queer ideas

The case against the case for support

On the face of it, the case for support should be the key organisational tool for fundraisers, but having seen a fair number over my working life, I'd question how many are actually fit for purpose.

Tim Seiler, Director of the Fund Raising School at Indiana University and author of Developing Your Case for Support has provided my preferred definition of what we should expect from a case for support...

"The case statement focuses on or highlights factors that are critical in arguing for gift support and is typically tailored to reflect the needs and interests of the supporter being addressed."

Which leaves me wondering why do so many charities fail to take into account the reasons why donors give when preparing their own particular case? And instead end up creating an internally focused document that defines what the organisation does and why.

To me, that's not a case for support. It's the basis of a strategic plan. Not something that too many donors are interested in. Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang describe this situation rather well in Fundraising Principles and Practice...

"Too often case expressions are written from the perspective of the organisation, containing jargon and reasons that make perfect sense to those working inside the organisation but that have little relevance for donors or others viewing the organisation from the outsider's perspective."

As a result of this internal focus, the case for support will often cover a huge raft of information, including need, core beliefs, vision, the role of the charity, the 'unique selling point', the personality, the key services and – if you are lucky – even a little on the role of the donor.

Try translating that into an effective fundraising offer whilst you're under the watchful eyes of your organisational brand police and you're in for some fun.

I don't understand why it has to be so complicated. If we look at some of the key elements and ask ourselves what they offer donors, I'm not sure if we'd come up with much of an answer.

Even need isn't that important.

Alex Spanos, is a U.S. Billionaire who each year gives millions to a whole range of different causes. When he was interviewed about how he chooses what to support, he placed need firmly into context.

"I never give because I think there is a need. There are lots of needs. I give because its a programme I'm interested in and I think I can make a real difference."

And he's right. Even when we feature life or death stories our DM recruitment response rates remain pitifully low.

I'm not saying we can forget need. Far from it. It is essential. But there is so much need, it's simply not a point of real differentiation.

Moving on to the vision. This obviously can be inspirational when handled well, but when given too little thought, it can also get in the way.

I remember a number of years ago, being presented with a new strategic direction for a charity. There was a new case for support and we were charged with making it work for fundraising.

As part of the process, we visited a number of projects to gather information to use in appeals. At each project, we asked to see examples of the new approach in action and every single person we met said the same thing, "We haven't started that work yet."

It was Henry Ford who said that "you can't build a reputation on what you're going to do." But we still had to get appeals out and I ended up producing packs that were written for two audiences – the comms team and the donor. I doubt either of them was really happy with what they received.

And when it comes to the old favourite of the 'unique selling point' (USP), charities often seem to focus on an attribute that's unique rather than one that will help to sell the cause. Just because a charity can identify one aspect of its work that other similar organisations aren't promoting, it doesn't mean it's a good idea to adopt it as a key strategic platform.

A USP only matters if it matters to the donor.

So what should a charity do when building a case for support for fundraising from individuals?

To start off, I'd recommend that any team working on this particular problem should write Tim Seiler's definition on the whiteboard and refer to it constantly throughout the process. I'd then suggest that three key areas are worth concentrating on.

1. What can you offer donors that other charities don't, can't or won't?

This obviously covers far more than the opportunity to tackle a need. We know that donors value some elements of their relationship with a charity above others. This should be our starting point and might include...

• The opportunity to see how their money has made a difference.
• A means to demonstrate to others what they believe in or are part of.
• The chance to fund a specific area of work.
• Direct access to those helped.
• Invites to social events.
• Control over the relationship and communications received.

This post is also worth a read.

2. How can you make your appeal as emotionally rewarding as possible?

This might require featuring a specific areas of work or certain beneficiaries – which when looking at any charity working with people, will normally be children. Unfortunately any other group rarely offers the emotional rewards of helping a child.

I'm not saying that it isn't impossible to build an effective case for support that focuses on adults. It's just very hard work. When Bluefrog built lendwithcare.com for CARE International as a means for people to directly fund entrepreneurs in developing countries it was the result of almost two years of extensive research and planning. The result is an inexpensive means to recruit donors with over 50% of all lenders donating to CARE as well. We also found ourselves on the receiving end of some significant corporate support.

We were rewarded by fundamentally changing the offer in response to what donors actually wanted from a charity.

3. How can you allow your donors to be part of the narrative?

You obviously want to build a relationship with donors that brings them closer to your charity. This has two key benefits. First it will help you raise more money and second, it might encourage your donors to want to learn more about your charity (which, funnily enough, is what your comms team actually wants).

So rather than focus on the macro-story of your organisation, try articulating your work through a series of micro-stories that people can become part of.

By identifying a small number of beneficiaries or staff who agree to help you demonstrate to donors what their money is doing you'll build a group that have a real stake in fundraising. Your focus will mean that the information you gather will be of a higher quality and the subsequent impact on the donors far greater.

Couple this with offering donors the chance to do a little more, such as sending beneficiaries greetings cards (as in the case of child sponsorship) and you'll find that loyalty and response rates significantly improve.

Which, at the end of the day, is what any good fundraising programme should have as its goal. And if your case for support isn't helping you achieve this perhaps it's time to have a look at the case for writing a new one.

When to choose choice

Choice is becoming a buzzword in fundraising. But just how important is it?

Over the last few years, organisations like Kiva, DonorsChoose and CRUK (with MyProjects) have done rather well by offering people a chance to decide how their donations are used. Kiva, which launched in 2005, has generated over $200 million for people working their way out of poverty. DonorsChoose, which is only two years older, has generated over $77 million for schools in need of teaching materials. And CRUK has over 400 individual fund raising pages and 23 project pages which have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But is choice the key factor that lies behind this level of fundraising success?

There are a number of charities that have built websites around the offer of choice who haven't been quite so successful.

Take FORGE for instance. I wrote a piece about this charity back in 2008 on how they came unstuck when they focused on offering online donor choice as a means to raise funds.

See The Difference, who do some great social networking activity to promote their site, also seem to be struggling (see this post for more thoughts on their approach to fundraising). If you look at their most funded projects on their website, few have generated more than a thousand pounds.

And My Action For Children which generated a massive amount of hits from press advertising and celebrity tweets seems to have converted just a tiny percentage to donors. Sign-ups just one month later have dwindled to a trickle.

I believe the different levels of success seen by the two sets of examples is down to something other than choice.

Kiva is fundamentally different. It asks people to lend - not give. And though a supporting donation is suggested (to fund the work of the KIva organisation) this is discretionary. In effect, you are not giving to charity as you can get your money back. As we've seen in the UK with Lend With Care, this is an offer that people find different and attractive. Add feedback on the impact of your loan and fantastic celebrity and corporate support (most notably that offered by YouTube) and you have a financial success on your hands.

DonorsChoose has also benefitted from celebrity support. But at its heart it offers something very special – great feedback. Though they will accept any size of gift, DonorsChoose prompts donors to give $100 by promising them a feedback pack from the school they help. This pack contains a letter from a teacher along with drawings, thank you notes and photographs from the children who've benefitted from the donor's gift. DonorsChoose encourage schools to get really creative with these packs and see them as so important that if a school fails to provide them to donors they can be excluded from the site. The other stroke of genius of the DonorsChoose model is that they also offer a thank you pack to everyone who gives a closing gift. So if a project has just a few dollars needed to hit target, the donor who makes up the shortfall - even if it really is just ten or twenty dollars – gets a thank you pack as well.

Take a look at CRUK's MyProjects and you see two main types of donation – gifts in memory and gifts in response to personal fundraising pages. In this respect it is not that dissimilar to JustGiving. The most successful of the projects on MyProjects is the Santander staff fundraiser for mobile cancer awareness units. Santander staff have been encouraged to raise money for CRUK with the promise that if they hit a certain target they will be eligible for a trip to Brazil to help renovate a school. MyProjects has simply functioned as an online means for them to run personal fundraising activities (see what I mean about it being just like JustGiving?).

If choice was that important to donors, thousands of tiny niche charities would be doing much better. If someone wanted to offer support for disabled children in London for instance, all they need to do is type those words into Google and they'd be presented with a long list of organisations that would love a donation. And more to the point, they would probably all offer a more rewarding and personal experience of giving than can be had when you donate to the national charities you'd find bidding on those search terms through AdWords.

And here's another example of why I think that choice is only a small part of the route to better fundraising.

I started out my fundraising career at ActionAid (about twenty years ago) where I worked on a product called ProjectAid.

ActionAid raised most of its income through child sponsorship. Supporter feedback and research told us that people loved knowing how their money changed a child's life. It also told us that some people found sponsorship expensive and others found it 'emotionally unattractive'.

We took a few logical steps and the end result was ProjectAid. We'd ask the donor to sign up to a regular gift and every four months we'd send them details of projects in need of funding. They could choose the one they wanted to support and we'd then report back on how work was progressing. I still have the first recruitment piece we ever produced and, as you can see, It's not that far from the 'game changing' ideas of crowd funding that we see today. Just on paper rather than on-line.

We tested it with a variety of media, but it didn't do that well.

But what was particularly interesting was how donors responded to the offer of choice. Most ended up ticking the 'where the need is greatest' box on the donation form. The product eventually was used as a 'drop ask' for people who were interested in child sponsorship but found the price too high. It was superseded by another product that concentrated on providing good feedback, which in the long run was more effective.

I've been involved in offering choice to donors in a number of different ways over the years and found similar results pretty much every time. Some people do value choice (particularly with causes such as cancer research and with high level gifts), but many others were more interested in hearing about need, impact and what they had done to make a difference. As one donor put it (and I paraphrase)...

"You're the experts on this. I just want to know that my money has helped".

In my experience, that's what charities should be focusing on. As I mentioned in a previous post, choice is only important if it is relevant. If it isn't, it can become a chore and actively turn donors off.

And if you are interested in finding out why, you should probably take a look at this study featured in Neuromarketing on choice fatigue.

If used appropriately, choice can probably enhance your offer, but, using the tried and tested (and tired) golfing analogy, it should be one of a number of clubs in your fundraising bag, rather than a single club that you rely on for the whole game.

How should we defend face-to-face fundraising?

During my recent break from blogging, I've been keeping an eye on the debate about face-to-face fundraising.

It's been quite a saga.

It was obviously all kicked off by the piece on BBC's Newsnight. If you missed it, you can watch it here.

The central story was that charities pay professional face-to-face companies to recruit regular givers, paying up to £136 for each new donor they sign-up. 

Newsnight questioned whether this was a good use of funds, citing industry figures that show more than 50% of people recruited in this way cancel their direct debit in the first year. 

With the average annual value of a donor standing at about £90, their view was it seemed as though most of a donor's gift was going to the professional companies – not to fund the core work of the charity.

It appears from reading the PFRA response that it wasn't the most even handed piece of journalism...

'A Newsnight researcher revealed his real agenda when he told the PFRA: “I think if people knew how much it costs charities to recruit them then they wouldn’t sign up [via an F2F fundraiser].” We believe that the journalists working on this story set out from the start explicitly to persuade people not to donate via F2F because of the allegedly ‘prohibitive’ costs. Of course that argument could only be maintained by systematically ignoring the costs of other forms of fundraising, some of which work out at far greater per donor than F2F, and by ignoring the return on investment that F2F generates (often over 1:3). Essentially their agenda was not to ‘inform’ the public but to convince them of the ‘truth’ of their own personal – and false – prejudices.'

But stitch up or not, the sector doesn't seem to have handled this story particularly well.

When the BBC asked charities how much they spend to recruit a new face to face donor, only two responded – Cancer Research UK who pay £112 a head and the British Heart Foundation who pay £136. Newsnight informed us that other charities cited 'commercial confidentiality' as the reason for their reluctance to respond.

And though they were asked, charity CEOs weren't up for defending face-to-face on the show. Mark Astarita, Director of Fundraising for the British Red Cross, explained why ...

'Newsnight wanted to set us up in a head-to-head situation with a small charity that hates face-to-face,” Astarita said. “It would have been a David and Goliath-type battle which nobody would have won.  It would have been damaging to the whole sector and so everybody made a wise judgement not to play that horrible game."

“You could tell by the way they structured all the questions that they had an agenda – it was not an ‘investigation’, they wanted to make their story stick.”

In the end, Newsnight was unable to find charities to take part and so at the last minute decided simply to interview a charity that uses face-to-face.  That was when the BHF agreed to take part, Astarita said.

He added that if Newsnight had proposed a straight interview from the outset, he expected charities would have been queuing up to defend the practice." '

The trouble is, whether we like it or not, it's the media channels that set the agenda and if we don't respond intelligently, we'll all be worse off.

A recent survey by the Charity Commission has shown that over the last two years, 11% of people have lost trust in charities, with media coverage about charities and how they spend their donations seemingly driving this change in attitude.

Which is why I was disapointed to read about the debate at the recent IOF conference on face-to-face fundraising, where PFRA CEO, Mick Aldridge summed up the sector's reluctance to defend face-to-face fundraising...

'Aldridge's attack wasn’t limited to the sector’s reluctance to defend face-to-face, but also centred on the “intolerable and hypocritical... ‘slagging off’ that face-to-face receives from some of our so-called colleagues from other fundraising disciplines”.

“That is rank hypocrisy and it has to stop,” he said. He noted that direct mail recruitment costs “are many orders of magnitude higher than for face-to-face” and challenged advocates of that medium, and others such as digital, to publish figures on RoI and costs for general viewing.'

It seems that the PFRA is concentrating on defending face-to-face on cost – because it recruits donors more cost-effectively than press or direct mail it should own the moral high ground. That's fine if the debate is within the charity sector. But as we know, it's a little wider than that.

Mick has also pointed out that we need a champion to defend the technique. And he's right, but I'd go one step further.  We are one sector and we all succeed or fail together. We need every single charity in the land to commit to champion fundraising in all its forms. Because, as it is now,  it's quite obvious that few donors fully appreciate the impact of their response to our fundraising messages.

A series of nfpSynergy studies has found that donors think that just 25 pence in every pound they donate actually goes to fund actual 'work'. The perception is that the majority of their gifts are used to cover administration and fundraising costs.

And it's people like Rarry Revan, who comments on another piece in Civil Society, who suggests a blindingly obvious way that we can tackle this misconception...

'Get a beneficiary out there, maybe a cancer survivor who said without face to face I wouldn't be alive. Or an African doctor who learnt their trade because of donors who were signed up on the doorstep.'

By taking this approach we shift the debate from how we raise money to the impact of how we spend it. And every single charity in the land can help achieve this goal. It's not about big advertising campaigns either. We'll win this argument on the micro-level.

Take Care International for example. They have shown that the attrition rate of face-to-face can be halved by providing donors with personalised, high quality feedback on how their donations have been used.

And ActionAid generates response rates to thank you feedback packs that many charities would love to get from their actual appeals.

The fact that a significant percentage of people find face-to-face recruiters irritating is just one symptom of a wider problem. We have to remember that people complain about DM, telephone fundraising and even online advertising too. Donors simply aren't linking their gifts to any measurable outcome.  And we are verging on stupid if we continue to ignore the desire amongst donors to know what difference their gifts have made.

People pay for value and if, after a great face-to-face recruitment process, you find yourself on the receiving end of a stream of self-congratulatory newsletters and appeals for more money it's not surprising that you might feel a bit short-changed.

The moral high ground on this matter is well within our grasp, but it won't be gained through an internal debate about relative costs nor through interviews on Money Box or Newsnight.

Instead we should confront criticism through aggressively demonstrating the benefits of our work.

By doing so, we'll ensure that the amazing goals we are striving for - cures for disease, the eradication of poverty and the end of cruelty and injustice - are worth the inconvenience of a smile and invitation for a quick chat from a nice fundraiser on a street corner.

Flashfunding - donor power in action

I've mentioned lendwithcare.org before.

Rather than ask people to give money to charity, lendwithcare.org gives people a chance to end poverty by funding poor entrepreneurs in developing countries.

You can read more about the site here or visit it here.

The official launch is still a few weeks off, but even in beta stage,  it seems to have caught people's attention and we have been rather pleased by the amount of support it's generating.

But it's not just the numbers which are impressive, it's also how people are getting involved.

One group of investors that I've mentioned before – The KindaAngels – now have their own website and have flashfunded an entrepreneur.

What's flashfunding? The people at KindaAngels explain...

"Part of KindaAngels is the shared experience, all of us coming together to achieve something collectively – to help someone.  So, taken to its extreme, I thought it might be an idea to see whether we could put together a KindaFlashMob!

KindaFlashMob is like the normal KindaAngels – but with a twisty twist! KindaFlashMob descends upon one unsuspecting entrepreneur and, in the space of a few minutes, funds their entire loan!"

It took them ten minutes to fund one entrepreneur.

What's most exciting about this innovation is that it's coming from the supporters – not Care International, the charity behind lendwithcare.org.

The lendwithcare.org website is simply a tool for supporters to engage with the people who need help – and it seems to be working.

Why have just one supporter, when you could have a whole group of them?

This is a quick follow-up to my recent post about lendwithcare.org.

Even though it's still in beta, the site has started to generate a fair degree of interest and I wanted to share an example of how one supporter turned in to a whole group of investors.

It has been picked up by @jamesmb of Socialholic, who featured lendwithcare.org on his site by choosing five entrepreneurs and asking his readers to vote on which business they'd like to support.

It didn't take long for them to find a winner, Lia Puspita, and fund her. They then decided to also help Akoua Kondje who came second. I've just checked and she's now fully funded as is Ibu Nurhaeni, who came third.

This small group of investors are known as the KindaAngels and have the Twitter hashtag #KindaAngels if you'd like to follow or join them.

Their approach to getting involved reminded me about a post I put up in February that suggested that rather than trying to control their brands, charities should concentrate on improving the experience they offer donors.

If that experience is fun and involving as well as authentic, there's no telling what might happen.

The traditional model that most charities follow doesn't really lead to a high degree of donor satisfaction. But it appears that offering choice along with the promise of feedback has started to motivate some people to do something more than just write out a cheque.

And I find that rather exciting.

The web has dramatically changed the business models of a whole range of industries and charities don't have an automatic exemption from the development of on-line technology. They are just slightly behind the curve.

As in every other sector of the economy, people pay for value. And it will be those charities that offer the richest experiences, greater connection and more involvement that will gain most from what the web has to offer.

I'll keep you updated of any other developments as lendwithcare.org moves to launch, but in the meantime I'd like to thank James and the rest of the KindaAngels for getting involved.

Update: James has just announced a new honorary member of the KindaAngels group - Starbucks Exeter.
All members who visit the store can get a free mug. For more details on this offer take a look at Socialholic.

Will you lend me £15 please?

Well to be honest, it's not for me.

It's for Ibu Nurhaeni, who runs a grocery business in Indonesia or Kodjo Agounde, an electrician in Togo.

Or it could be for any of the entrepreneurs that you'll find on Lendwithcare.org.

It's a site that Bluefrog has built for Care International and is in beta test before a launch next month.

It's like giving to charity. But it isn't. It's lending instead.

Rather than just sending a gift to a charity for their general work, Lendwithcare.org allows you to support an entrepreneur in a developing country who has a great idea for a business but needs a little help to get it off the ground or to it's next stage of development.

It's similar to Dragons Den, but you don't need to be a millionaire to get involved.

It works like this.

• You have a look through the entrepreneurs and find one with a business idea you like.
• You then choose how much you want to lend him or her.
• It doesn't matter if you can't lend the total amount they are asking for because other people just like you will make up the difference.
• The minimum amount you can lend is £15.
• Over the next few months you'll get feedback on how the business is progressing along with regular repayments on your original loan.
• When it's paid back you can simply return the money to your bank account or lend it to another entrepreneur. You'll find that your £15 can change someone life over and over again.

Now you might be thinking this sounds a little like Oikocredit, Grameen or Kiva. It is, in as far as it is built around the concept of micro-finance. But this product is built from a fundraising perspective and there are some interesting differences which you'll discover as time goes by.

But apart from helping Care International get Lendwithcare.org off the ground, the reason why I'd like you to lend £15 is so you can test the site out and let me know what you think. It's at beta stage and as someone experienced and interested in fundraising, I'd value your opinion on the site and it's usability.

And to show you how confident I am about the entrepreneurs, if anyone you lend to defaults on their loan, I'll personally guarantee to pay it back to you.

If you need any further information, this video explains all. Thanks for helping. I'll get back to the normal stuff tomorrow. Click here to get started.

How to reduce face to face attrition by up to half

One of the problems of using face-to-face techniques to recruit donors has been the high cancellation rates.

It's not unusual to see more than 50% of all supporters recruited in this way cancel their regular gift in the first year.

The fundraising industry has always struggled with this huge exodus of donors. Much of the blame has been placed with the face-to-face and door-to-door fundraising agencies. The implication has been that they have recruited the 'wrong type' of donor or perhaps put too much pressure on people to sign up.

The agencies responded by offering partial refunds or ever growing numbers of replacement donors.

I've always thought it a crazy situation.

The charity who appoints an agency on these terms doesn't really need to bother investing time and money in engaging donors. After all, the agency is going to cover the costs for for those who cancel.

Yep. It's crazy alright. Of course the agency doesn't pick up the bill. Their prices have to be inflated to cover the cost of offering the guarantee. The charity still pays for the donors who cancel, just as they do for those they retain. And what's more, the donors who slowly drift away after a gift or two aren't covered by any money back or replacement offer.

And this doesn't take into account the impact that a poor experience can have on the perception of a specific charity (or the sector as a whole).

So what do we do about this massive problem?

Something very simple.

We change our attitude.

When launching a street or door recruitment campaign, we shouldn't just cross our fingers and hope for a good crop of new supporters. We should do something positive to demonstrate to our new and usually young donors that we are a charity worthy of their support. We should show them what a rich and rewarding relationship with a charity should actually be like.

As I've pointed out on this blog many times before, one thing that unites all donors is a desire to understand what difference their specific gift has made.

The donors we are recruiting through face-to-face may well be significantly younger than the traditional direct mail donor, but they are no different from their forebears in this key respect. If we can show them what they have done and the resulting impact, there is a very good chance that we'll retain them.

And after a large amount of hard work, we've proved that this theory actually works.

We put this idea into practice last year, when working with DialogueDirect (now Real Fundraising) and Home Fundraising we recruited face-to-face and door-to-door donors for CARE International using an online donor feedback system that we've called USPACE.

We created USPACE as a modular system that any charity or non-profit can use to provide feedback to their donors without the need to go through the expense and time of creating a custom built website. The basic architecture can be re-skinned to fit any design and works with most databases. If anyone saw Matt Goody from Age UK present at the Institute of Fundraising Convention in London, they would have seen an example of how USPACE works.

But for those who couldn't make it along, let me explain. Its starts at the point of recruitment.

Donors are given materials that don't just talk about what the charity has done, but focuses on the work that the donor will be helping make happen. CARE International's new donors, for example, received three seeds - a peanut, a pumpkin seed and a grain of rice. Each signified a specific project. Accompanying the seeds was a small sheet of stickers that the donor could use to send messages to some of the children who will benefit from their support.

The donor was also pointed to USPACE in the guise of www.mycarezone.org to find out what their gift was making possible.

The site has been built to place the donor at the centre of CARE International's work. Even their name is given the same prominence as the charity logo. The language is inclusive. It talks about what the donor has done. You is heavily used instead of the ubiquitous We found on so many charity sites.

Through regular updates, the donor gets to see a project unfold, often from different points of view - a beneficiary, a project worker or even another supporter.

The site doesn't pretend to be a Facebook type social networking site. It's far from it. But what it does do is build on the decision making process described by Mark Earls author of Herd...

"The assumption is that by-and-large, individuals make decisions on their own. My Herd point-of-view is that people influence each other, often without realising it."

Donors are encouraged to share why they are supporting CARE International and what they like about the projects they read about. Each time someone visits the site they get to see that they are actually part of a community. But most importantly, they see the reason why other people are giving. These endorsements help to create a virtuous circle where donors are reinforcing each others giving.

We've also turned the concept of project information on its head. Rather than just the charity deciding what work should be shared, donors can flag up what they are interested in. And we also use information from outside the organisation. Relevant films on YouTube, articles from newspaper and magazine sites and great photographs (like these from Bangladesh) can all be used at no cost through linking and embedding. You can see another sample page by clicking here.

You'll also see from the main page that upgrading and adding extra gifts is incredibly easy. By clicking the button I've highlighted on the right, a gift is added to the next direct debit payment. Donors seem to love it.

Should a donor cancel their gift, the site can help identify the reason and offer them a chance to reduce their gift or even take a small payment holiday.

USPACE has many similar features that engage and empower donors (too many to cover in one blog post), but I imagine you are wondering about the impact?

As you'll see from the results graph, it halved attrition over the first 4 months amongst the people who signed up (those with 0 payments are people who cancelled their direct debit before their first gift).

I can't share precise figures, but compared to 2009, attrition was down even amongst new recruits who hadn't signed up to USPACE (No MCZ). What's most exciting however, is that we have seen a massive 50% fall in cancellations from those supporters who did sign up (MCZ). Our next goal is to offer USPACE to more donors and we are currently trialing initiatives to ensure more donors take advantage of the great feedback on offer. Adrian Sargeant pointed out in Building Donor Loyalty, that attrition is an expensive activity. By reducing an attrition rate from 20% to 10% an organisation can increase it's revenue by 50% over ten years.

I'll leave the last word on USPACE to CARE International's Head of Direct Marketing, Tracey Horner...

"Engagement is up and attrition is down. We are now offering USPACE to all supporters and plan to expand its use to reactivation of lapsed donors. If the effect is anywhere near that achieved for face-to-face, we are going to be as happy as our supporters appear to be with their enhanced understanding of what their gift actually achieves.

Their feedback shows they really appreciate seeing how they actually make a difference."

Are your donors simply paying spectators?

There's a great video on Social Hallucinations produced by David Gauntlet from Making is Connecting.

David looks at everyday creativity and writes about seeing a cultural shift - from a sit back and be told one to a making and doing one.

So what's this got to do with fundraising?

Quite a lot.

Something that we repeatedly find people mention in our research at Bluefrog is a sense of disappointment with charities. They enter into a relationship with an organisation in the hope that they are going to be an active part of something good. What they receive is a stream of communications talking about what the charity is doing and requests for money.

Disillusioned and unengaged, they soon stop their support (This behaviour is often incorrectly described as lapsing).

But when people can actively do something more than sit back and give, they create cultural capital that benefits them as much as the charities they support.

An example of this is craftivism.

And an example of craftivism is Save the Children's Knit One, Save One campaign. This generated over half a million knitted hats for newborn babies in developing countries. It was also responsible for generating 50,000 messages that were delivered to Gordon Brown encouraging him to do more to help prevent deaths among children.

Save the Children isn't unique. When you think about it, there are a number of examples of this type of engagement already offered by charities.

Child sponsorship provides donors with an opportunity to write (and receive letters). Kiva enables people to help set-up new businesses (and see how they are performing). Care International offers supporters the chance to send advice and good wishes along with educational materials to school children in developing countries.

Organisations that fill the gap between giving cash and full-time volunteering are benefiting from the desire people have to create and connect. It doesn't matter if this is done on-line or off-line, but by giving people the chance to create change rather than simply be paying spectators, we offer them a welcome opportunity to add meaning to their world AND move it in the direction many of us would like.

That's the sort of approach that drives real engagement. It's an idea that I find really exciting. If you've got a few minutes to spare, you should really watch this video.

The nine ways donors filter your appeals

A few years ago my uncle set up a direct debit to an animal protection charity. He has repeatedly been upgraded and now gives them £60 a month.

He doesn't want to be upgraded any more. He values the work of the charity so has resorted to throwing all their communications unread into the recycling bin.

It seems the charity in question has used standard RFV segmentation and concluded he likes being upgraded. Their guess – no matter how educated it may be – is wrong.

His actions are not unusual. In research we hear donors tell us time after time that they don't feel valued or appreciated by the charities they support.

They, like my uncle, see the relationship as a one way flow of financial resources. As a result they develop their own methods of avoiding giving. In addition to the throwing everything in the bin technique, I've heard donors say they use...

• The hat technique. All appeals are saved up and put aside. Once a month they are drawn out one by one until a pre-set budget is exhausted.
• The first come first served technique. As above but this time it's down to the appeals that hit the doormat first each month.
• The rotation technique. One in n appeals will result in a gift. For example, every third appeal will receive a cheque. The rest go in the rubbish.
• The seasonal technique. As you might expect, this classifies charities according to season. Shleter gets a Christmas gift, WSPA gets a spring one and Care International gets a summer one. No matter how often you ask, you won't get any more.
• The boredom technique. Only the most entertaining appeals receive a gift.
• The topical technique. If it's in the news, a donation will be given, otherwise it's a no.
• The blame technique. If there is something a donor doesn't like such as the use of non-recyclable glassine windows in envelopes or the inclusion of a pen or stickers, the appeal gets rejected.
• The thanks technique. If a thank you has been received to their most recent gift, another donation will be considered.

These methods of managing giving (and others like them) are surprisingly common. What is most striking about their use is that a charity can't really control whether the technique will be implemented against them or not.

The only route to tackle and avoid them is to actively engage your donors. Write to them about what they want to hear – not what the latest manifestation of your brand guidelines demands – and give them choice in how they support you.

At Bluefrog, we recommend that charities offer committed givers the chance to opt out of receiving cash appeals. In their place we offer real feedback – letters, emails and videos from people who are being helped or actually doing the work that donors care about. The result is that donors significantly increase their direct debits and end up giving far more than we'd ever receive from the occasional cheque in response to cash appeals. And feedback shows that they feel closer to the charity too.

If you are still on the look out for a resolution for 2010, I'd recommend dropping the guesswork and asking your donors if they are happy with the way you communicate with them, offering them creative and attractive alternatives to the standard appeal cycle. It always pays dividends.

Happy New Year!

You don't choose donors, they choose you

Choice is an important concept in fundraising – donors love it.

When we offer choice through simple techniques such as shopping lists in appeals or more complex devices such as post-recruitment questionnaires that give donors control over the communications they receive, we build loyalty and generate more gifts.

There is a piece of research that helps explain why this occurs. Harbaugh, Mayer and Burghart of the University of Oregon undertook an experiment where they gave 19 young women $100 each and then confronted them with a selection of different scenarios...

• The money would be taken away with no explanation.
• The money would be taken away and given to a local charity.
• They were given the choice of keeping the money or donating it to charity.
• They could keep the money, and an extra gift would be given to charity.

All this happened whilst they were in an MRI scanner – a machine that mapped their brain activity whilst the scenarios were being considered.

The researchers found they could divide their subjects into two different types depending on brain activity.  They defined these two groups as egoists and altruists depending on whether their brain responded more to keeping the money for themselves or more to donating the money to charity.

Those whose scans showed a positive response to money going to the charity rather than to themselves were about twice as likely to give money voluntarily.

People obviously didn't like money being taken away with no reason, but if the money was given to the charity, the parts of the brain that became activated were those that respond to basic rewards such as sweets, food or positive social contact.

When the decision to give to charity was completely voluntary, these reward areas produced increased amounts of activity.

In short, active giving produced an extra neural benefit over passive giving. Something that both economists and fundraisers might describe as a "warm glow".

Sadly when giving was voluntary, the charity got 10% less than when a percentage of it was "taxed".

You don't need an MRI scanner in your fundraising department to appreciate what this means – if a donor feels coerced into giving, the rewards they feel are minimal and the relationship is off to a rotten start.

We only have to look at attrition rates associated with different types of recruitment activity to see what happens when there is a sniff of coercion in recruitment – cancellations go crazy.

Face to face, cold telephone and even TV have very high attrition rates compared to the emotionally cooler recruitment techniques such as direct mail and press ads.

One of the ways of managing the high attrition rates delivered by some recruitment channels is by demonstrating just how important the donor is to your work immediately after recruitment. And then giving them complete control over the relationship. If we do this, we help activate that "warm glow", which is just what the altruists are looking for. As a direct result, we stem attrition.

Bluefrog's head of creative, Aline Reed has recently posted a piece on her blog, Bluefrog Creative, about how we are tackling Face to Face attrition for Care International. It's early days, but by offering donors insight into the impact they are having and giving them control over the relationship, we are seeing some rather pleasing figures. You can see this work by clicking here.

As Aline explains, we aim to publish the outcome of this test along with some other research at a major presentation in London on the 13th of November. As usual with Bluefrog research, there will be no charge for attendance or our report. Email me at mark@bluefroglondon.com, if you'd like additional information or to be added to the guest list.

In the meantime, If you'd like to brush up on where you are likely to find things like the striatum (where all the fun happens), I  suggest you watch this short video to get you up to speed on all things brain related.