Learning fundraising - fundraising conferences and more

It is an interesting business this fundraising for good causes. We all love it, most people I know are in it because they want to 'make a difference' and we all do our best for our charities. But it still isn't a profession. So where do we get our training?

There are qualifications - the CFRE is the one that I most familiar with, but I am sure there are more. (Please share them by commenting on this blog).

I am lucky that my job allows me to visit loads of conferences, where I learn more and also get to present a bit. But sometimes I find out about a new conference I have never heard of, so I thought it useful to publish a list of conferences I know... Please add more by commenting.

I really don't care if the title is conference/forum/workshop or whatever, I am just looking for learning opportunities for fundraisers - and the relevant website, and when it is please!

As well as conferences, Pareto Fundraising offers tons of training too. Mostly in Canada, Hong Kong and Australia more information can be obtained here.
Links are usually to the parent body, since actual conference sites often change.

Australia - FIA Conference. Annual, next February '09
Australia - Australasian Fundraising Forum. Annual, most recent August '08
New Zealand - FINZ Conference, Biannual, most recent May '08
India - SAFRG. Annual, most recent Aug '08
UK - IOF Convention, Annual, next 6-8 July 2009
Netherlands - IFC, annual, next 14-17 Oct 2008
USA - AFP, annual, next 29 Mar - 1 Apr 2009
USA - DMA/AFP 'Bridge' Conference. Annual, most recent July '08
Brasil - Brazilian Fundraising Conference, Annual, next 5-7 Nov '08 (NB the website was not working for me when I put this up, and my Portuguese is not good enough to search in the right lanuage).
International - IWRM. Maybe annual now? Most recent was Malaysia, May '08

Oh, and if anyone knows of a list somewhere else, I would rather point to that and save me some time! The closest I ever got was to follow guru and Resource Alliance chair, Mal Warwick.
I will get the list up in a friendlier format on our revamped website in the new year.

Sean Triner, Pareto Fundraising

Guru at last! But just for a month

Please keep your opinion to yourself, especially you JB, PR, JG and everyone else, but for one month I am officially a guru...

The Resource Alliance runs a popular section on it's website, called "Ask The Guru", and I am September cover-boy.

So, if you have a burning question you can post it on the site, and I will do my best to answer it or point to somewhere else where there is an answer.

You may also want to look through some of the other questions to previous gurus, who were:
Mal Warwick
Kay Sprinkel Grace
Ken Burnett
Steve Thomas
Tony Elischer
Ted Hart
Stephen Pidgeon
Bernard Ross
Norma Galafassi
Simone Joyaux

Enjoy!
Sean Triner

Knowing Bilbo raises more money

Photo: Bilbo, (c) Base Photographics

Pareto Fundraising is obsessed with data. We love it. In all of the forms it takes, especially:

1) Big picture, environmental data (who gives, how many people are there, how big are charities etc).

2) Analytical data (what your donors - or customers - do)
3) Personal data (information about your donors).

The third type, personal, is a lot of effort to collect. We know we should collect donor transaction history (purchase history), contact details and date of birth, but what else?

We collect tons. We get it in various ways, including surveys which are one of the best tools a charity can use. But I want to share a tiny snippet for you. One of our clients, The Lost Dogs' Home, captures as much information as it can, including the name of pets belonging to the charity.

I asked Paul Roberts, CEO of Pareto Phone and co-owner of all the Pareto group companies, if knowing pet name made any difference to whether someone would upgrade their regular gift.

In a remarkable show of the power of personalisation he sent me an amazing statistic.

After calling donors, who were already regular givers, Pareto Phone noticed that 44% of people they spoke to, who had never told The Lost Dogs' Home the name of their pet, upgraded. Pretty damn good!

But for those who had notified pet name a massive 63% of them upgraded!

Obviously, pet name won't be such an important identifier for most charities, but please think about what information you want from your donors, and why.

Sean Triner

Regular giving reference blog

In many blogs and articles will refer to regular giving. What do I mean?

Regular giving is, to me and all those in Pareto Fundraising and Pareto Phone, the act of giving an automated gift to a charity, usually by credit card or straight from bank account. It is usually monthly.

It is also the biggest revolution in non-governmental fundraising history, producing more growth for more charities than anything else, ever.

Large and small charities have had their ability to provide services revolutionised by regular giving. For a great example, check out this article by Kate Hoelter, Fundraising Manager at The Lost Dogs' Home.

Last year we gathered together a group of charities in Australia, and analysed their income by source, excluding legacies and government. As you can see in the chart below, HALF of their fundraising revenue of $160m p.a. now comes from regular giving.

(F2F, RG, Child Sponsorship and F2F Child Sponsorship make up the four top segments, orange, blue, purple and green - and all are types of regular giving).

If you work in charities, and raise money from individuals it is essential that you investigate it further if you haven't already. If you don't, you are negligent and should fire yourself!

Plenaries, charity budgets and Olympic Gold Medals

This morning I got up just before 5am. It is the final day of the conference in India, and I'm nervous about my closing plenary. Actually, I am more nervous about the opening plenary I am meant to be delivering a few hours later in Sydney.

Following the session today, I run the death-race otherwise known as the 'highway' from Agra to New Delhi (dodging cows, cars, bikes, people and trucks going the wrong way on the dual carriageway) and then flying off to eventually land at 06:30 in Sydney, across town to the conference and open up with my plenary at 09:30.

So, up far too early, I start blogging and thinking about the conference. I have already commented about how similar things are here - the same problems and issues, but another one came up yesterday. Charity staff come to these conferences with real needs. Usually they are desperate for funding. They want to to hear some speakers tell them how to pull a rabbit from a hat.

Nearly all of the delegates I have met have no funds, but strong needs. They often believe that of course people will donate - they are so worthy!

Of course, reality kicks in and people begin to realise there is no magic pill. But still they grasp for miracles. "...surely IBM will sponsor this?..." or "... I know someone who knows Lakshmi Mittal or Mukesh Ambani..." (two of the richest men in the world, who happen to be Indian).

But in the end, success in fundraising is like success in Olympics. The more you spend, the more you make. Australians are gutted at being lower than Britain on the official Olympic table.

My Aussie mates, especially Jonathan Grapsas, have a big gripe. 'Yeah, you won more than us - but look how much you spent!' Inferring that our recent investment in sports, paid for by the National Lottery rather than just the tax payer, is a bad thing. Well, what do you know? The more you spend, the more you win - the more athletes you attract, the better training facilities, better competition opportunities and equipment. No surprise really.

Every now and then, a nation spending little on training athletes wins some medals and does well. But if we look at consistency, and the top nations - they all spend big time.

Same with charities. Some, with reasonable budgets, still moan that they are not growing fast enough. Well, sorry guys but the secret to growth is not that secret - spend more on fundraising. No matter what size you are, make sure you put some money aside every year for fundraising purposes.

Look at the annual reports of the top ten charities (by fundraising income) and you will see they are also very high spenders. In the charity world, you don't grow without spending.

A great example is World Vision in Australia. These guys have done very, very well in growth terms. Their formula for success may include child sponsorship and regular giving but they sustain themselves through clever spending. In their most recent annual report, they show how they raised $350m. This makes them the largest charity (measured by income) in Australia.

At they same time they report that they spent nearly $28m on fundraising, and another $25m on 'administration'. According to a table compiled by Givewell*, the fifth largest charity is the National Heart Foundation, which raises just less than $50m. In other words, only four charities raise more in total than World Vision spend on fundraising and administration.

Just like the Olympics, every now and then a charity does really well for some reason without spending much. But when you look at consistent, stable, safe charities raising the most - they spend the most.

Of course, on the Olympics I was on a winner no matter who won between Australia and Britain - as a Citizen of both countries I can be pretty flexible when scrapping with belligerent Aussies...

*This link will take you to their website, but you will need to subscribe to get the report.

Australia Tops Olympic Medal Chart!

Can you believe it? Well, if you take medals per human rights rating, medals per population, medals per GDP, total number of medals and total number of golds and work out who did best across all of them, then Australia wins. Yaay! Amazing what you can do with statistics really. Check out the superb 'alternative tables' from UK broadcaster, Channel 4.

In the last Olympics, the Aussie Government's Bureau of Statistics put up another alternative table up showing how the Aussies came third. Propaganda alive and well in Australia!

This time around, we had an amazing Government level conflict which now results in an Aussie Minister wearing an England shirt next time the nations meet, and the Aussie Olympic Association Chairman having to buy five bottles of Champagne for his British counterpart.

A bit of healthy banter? And what does it have to do with fundraising? Nothing, but the next blog does...

Fundraising in India - the value of logic and reason

Today sees me in Agra, India, about 5km away for the Taj Mahal. Cool.

I am here for the 'International South Asian Fundraising Workshop', where two colleagues and I are doing a few sessions training fundraisers from the region.

Yesterday at 0545 I went along with my Pareto Fundraising colleagues to visit 'the Taj' - one of the seven wonders of the world. And it is pretty amazing.

A great break, then back for breakfast and last minute work on our presentations.

After the visit, I presented a pre-conference workshop. The workshop was all about using data to inform strategy, and not to be reliant upon tradition to dictate your fundraising strategy.

My audience of about 35 people were predominantly Indian, with a few from Pakistan and at least one from Nepal. The session was similar to one presented several times in Australia, Canada, Chile, Thailand, Brasil, Argentina and UK - and not surprisingly the same issues came up again.

Although the session is about using data, and using evidence I always give examples to illustrate how anecdote and gut instinct can be so wrong, and I also have a pop at focus groups (in a constructive manner of course!)

The two examples that always get the best reaction are:

One: I get four people to come to the front and hold up the elements of a direct mail appeal - the pack is huge, with about 13 different elements - 4pp letter, seperate response coupon, diary from the field, a photograph, another mini-letter and of course outer and return envelopes. All eight hands are needed to hold up all the bits.

I then ask for feedback; the audience always say they wouldn't donate. They give lots of reasons - too long, not enough time, too expensive, wouldn't read it.

I then show them results - and they are astonished that, in head to head tests, making a big pack does not put people off. In fact, a recent test resulted in a huge pack beat a 'normal pack' (one page letter with tear-off coupon, outer and return envelopes) by over 4.5 times. Grumblings still abound - despite the evidence I know that people in the audience are never going to test such an approach.

(By the way - I should add that making an appeal big is not going to make it work. A rubbish big appeal is still rubbish. Producing a good appeal rather than a rubbish one needs an understanding of what needs to go into a letter to make someone respond, no matter how long.)

Strike one: Indian audience no different from anywhere else I have presented this.

Two: The next example is where I explain that corporate fundraising is crap and a waste of time for most charities, most of the time - despite the fact that some great charities like WWF and Habitat for Humanity do really well from corporates. There is disbelief and lots of "Ah, but it is different in India". (Reminded me of "Ah, but it is different in Hong Kong/New Zealand/Philippines etc).

I didn't have the data to prove this in India, and was asking the audience what they knew when just at the right moment a guy called Anup Tiwari from UNICEF India pipes up "Look at the biggest Indian charities - you will see that they get 85% of their money from individuals - only 5% at most comes from corporates."

Phew. But still more grumbles and arms folded from people, despite the evidence. Why is it that despite logic, reason, evidence and data our prejudices and assumptions take so much knocking down?

Strike Two: India no different from anywhere else - corporate fundraising enjoys a disproportionate standing in the fundraising mix.

Of course, my point in the session was don't take my word for it. Apply your logic and reason, and most importantly - test it. Find out for yourselves.