My football team and charity

Since moving to this part of the world (the border between Queensland and New South Wales, about 2.5 hours south of Brisbane) I bought a season ticket for Gold Coast United.

I am still missing Leeds United, who - although in the English third tier - would hammer Gold Coast who are 1 point off the top of the Aussie top league. Still, at least the weather is good here.

Anyway, I digress a Surf Life Saving are promoting an event and I thought it good to share with you the email invite. It'll be interesting to see how they do - and if you live near here or in Brisbane, maybe you can help (quick train journey from the City to Robina).

How else can you fundraise with football clubs? Ideas welcome. Howard Lake was also asking about football fundraising ideas on his blog.

Have a read and send me any feedback! (I'll ask Greg if he wants me to send it to him!)

Hi Sean

Local football team assists Surf Life Saving to raise much needed funds!

How would you like to see a top game of Football and Support Surf Life Saving?

GOLD Coast United and the Surf Life Saving Foundation have partnered for the big home game against Wellington Phoenix at Skilled Park on Sunday, February 7 (kick-off at 6pm). The match is a fundraising initiative and United’s way of supporting surf lifesaving in Queensland. The club will donate $1 to Surf Life Saving from every ticket sold and there will also be plenty of other fundraising activities at the game.

Much of the fundraising activity will occur in the Chairman’s Club before kickoff.

The Chairmn’s Club is Gold Coast United’s highest level corporate entertaining at Skilled Park. If you’re after the best in entertainment, dining and networking, the Chairman’s Club is for you!

Prior to the game you will be treated to a 5 star 3 course buffet meal with beverages including fine wines. You can then enjoy the game in your premium padded seats on the half way line in the western stand, before enjoying further hospitality at half time and then again at the completion of the game. You will also then get an opportunity to mingle with the players at the conclusion of the game.

There will be some terrific auction items on the night, including, signed football memorabilia featuring Maradonna, Liverpool FC, Socceroos and Gold Coast United, as well as some great other auction items.

We want to give you, as a great supporter of Surf Life Saving the opportunity to further show your support by buying a table in the Chairman’s Club. If you are unable to find 10 people you may also consider buying a few seats.

Tickets are normally $229 per head: for our partners tickets are just $200 per head, or $2000 per table.

It’s going to be a great game with both teams jostling for positions at the top of the ladder in the lead up to the exciting Hyundai A-League final series. We hope to see you there supporting Surf Life Saving and Gold Coast United

In the wake of a number of tragic downing’s lately, Gold Coast United’s shirt sponsor Modern Solar has generously given up their position on the back of the players shirts for this game, which will be replaced with the safety message, “Swim between the flags”

It’s the last home game of the regular season, we want to show our support for our local Gold Coast team as they ramp up for the finals, help us fly the flag and raise much needed funds for Surf Life Saving in Queensland.

To buy a table, please contact Neil Rangeley at Gold Coast United on 0408 789 573 or email nrangeley@goldcoastunited.com.au. Make sure you mention “Surf” to Neil to get the $200 Chairman’s Club tickets.

Questions about the night can be directed to me on 0407 201 268 or just reply to this email

Thanks

Greg Potent

National Donor Acquisition Manager

Surf Life Saving Foundation

T - 07 3846 8110

F - 07 3846 8099

P - PO Box 3777 South Brisbane Q 4101

W - www.lifesavingfoundation.com.au

ARE YOU A GUARDIAN OF THE SURF?

Spam forces me to moderate comments

A short apology - the number of Spam comments such as "Great post you got here. It would be great to read more concerning this matter. Thanks for posting this information." followed by a link to an prostitute website or something has increased so much that it was I need to moderate comments.

Haiti Disaster appeal - what happens when I donate?

The terrible earthquake in Haiti has dominated news and conversations over the past week, and I do hope that you were able to give to help people with their immediate need.

In my last Agitator, in December I talked about what to do post disaster. But when a big disaster or emergency occurs, charities are overwhelmed. It is all hands on deck.

There is still no excuse, disaster and media type charities should be ready - it is a sad fact of life that will be a horrible disaster again, which will need our immediate help.

The American Red Cross was set up ready, with templates and plans in place. They have done brilliantly at using new media - using SMS they had raised $12m by Saturday (compared to $200k after the 2008 Hurricane season).* They had raised $87m in total by that afternoon.

The Australian Red Cross had a different tack - at first the only presence I saw was their home page highlighting the work and response of their colleagues in the USA. Their contacts with journalists came to fruition later on, with their details appearing next to news articles.

Other International Agencies got themselves onto press stories and were using Google Ads and other online devices to drive people to give to help on the ground. Google themselves were first,

with Google Ads asking for help, and trumpeting their brilliant immediate commitment of US$1m and a direct request to give to UNICEF and Concern.

I received plenty of emails from charities I donate to - first was Compassion on Wednesday night, then Christian Aid, hitting my inbox at 230am on Thursday. Plan Australia arrived Thursday evening, as did UNHCR and CBM Australia. WSPA asked me to help them rescue animals in Haiti on Friday and Kiva updated me on projects there on Saturday.

Plan USA got a chaperoned email to me (I am not a donor to them) on Saturday from the Nation Magazine asking me to give to Plan USA.

No one has sent me an SMS or called me yet.

It is hard in the face of tragedy to be hard nosed about these things, but there needs to be a methodical, tested and thorough response by us fundraisers - we need to keep a clear head and work out what people want in this kind of situation.

I have donated to all the Australian charities above, plus Christian Aid in the UK. I am keeping screen grabs of the process and will follow what happens and report back.

Sean

*Data from Chronicle of Philanthropy News Update.

You can read last month's pre-Haiti article 'Cashing in on disaster donors' here.

Should I Mail My Appeal At The Same Time as a Disaster?

The terrible events in Haiti will almost certainly be matched by substantial donations from people right now - people are good, and generous.

But what if you work for a charity that has nothing to do with emergencies abroad - and you have a campaign due to launch next week?

Should you carry on?

Regardless of the media - phone, email, mail, TV etc, the answer is almost certainly yes. All evidence we can find shows that giving goes up in a disaster - and the disaster gifts are additional.

Even if you believe income will be down if you run a campaign 'up against' a new-focused disaster - and all evidence seems to show this is the wrong conclusion - logic dictates you should still carry on.

The main reason is that for most organisations, whatever campaign that was planned was going at this time for a reason. Almost certainly there is another campaign planned after an appropriate gap.

So delaying could have much greater impacts on your communications plan than any potential drop in income right now. With 20 communications in a year, a delay by two weeks is effectively cancelling a communication. And if you think 'it won't matter to drop x communication' then you shouldn't have been sending it anyway. (Twenty communications is on the low side for most organisations - think appeals, newsletters, donor care, updates, emails, phone upgrades, surveys etc...)

However, I repeat - all evidence shows that you will make more money for your cause if you carry on than you would by delaying or cancelling.

For more numbers and details on the reasons why you should go for it check out this article - 'Tsunami Suicide and the Earthquake in China'.

Sean

Haiti Disaster appeal

Terrible news from Haiti - thousands killed, lives devastated. Please help by donating now.

For USA residents Huffington Post has a superb summary of who is doing what here.

UK, donate to DEC here.

Australians & Canadians go for MSF - they are already there. Aussies donate here. Canadians here.

Other Countries - Google Haiti Relief. Please donate if you can.

Sean

SOFII needs help

If you have been reading my blog, you know I love SOFII. But it is in trouble.

Please, if you are a fundraiser, read this and donate now. If today, the donation will be doubled.


This is the most important blog I have ever written about SOFII.

I do hope that you signed up and find the site useful. The revamped site is going to be much more user friendly, and even more useful.

But it won’t last long without funding.

You see, the fact is, SOFII was born from Ken Burnett’s passion for fundraising, with the support of some key friends – including us at Pareto. A bit like many things in new media, it was created as an idea – he just got on with it (good old JFDI attitude).

The plan was to see if it worked, if it was popular and then work out how to fund it.

But now, as a fundraiser, I need your help. Please will you make an urgent donation of $30 by clicking here. I’ve already put in a big chunk, and a couple of close friends have put something in, but there is still lots to go.

And if you make a donation today it will be matched – doubled – by The Big Give*; twice the value right now.

Like you, I care about making the world a better place. That’s why Paul and I set up Pareto, and probably why you work where you do.

Fundraisers have a huge role to play in enabling their organisations to have the maximum possible impact. But fundraising is tough.

SOFII helps fundraisers do their job. Fundraisers like Julia at the Centre for Companion Health, a small fundraising operation based in Brisbane, Australia.

‘When I was first told about the SOFII website site I was sceptical – a free site that shared fundraising initiatives from around the world – is this possible?

‘And then I realised it is possible, very possible, brilliantly possible!’
Julia is one of over seven thousand SOFII subscribers.

‘The SOFII site has an amazing array of top of the class, proven fundraising success stories and a mountain of ideas. To me this site has been gold. I refer to it all the time and wish I had more time to sift through every single document.’

The problem for SOFII is that I need to professionalise the site. I need to make it more friendly, have comments and voting available, and professionally manage the gathering and displaying of exhibits. And this is where I need your help.

Please, join me by making a gift – I am suggesting $30, but don’t forget that every dollar you give will be matched. Click here to donate before the Big Give time limit expires.
Julia has used the site in an incredibly practical way...

‘As a one person fundraiser – I need to be economical and targeted with my fundraising efforts – and this site helps me do this. I have downloaded so many of the examples, then adapted them specifically to our donors and our cause. It is like you get to see the secret recipe for fundraising – but you must add your own unique ingredients.

I have used SOFII for direct mail, donor care, thank you letters, donor surveys, campaign ideas, bequest (legacy) communication and also just for my own personal professional development in learning more about the scope of fundraising.’

Julia is in Australia, but SOFII is helping fundraisers in countries as diverse in fundraising and culture as Nepal, the UK, India, USA, Indonesia, Hong Kong and New Zealand.

Ken’s vision was to keep SOFII free and available to any fundraiser. And it still is. But I need those fundraisers that can help, to help.

Please, as a fellow fundraiser, help keep SOFII alive – and make a donation – grab your credit card, click here now and help fellow fundraisers around the world.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time reading this email. And thank you, thank you, thank you for making a gift.

Sean Triner
Fundraiser, SOFII user and donor.

PS Julia really loves SOFII. And she is not alone. With the revamp of the site, even more people will be able to use it to help their fundraising activities. Please join me in donating to SOFII here. How much to give? I am suggesting $30 because it is an amount that won’t be missed by most fundraisers earning over $40k a year. And if you give now, it will be doubled*.

PPS If you haven’t signed up to SOFII, please do so here!

Digital Integration

This winter, Starlight the Children’s Charity mailed an urgent appeal to its donors telling them about how the financial crisis had hurt their bottom line. The appeal did really well, raising more than double last year’s income.

The appeal was put together as an emergency appeal, taking a couple of weeks from start to finish. Yet despite this time frame, staff still managed to make sure that the mail message was integrated with their website – in particular, their home page.

It still amazes me that a charity can run an appeal or campaign through the mail and / or phone which would usually have a message along the lines of:

• Here is a problem, a really, important problem (let’s call it problem x)
• Here is how problem x affected subject y (the case study)
• Here is what we are wanting to do to fix the problem
• We really, really need your help to do this
• This is really, really important
• Please give now to help solve/alleviate problem x

The recipient of the mailing is motivated, excited, maybe even shocked, but really cares. But what if they misplace the mailing? Chances are they go to the website homepage to find out more . And more often than not there is nothing there about the appeal! No mention of subject y, and problem x is loads of clicks away and doesn’t feature in the search engine...

Not a good look. Now, to be fair, in the real world few donors actually give online – so it hasn’t really mattered that much. But things are changing. Our benchmarking report (comparing data from 23 charities) has shown online solicited donations doubled between 2007 and 2008, and this will probably happen again (at last!) in the next 12 months.

But we also noted a marked increase in offline-solicited online donations. In the Starlight example, over $650,000 was donated in response to the appeal – and about 10% of that came in over the web. In other words, those donors received the appeal and instead of sending a cheque through the post, logged in and donated.

There is still an argument to say that including a web-donation option on a response coupon can decrease the total amount raised (because you send people away from an immediate response option), but this theory needs further testing.

Regardless of this argument, most fundraisers I know haven’t tested this, they just automatically include a web donation link.

Now, if you are writing a letter telling people this is the most important thing in the world they can donate to, and then send them to a weblink to donate there is even more of an imperative that the link and your home page reinforce the urgency of the message.

In their most recent campaign about human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Amnesty International asks for ‘an urgent gift today’ to help ‘respond to the cries of thousands of women like Bernadette.’The signatory of this letter is Andrew Philip, an Amnesty researcher.

The response coupon directs me to the Amnesty homepage (in small print),which features thestory in the appeal, though with a different case study. This is great – it is important after all!

The theme is let down slightly with a generic online donation page but at least the communications led me to that point.

But most charities don’t pull this off well, if at all. Just visit the homepage of the charity that next asks you for money and see if what they are asking for is really that important.

It should be easy to amend the homepage a bit, have a separate online donation form, and those with a Facebook and Twitter presence need to reflect the campaign too. For now, it won’t cost much, and keeps the website relevant, helps search engine optimisation and should raise a bit.

But in the future, with more and more people giving online it is going to be absolutely essential.
(Oh, if you do take online donations and get your messaging integrated – please, please, please ensure that your processes for measuring response and allocating to the appropriate campaign are working!)

Check out Amnesty’s website here (though the campaign has now changed), and there is a full Starlight Case Study here, including an entire copy of the mailpack here.

[Every month I write a column 'The Agitator' for Fundraising and Philanthropy magazine and this post is my most recent entry!]