Stop talking. Start doing.

I'm loving the new Stonewall campaign.

It's all about taking an action. Any action. 

And I'm all for that.

Stop talking about stuff.

Start doing stuff.

Not everyone can take to the streets.

But everyone can do something to make a stand for the things they believe in.

We're going to see more campaigns like this.

More campaigns where the first action is a small action taken online.

More campaigns with the objective of growing the crowd.

Because as someone much smarter than me said...

"You can't crowdfund without a crowd".

Seems simple right.

So, what are you waiting for?

Permission!?

Maybe it's time to stop talking about how you're going to change fundraising. And start doing.

Asking the right questions...

The theme of this year's IFC conference is ‘Asking the Right Questions’.

As someone who spends most of his time working with UK charities I don’t think there has ever been a better time to pause, breathe and think about the things we can do to drive real change in the way we inspire and move the public to take action for the causes we have the privilege to represent.

For a very long time fundraisers in the UK have been in optimisation mode. Monthly giving by Direct Debit was our goal and all roads have led to the optimisation of the channels and tactics that have delivered monthly givers at scale and for as little outlay as possible.

But now is the time to change. This doesn’t mean that monthly giving isn’t important. But we do need to diversify the methods by which we recruit and retain donors. And we need to offer donors more choice in how they support us than a low value monthly gift.

A major part of my day finds me thinking up how we do this, specifically how we use digital techniques to do this. 

Coming up with ideas is the relatively easy bit: we all exist in a digital world and can all be inspired by the emergence of new technologies to help us come up with new methods to deliver better advocacy and fundraising programmes.

But there is a problem, the problem is that there is so much happening in technology and digital. There’s so much going on that we need a framework or method to make sure we make the right decisions on where to invest our energy and budgets.

So we should focus our decisions on which ideas to develop based on the answers to questions in three key areas:

Technology. What does technology enable?

Does the technology exist to do the thing we want to do? It’s possible to develop anything if you have the time and money. But building from the ground up is expensive and fraught with danger. Before we build anything we need to be sure that there aren’t already platforms or products in existence which we can fuse together to deliver our idea. I honestly believe that the organisations that invest time and resources here will be at the forefront of redefining the fundraising model.

Behaviour. What are people actually doing?

This is the biggie. An idea that is built around a fancy piece of technology that doesn’t have mass appeal or mass adoption won’t drive mass response. It is that simple. And a piece of technology that requires people to do something that sits outside of their existing behaviours has to deliver real value to us and meet an identified audience need if we are to consider it. There are too many ‘cool’ ideas that end up being launched and then die quietly. To get traction, our ideas have to born out of and be built upon existing behaviour.

And while we are here. Not very many people want another login to another closed platform. We all have too many passwords to remember and the only people who will bother are your most engaged. Strive to personalise the experience of people supporting you, but don’t hide it away.

Impact. What will deliver the biggest impact?

I worry this question doesn’t get asked enough. Will this idea deliver impact at the level we want or need? And for clarity I mean impact as defined by you, so that’s money, actions, likes, shares, whatever it is you know you need to do. Will your idea deliver it?

So, by all means develop your Virtual Reality fused with Android Pay idea. But don’t be surprised if those who don’t use Android Pay don’t get involved.

So ask the right questions!

It really is about asking the right questions about the areas that have the biggest potential to transform our future success. If you have an idea that utilises existing technology, is based on what your target audience are already doing and can deliver impact you need you’ve hit the sweet spot - it’s the idea to pursue.

Originally posted on the 101Fundraising blog.

If you keep on doing the same things, the same things will keep on happening...

Cancer Research UK 60 second ad from Digital Team on Vimeo.

CRUK are smart.

They're big and very successful.

But they weren't always big.

They got big because they worked hard at being successful.

Their latest campaign shows that they are getting ready for the new world of fundraising. Whatever that means...

Anthony explains it better in his own words.

When we sat out to do this we wanted not just another ad campaign but a communications platform.

Lots of the work we do is direct marketing – we want people to do something directly in response whether that is donating, volunteering or presenting at the doctors earlier.

To that point, we had a change of strategy from working marketing through brand and direct response separately to being much more ‘brand response’ – so expecting that all our activity will generate a direct response and brand impact as well. Bringing those together.

Full article here.

Innovation. Really?

Innovation really is the word of the moment.

Yet some of the biggest, most successful and most memorable fundraising moments of the past few months weren’t planned or created. They didn’t originate from an innovation process or team. It wasn’t someone like me.

I’m thinking #nomakeupselfie and #icebucket challenge as two really big examples, but there are lots of others.  When these moments occur it’s because the act of getting involved captures the public’s imagination, participation is simple and there is an element of sharing and of being challenged to take part by a friend.

Let me be very clear, I’m not anti innovation by any stretch of the imagination. So let’s not go there…

I totally appreciate that innovation means we need to continually improve what we’re doing. Small improvements and big steps forward, innovation is about pushing things on and getting better and better at raising the money. We can’t keep still or we will fail. Someone awesome once told me (over and over again) “if you keep on doing the same things, the same things will keep on happening”…

But I’m convinced that as a sector we’re missing a trick.

Maybe you don’t need an innovation team?

Maybe you need a rapid response team. Or at least a single person in your organisation who is responsible for spotting opportunities and ensuring that your organisation has the relationships, infrastructure and processes in place to react quickly and to follow up with skill.

Maybe we should all be focused on that?

Stick with it... a new take on charity advertising...

Worth bearing with the slow start and sales pitch. An interesting combination of ad space and response mechanism.

Red Cross blood trade...

Ages ago I posted a student project for Amnesty thinking it was an actual campaign.

Here's another one, but this time I realise it's a concept rather than a real life campaign. It's an idea to increase blood donations to the Red Cross. It's made by a group of students in Brasil.

We all want our cause to be relevant to young people. But we can't just broadcast and expect people to tune in. We need to think long and hard about where we put our messages and think even harder about what we can give in exchange for peoples attention.

Which is why I like this one so much. It's simple. It makes the point. It will get a response.

I found it on the brilliant Adverblog, a blog well worth looking at.

A charity collecting box for the Facebook generation

I found this brilliant reinvention of the charity collecting box on one of Beate Sorum's Pinterest boards.

My favourite feature is the digital camera that takes a picture of the donor to give a personalised thank you.

But the whole concept is pretty amazing - a really innovative update on an old fundraising technique.

You can read more about it here and here. 

And I've just noticed Mark has blogged about it as well.

Street Theatre

Tim was telling us about this today. I think it's an absolutely incredible campaign.



There is a fierce debate raging in the UK about face to face fundraising. The public apparently hate it, charities are quite rightly spending a lot of time defending it. Campaigns like this should inspire us to bring innovation to our approach to street fundraising.

If you like this you will love this.

WaterForward

Charity: water seem to have come up with a brilliant idea. A great way to harness the power of the social networks of their supporters.


How WaterForward works. from charity: water on Vimeo.


I really hope that WaterForward works for them.