Obama needs to ask for Votes as well as $

I signed up to Barack Obamas site a few weeks back after I heard he was going to text the name of his VP to everyone. 

I thought this was fascinating and what a great way to engage people…Did I want to be one of the 1st to know…of course I did. We all want to be the first to know something and Obama’s team have tapped into that.

Since then I have recieved almost daily communications from the Obama camp, well written pieces that are appropriate and of interest to me. As I have been getting these I have been thinking about all the lessons we fundraisers, and all marketing professioals too can learn from the campaign. For a great Direct Mail lesson check out what Damian over at Ask Direct has to say in his piece..Does your direct mail sound like Bill Clinton

Anyway aside from the good lessons we can learn there are other lessons we can learn as my good friend (and great fundraiser) Katie Schrier pointed out when she wrote to me and said:

Hey Conor: Heard something really interesting on the news yesterday that I thought was a great reminder for the non-profit sector in general.  As you know, in the states we are prepping to elect our next president (thank God).  A democrat was being interviewed about Obama and whether or not she was going to vote for him, and she said, “He [Obama] has asked me for my money, but not my vote.”  I thought that was such a fascinating statement when considered from a fundraising perspective. As fundraisers our job is certainly to ask people to support a cause that we believe they will or should be passionate about.  But this statement is such a vital reminder that we must first always be doing the groundwork of getting the donor on board “emotionally” before we ever ask them to make a commitment financially.

Great point Katie, thanks.

Impact Calculator

I was checking out the Capital Area United Way site today and thought this was a clever tool. It allows donors put in an amount and it lets them know the impact of their donation. I know a lot of charities do similar pages about What your donation can do, but I just thought this was a more interactive version of that. Nice work.

American Red Cross faces defecit

The Chronicle of Philanthropy writes that

The American Red Cross is facing a $200-million deficit, a nearly empty disaster-relief fund, stagnant fund raising, and large loans it took out to help victims of recent disasters, reports The Wall Street Journal

The paper criticizes the charity’s fund raising as outdated, saying “its fund-raising model of living from disaster to disaster no longer works well in a world where other charities constantly are competing for donor dollars.” The paper also points out that fund raising between many of the Red Cross’s local chapters and the national headquarters is out of sync, with some affiliates refusing to share donors with the national office.

AdWords-Style Widget Recommends Related Ways to Take Action

Social Actions has announced the launch of a revolutionary widget that recommends to readers of your blog or website related ways to take action.

The widget automatically identifies the keywords on any page and lists social change campaigns related to the stuff you’re writing about. These campaigns are gathered from social action platforms like Kiva, DonorsChoose, Change.org, GlobalGiving, Care2, Idealist.org, and fourteen others.

Find out what actions would be listed for your blog (or any website)

Because the new widget pulls actions from 20 social action platforms, it can recommend actions based on a wide variety of content. Whether you’re writing about your local community, pop culture, or green living – you can expect to surprise your readers with related ways to make a difference.

How the new widget from Social Actions works
After you cut and paste the widget snippet code into your website, the widget automatically scans the content of each web page on which it appears and identifies the top three keywords for that page. The widget then searches for related campaigns on 20 social action platforms. It then automatically loads the top three campaigns for the keywords, with the option to discover more. As the content of your site changes, the widget checks to see if there are new keywords. As a result, your readers are always connected to fresh and relevant calls to action.

Is anyone using this? How are you finding it…let me know..

article found on AFP Blog and text taken from the Social Actions Blog

Drink for Charity

Im really just not sure about this.

The idea behind this is fine, it was set up  to engage the target audience in activities they were already likely engaging in – drinking and socializing – and using that to tap into their benevolent spirits.

Ok I get that. in fact I often thought when organising fundraising gala balls for the 20/30 somethings that less formal events that reflect what the target market is doing anyway, would be more effective.

But something about this just doesnt sit well with me (and trust me Im pretty open when it comes to fundraising ideas!) Maybe its the name…drink for charity…it sounds like a challenge or something…drink as much as you can for charity.

Any thoughts???

The Big Give

I dont know why I havent come across The Big Give before now, but its a great site. Its another example of a site that aims to give the donor more ownership.

Today Professional Fundraising report:

Corporates looking to give money to charity can now opt to do so via a new voucher scheme launched by The Big Give today.

Companies can buy Big Give charity vouchers for a minimum of £10. These vouchers can then be redeemed on any of the 3,933 charity projects currently listed on www.thebiggive.org.uk

The scheme has been launched as a means of providing additional income to the registered charities. The website’s operators hope it will be used within corporate CSR initiatives or to replace conventional client gifts.

This is certainly a site charities should look to have a presence on. http://www.thebiggive.org.uk/

CSR reporting

Mallen Bakers Blog has an interesting post about Corporate Social Responsibility reports, he believes that:

companies that want to make better impact of their audiences are going to have to find new ways to do it – move from the report mode (one way, broadcast only) to the discussion mode (new media, dialogues, blogging).

Also on the site is a survey with some interesting results, below:

Chuggers

There have been some interesting exchanges on Damien Mulley’s Blog, the Intelligent Giving Blog and UK Fundraising recently about chugging that are worth reading.

I know that the method of fundraising works, charities wouldnt engage in it if it didnt, but Im just not sure its a great method of raising funds.

I had a really bad experience once where a chugger, after I told them I wasnt interested, muttered under their breath….you should it would make you feel good. I couldnt believe it. It left me with an incredibly bad impression of that charity. And that is my main concern with the method, I think it gives charities a bad reputation.

Trends In Philanthropy: Ireland

The Community Foundation for Ireland have released a report “Philanthropy, the views of those who advise the rich“.  This is Ireland’s first ever survey of professional advisors focusing specifically on philanthropy.

A must read for all fundraisers in the Irish market. Some of the key findings that struck, and shocked me a bit, were the facts that:

1. many advisors are still unsure how to deal with philanthropy and are uncomfortable raising the topic
2. many advisors are unclear about the philanthropy vehicles available for would-be philanthropists

Glanbia add Call to Action

I had mixed reactions when I saw the new weather stings on TV3 and RTE.

My first reaction was “Isn’t it great that Glanbia/Avonmore are putting a marketing budget behind their 3 year partnership with Barretstown”. But then this was swiftly follwed by disappointment with the sting: “Why is there no call to action”

This latter reaction was somewhat put to rest last night when I was watching the TV3 weather last night and spotted a new website address on the stings www.sendmorefamilies.com. Clearly someone at either Glanbia or Barretstown had the same thought...here we are supporting a charity, asking our customers to support it…but we havent told them how to do it! So it is good to see it included on the stings.

These 10 second stings must be doing Barretstown the world of good and will help them in so many other ways over and above the 2 million Glanbia hope to raise. I still think that the call to action could be stronger in the ad, maybe adding the words send more families into the copy, and the website could do a bit more…how about allowing me sponsor a family or raise the money to send a family. Maybe that will come with time and for now I certainly wouldnt be critical of Glanbia as they seem to be really engaged in this partnership. Couldnt find anything on the Barretstown site though!!!

Check out the stings here:

Getting Started with Social Media

Great advice from Beth Kanter on how to get started with social media. Read it here

Don’t Almost Give – Give

Came across these ads on the Extreme Fundraising Blog

Recession Fundraising

News Release from nfpSynergy about the impact of a Recession on fundraising:

Growth in charities’ average voluntary income rises or falls 10 months after any rise or fall in GDP growth, followed by peak impact on overall income growth a further 7 months later – according to a financial analysis out today

Leading not for profit sector think tank and research consultancy nfpSynergy examined the financial history of 56 of the UK’s leading fundraising charities to assess the relationship and timing of the impact of fluctuations in the UK’s economic fortunes (qua growth in GDP) on third sector organisations’ average growth in income, both voluntary and overall.
The survey of charities – most in the top 100 in terms of voluntary income – shows a direct correlation, albeit time-lagged, between GDP growth and charity income growth since 1980. The growth in individual voluntary donations rose or fell almost as soon as people’s disposable income rose or fell: on average 10 months after any rise of fall in GDP growth. And there was a further average 7 month lag before the positive or negative impact on the growth of charities’ overall average income – including government grants, investments and fee income – peaked.

nfpSynergy’s researcher, Jonathan Baker, said:

“We predict that average charity income growth will slow or become static as donors respond to the economic downturn but we are not predicting drops in actual average income; and the voluntary sector as a whole should be robust enough to weather well, having continued to grow over the last 30 years – through thick and thin. In previous recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s, the sector income growth slowed and almost stopped – but was never negative. Our message is: don’t accept or expect defeat, but be cautious. Charities still have time to create a resilient action plan to protect themselves against income volatility before the onset of any possible recession.”

See the associated slides here

Overseas Aid – A new approach?

Gerard O’Neill, who is an economist and a director of a market research agency in Ireland (Amárach Research) wrote in the Sunday Times over the weekend that he believes that there is a new approach needed in the way the Irish Government distributes its overseas aid. He believes the people should have their say.

In the article O’Neill says he believes that people give to charity because…

Fundamentally, it’s because it makes them feel good about themselves… charities could go a lot further with this insight and make the case that donating money to charity will make you happy.

For some reason this statement really annoyed me, at best its a simplistic conclusion and if it was this simple….well fundraising wouldnt be so hard now would it!  O’Neill tries to back it up with some research

….at the University of British Columbia, which gave participants a $5 (€3) or $20 bill and asked them to spend the money by 5pm that day. Half the participants were instructed to spend the money on themselves, and half to spend the money on others. Those who spent on others reported feeling happier at the end of the day than those who spent on themselves.

So now O’Neill believes we should apply this principle to Irish Overseas aid

Why not let every citizen in the country decide how to spend Ireland’s aid budget? That way we get the benefit of spending that reflects the wishes of the electorate, as well as the buzz from doing good. This approach to public policy is based on the insights of behavioural economics and has been called “libertarian paternalism”.

How will we do this?

I see it working like this: at the start of the year each registered voter is given a voucher worth their part of the total Irish Aid budget — about €286 each, given a population of 3.2m aged over 18. Each citizen can “spend” their voucher during the year, by giving it to any one of the Irish NGOs registered with Dochas. The charities can advertise their activities in developing countries (as they already do) in order to attract voucher donations. Citizens should also be able to elect to pay their voucher directly by standing order to a charity of their choice, giving the charities some sense of continuous funding.

Now something I neglected to mention was that O’Neill contends all the Irish Overseas Aid should go to Irish NGO’s. Currently a lot of aid goes to the likes of Unesco and O’Neill believes this is not an affective way of spending Irish Aid.

Aside from O’Neills simplistic view to why people donate to charities I dont completely disagree with what he is saying. Although I do have some questions:

1. Surely by giving to Irish charities there will be additional costs in getting the money to the source to those that need it
2. Will the bigger charities get a bigger slice of the pie, simply because they can shout louder
3. Will the bigger charities bombard voters with DM and DRTV to get their vouchers
4. If each citizen is allowed spend their own tax, giving it to the charity of their choice, will this affect other charitable giving?

Im not totally against this idea, its a different and new approach and that’s always good. I do think that the questions above would need to be addressed. I would also rather see that we take an approach that gets the funds directly to those in need. Talk about engaging the Irish Donor if we were to set up a government site that allowed us to spend our vouchers similar to the site Modest Needs (if you arent sure what that is it’s a site where people can donate directly to projects, read my post about it here)

Read the full Sunday Times article here and let me know what you think

Great new BHF ad

This is a great new ad from the British Heart Foundation. Came across this on the guardian site, read more here