Perhaps the new desk can wait a bit longer…

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