Wednesday, March 30, 2016

In Defence of Fundraising

Excellent stuff from the Charity Defense Council in the USA this week. They called out the mainstream media on damaging press coverage of the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP).

In summary, CBS and New York Times reported in unfavourable language about WWP's fundraising practice - in particular the topic of overheads.

In most countries even charity staff and fundraisers get worried and believe the press.  But USA fundraisers have a cool thing going for them: The Charity Defense Council (CDC).

The UK really could have done with these guys over the past two years, with so much nonsense written about UK fundraising.

It is a fascinating story, and great to share when your media unfairly has a dig.

Hats off to the CDC. Thanks you guys!

Read the Preliminary Report here.




Make more for your cause with the Pareto Principle.

When we set up Pareto, my friend Paul and I named it that for a reason: The mathematical concept of the Pareto Principle.

Most people in direct marketing understand the principle in general. They get that 80% of your income will come from just 20% of your customers, or in our case - donors. It is amazing how accurate this can be over the lifetime of your donor program. 

But so what? 

How do we use this fact to allow us to raise more funds?
Applying the Pareto Principle helps with resource allocation.

If we can increase the income from those few top donors by just 25%, we will raise as much as we would have done from the whole donor file previously!

This effort could be bigger packs, phone calls, events or even personal visits. 
  
Over the next few weeks I am going to write a few more articles about applying this principle - especially in the area of mid value donors. I will also be offering free webinars about the topic.

Check out the video below, which we put together to explain the Pareto Principle in the context of fundraising.

The Pareto Principle gets even more interesting when you start drilling down into those top 20% of donors.



Saturday, March 26, 2016

Webinar on Mid Value Donors

Guru and Agitator Roger Craver is joining me for my next FREE webinars. On Tues 26th – Wed 27th April, depending on your time zone.

All about Mid Value Donors – Please Register now!

Europe, Africa & W. Asia edition
Tues 26th April
12.00 BST - London
13.00 CEST - Paris, Madrid
13.00 SAST - Cape Town

14.00 EAT - Nairobi

Tues 26th April
14.00 PDT - Seattle
17.00 EDT - New York
18.00 BRST - Rio De Janeiro

Americas (Pacific) SE&E Asia, Oceania edition
Tues 26th April
17.00 PDT - Seattle
20.00 EDT - New York, which is the same time as...

Wed 27th April
08.00 HKT - Hong Kong
10.00 AEST - Brisbane
10.00 AEDT - Sydney
12.00 NZDT - Auckland

(If you can’t make the one in your time zone, try one of the others. It may mean an early start or late finish that day: But I promise it’ll be worth it!)

Monday, March 21, 2016

Making Facebook Work: Workshop in Boston at AFP Conference

Fundraising guru Tom Ahern is going to be presenting on how to get donors from Facebook at AFP.

(Not going to AFP? You can get a recording of my webinar with Tom of The Three Secrets to New Donors from Facebook here).

Titled Making money on Facebook: Yes, it can be done. He will be presenting the case of Soi Dog and what they pulled off in raising lots of money on Facebook.  And getting monthly givers.  Now more than 15,000 such donors acquired through Facebook.

Even though I will be on a 'plane to Hong Kong at the time he presents (315pm, March 22nd) I will be sort of joining him by video.

Here is our intro.


If you are at AFP 2016, then please please make sure you can get along!

Three Secrets to New Donors from Facebook is not the only webinar recording.  There are also three more.  Between them, these four webinars have already had about 3,000 people watch them!






Sean

Monday, March 14, 2016

State of Donation - Scope of Fundraising in Australia



Last week I attended the Fundraising Institute of Australia conference in Melbourne, following long term fundraising guru Roger Craver in the opening speeches.

I cheated in my plenary, with the team at Pareto Fundraising pulling together a video with a load of really interesting data about the Australian fundraising market. The video is below.


The video shows data to date, but after I had played it I talked about what would be coming next - see my previous blog about that!


Thursday, March 10, 2016

Really Integrating Direct Mail with Major Donors and Bequests

Really Integrating Direct Mail with Major Donors and Bequests

I believe the new big thing for charities (and something Roger Craver from www.theagitator.net picked up in his latest blog) is something really old fashioned: talking to your donors face to face.  Especially mid value donors and bequests.

The charities that grow and raise more money for their beneficiaries are those with a long term view. They have a cohesive, coordinated and focused strategy.

With only 301 charities (1%) accounting for half of total revenue in Australia it is relatively easy to get hold of some really fascinating data. Especially when many of the larger charities collaborate in Pareto’s annual benchmarking exercise.


                                         
Let's take direct mail.  If you haven't already got a large database of donors through direct mail, the costs of donor acquisition, setting up a team and database, bringing in the right skills and more can mean it will take years to break even from fundraising in this way.

Even though direct mail is still the largest source of donors in Australia (and many other countries, including USA) it could be a marginal activity to start with. And there could be better options for many.

But if you look at the data and can work 'without silos', direct mail integrated with legacies and major donors - using mail, phone and shanks' pony (visit donors) - you can make this combined approach the best long term bet for your cause.

Take this example, based on real data and modelled for a new entrant to direct mail in Australia.

The charity invests $1m per annum, for five years, on direct mail acquisition.  Other costs such as ongoing house mailings, calling donors for regular (monthly) gifts, thanking, processing and developing packs are additional to that million but included in the model.

After ten years the charity would have raised over $7m net.  A lot of effort and risk for what is an OK return.

However, what if the charity 'lifted' the values of some of these donors through major donor activities? Applying the growth that we have seen the best charities get through their major donor programs, and including some costs for staff and materials, we end up with $13.6m.  Now we are talking growth!

And what if they were great at legacy fundraising too? Well, they'd be up at $21.3m net, with an annual net income looking forward in excess of $3m which is pretty much in the bag.  A superb, reliable and expandable revenue.


Here it is illustrated:



A great chart for your board when you are after investment, and a great approach for breaking down those internal silos.

Sean

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Australia Fundraiser of The Year

Congratulations Jennifer Doubell of Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre!

Well deserved win for Jennifer at the FIA Awards this week.

Even if you are not a fundraiser in Australia, you may well be impressed by her skills.  This one minute video shows her demonstrating exactly why she is such a good fundraiser.

Sean


Disaster Fundraising Guide download it here