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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Donor Motivation

January 14, 2011 Leave a comment

As someone who advocates looking after donors, saying thank you and cultivating those who support you, no matter how small the donation, the legacy of several million pounds left to the National Trust of Scotland by an American donor who didn’t know the charity and had never even visited Scotland, isn’t something I should be highlighting.  But you can’t deny, it’s a fascinating story (particularly in the Las Vegas news article I came across which gives a slightly different perspective to the Scottish press).

I’ve really just linked to this as I find it an interesting story – but should caution that these situations arise very rarely and, while not impossible, as it’s not really something you can legislate for, you can’t base your fundraising plan around it and so should just enjoy it if and when it happens.

I also had a vague feeling on reading the article that he was perhaps the anonymous US donor at one of the organisations I used to work for (I won’t say who in case he isn’t).  I wonder if those other organisations who were lucky enough to benefit in donations from him are wishing it was they and not the National Trust for Scotland who received the final mega-gift?

Please enjoy the article and read this, somewhat sad tale of a man who chose to do great things with his money and helped many organisations – but while reading still think about ways to win new donors, look after them well, keep them and perhaps motivate them to give you more.

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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.

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Arise Sir Local Hero…

January 10, 2011 Leave a comment

UK Fundraising’s blog post on this year’s (2011) New Year Honours list highlighted the fact that three quarters of those to have received an honour this year are local heroes.  I don’t know about you, but I’m pleased to hear that.  I suspect though, that the majority of them were offered MBEs or CBEs rather than becoming Dame Such and Such or Sir Blah de Blah – both of which seem to be reserved for sportsmen and women or actors.

Personally, I think more honours should go to those who tirelessly and for no personal gain go out of there way to support their local communities or to raise the profile of a cause close to their hearts.  Year after year, we hear how someone is being awarded for services to sport, theatre or film – which is largely them being awarded for doing their job, isn’t it? 

I don’t want to sound churlish – and I’m not disputing that there are some fine actors and sportsmen and women out there – but presumably, they want to be top of their game anyway, so it’s not been an entirely selfless act to get there.  Not like running the local youth club in a run-down estate or providing support for local elderly people either as a volunteer or as an employee doing a job with very little pay and without much complaint or need for recognition.

So, personally, I say ‘well done local champions’.  Let’s see more of them being honoured in the future.

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Charity at the Checkout

January 3, 2011 5 Comments

I read Paul Vallely’s article in The Independent with interest.  In it, he talks about the coalition government’s latest ‘Big Society’ type initiative to encourage philanthropy – by making it easier for shoppers to add a donation to their purchases through the credit card PIN machine.  And it made me wonder whether I would consider adding a donation to my bill at the end of the usual frantic shopping at Tesco experience.  And I’m a professional fundraiser.  All the, who gets the donation, how much should I give, will I Gift Aid it – is that not expecting a bit too much of shoppers who really just want to get out of there as quickly as possible (preferably with all the children, bags, keys etc. they arrived with)?

And then, of course, there’s the point of view of the charities themselves.  The article made the valid point that PIN machine donations don’t give donors the opportunity to really connect to the charity itself – as those charities benefitting from the donations will have been chosen by the retailer rather than the person making the donation.  It also means, in all likelihood, that the large well-known and already well supported charities will benefit while small, local or less appealing causes will be unlikely to make it onto any list of potential beneficiaries chosen by the likes of Waitrose, Tesco or HMV.

And so, where is the potential for donor engagement; encouraging future possibly larger donations; and increasing the sustainability of fundraising for these organisations.  And how likely is this initiative in helping to fill the gap left by the inevitable government cuts to the sector – both direct and indirect? 

Of course, encouraging philanthropy and making it easier for people to give to charity can only be a good thing – perhaps it might get people thinking about how they can support charities close to their own hearts.  However, the cynic in me suspects that this is yet another PR exercise.  And that, while taken as a whole, the entire level of donations may sound impressive at the end of the first, second or third year of this scheme, it is unlikely to have made that much of a difference to individual charities – and even less likely to have helped those smaller, leaner and often highly effective grassroots charities that our society really needs.

Would you consider adding a donation onto the end of your shop at your local Tesco’s?  Or are you so busy rounding up children, filling up bags and trying to find your car keys that charity is likely to be the last thing on your mind?

PIN philanthropy, fundraising ideas

by Flickr user Mark Hillary

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