Five things I wouldn’t have guessed about lead conversion at the start of the year.

When I last wrote about online lead conversion in January, I was coming off what seemed like an incredibly steep learning curve.  At that point I expected a levelling off of my understanding, but if anything we’re discovering more new things and more often. Some of these are obviously just further nuance to a general idea, but others are things that I would not have imagined this time last year.  This then, is a run-down of some of the most important things that have come up since then and some of the ways we’re dealing with them.

Lead source plays a significant role in retention

As a dialogue fundraiser I always assumed that the influence of the lead source would be tiny compared to the influence of the other systems.  If you consider that you’ll convert around 6% of contacted leads (I’m talking about surveys here) to regular givers, you’d expect the quality to be driven by the conversation with them rather than the criteria of initial selection.  However we’ve seen that different lead sources have a significantly better, or worse retention rate.  When comparing across all our different phone suppliers we’re seeing a difference of up to 5% on second donation. That’s a substantial  amount and will make a noticable difference to ROI to even medium term ROI.

Still not eveyone is uploading data on a daily basis

The recency with which someone has taken an action, be it a survey response or a petition ask is directly relevant to how likely they are to convert. More than one fundraising phone room looking to take on live uploads in six months’ time it seems unlikely anyone will be looking at weekly uploads. .

Older data has value too

Although the biggest and easiest wins will come from the first week after someone has responded, that is not the time to throw the data in the bin.  I’ve seen some phone rooms have success with data that’s a month or two old when using it as “filler” and, assuming that you have a decent amount of volume, asking the donor via email or other inexpensive streams can produce some exciting results.

The market hasn’t finished growing

The market has matured over the last 12 months.  Penetration and conversion results have dipped marginally, but not enough to suggest the market is full. That may change with rumours that some charities with much the bigger budgets are planning on increasing their presence. However, for the moment there seems to be plenty of room for growth.

Face to Face agencies should be worried

With the Australian face-to-face market being short of quality volume (there are some great agencies, but overall quality is dropping), lead conversion is becoming a much greater part of the fundraising mix.  Not only are ROIs and donor retention significantly better but volumes much more consistent than face-to-face as well.  With F2F (anecdotally) trending in exactly the opposite direction on all those aspects you have to if anyone is going to be growing their F2F campaigns.

(There are of course F2F agencies who have moved into the lead conversion space incredibly successfully).

How are you finding online lead conversion?  What’s surprising you?

 

Top 5 Reasons To Love Chuggers

Face to face fundraising, chugging* if you will, has been copping a battering in the Australian media of late. The criticism, as often happens has been that it’s expensive (which is incorrect), the people who do it are not Australian (partially true, but not through want of trying), and that people find it annoying. This last point is the one that really matters, it completely subjective and so requires no rationalisation. It’s also the opposite of the way people should feel about this form of fundraising. Face to face is a fantastic thing for Australia to do and have and we should be proud. So here is a quick list of the reasons why Australian’s should all love chuggers.

1) Its turned Australia into a nation of super heroes

This isn’t an exaggeration, face to face fundraising is responsible for raising billions of dollars. Those billions of dollars save lives. From malaria treatments to meningitis vaccinations. From disaster relief to campaigning against honour killings. The money that face to face fundraising has raised has enabled charities to do much, much, MUCH more good in the world.

Australia like to think of itself as a generous country, but this is because we have face to face fundraising.

In CAF’s 2013 Five year World Giving Index, Australia came second most giving nation. The index is marked on recency, frequency of participation in three categories:

• Helping a stranger
• Volunteering
• Donating money

Although Australia is a fairly good all rounder the thing that keeps us up the top of the charts is that lots and lots of us give money regularly. Lets be clear, getting this many people to give this way is ONLY possible because of face to face. In 2013 an estimated 200,000 people started giving to a charity because of F2F. That’s close to a percentage point of the population of Australia and WAY over if you consider the people face to face doesn’t ask to donate because they are too young, or not in a position to donate. That sort of growth is something that we should celebrate as a nation. Not only are we pretty bloody generous already, but we’re getting substantially more generous every year… because of face to face
Not only has face to face meant more donations to charity and more people giving, but its revolutionised the type of people who give. Before face to face most donors were around retirement age. Generationally this proved a problem as, you know, older people die sooner. Face to face starts people off as donors when they’re young and helps them engage with making the world better when they’re in their 20s. This is a fantastic sign for the future of the country. It’s habit forming if someone is engaging and donating at such a comparatively young age, they are more likely to do so when they’re older. Face to face is building a nation of people who actively contribute to making the world a better place. It also means that there’s kids today have every right to cock a snook at their parents and grandparents generation.

2) It is really effective for the charity

There is really no comparison. Face to face brings in more donors, more reliably than any other form of fundraising. Advances in fundraising concepts like on line advocacy and two-step asks, we are really just playing around the margins. Face to face is the only way to get people to make a transformational difference. Some of the comments on the recent media articles have been from people working in very small organisations saying that they never pay fundraisers. Small organisations do amazing work and when I say the next sentence, it is in no way disparaging to them. However, a small organisation will only ever make small amounts of change. To scale up requires growth and that, pretty much always requires investment.

If face to face DIDN’T exist what would the alternatives be? Direct mail fundraising growing to such a level where every charity has to mail everyone they can all the time? If you consider face to face fundraising to be an annoying methodology, would you prefer to be receiving three or four letters from charities every day which you throw straight in the bin? No one has ever said “I wish I got more letters asking me for money”. As a methodology face to face has the same emotional impact, positive or negative of other forms of asking people for mone. On top of this the break even point for a donor recruited by direct mail at the moment is two and a half times as long as on the streets, more competition would only drag his out.

3) Human to human is morally the best way to fundraise

One of the arguments for Face to Face fundraising that I absolutely disagree with is that the end justifies the means. This suggests that the act of asking in person is bad. Its not, its the best way of asking.

Firstly there is the fact that the it feels great to give in this way.

When we give money, we get a great rush of endorphins that makes us less stressed, more happy and feeling A1 awesome! This is an effect best felt in the company of others and unless you plan on filling in donation forms by yourself in the middle of a mall, Face to Face offers you a chance to feel this good in public.

Secondly by having a human in front of you, you have a chance to ask questions and get the espouse in the easiest possible way. Fundraisers may not have all the answers, but they will know the many of the most common. Talking to a chugger will save you hunting round a website for it (and lets be honest, you wouldn’t get round to doing this anyway).

Thirdly, by having fundraisers out in them out in the street or coming to your door also means that you are prompted to do it. The number of people who give to charity without prompting is minuscule, less than 1% of the people who give when asked. If we relied on people’s knee jerk generosity only 1% of the good works the Australian public does would happen.

4) Paying people to raise money is an excellent thing

When I was working as a fundraiser on the streets, people would regularly shout at me to get a proper job. This always seemed an odd opinion to me. What constitutes a proper job. Admittedly face to fundraising isn’t something that requires a degree or formal apprenticeship, but there are many jobs like this. Surely objectively as an unskilled occupation raising money to make the world a better place is more noble than working at a fast food restaurant flipping burgers? As casual employment there are few things as worthy as fundraising.

Also, to counter one of the arguments that’s often levelled against it, no one does it for the money. It doesn’t pay anywhere near as well as any job that doesn’t involve the word “charity”. (I’m not going to argue the reasons why this shouldn’t matter here, instead I’ll just link to Dan Pallotta again.) And when you consider the amount of abuse people who do the job receive, they are certainly not remunerated as well as they should be for doing a good thing.

5) The worst thing you can say about it is that you don’t like it

Perhaps the most common complaints that have come up in the media or to me in person is that they just don’t like it. To be honest people are entitled to any opinion they want. All those people who smile at you and ask you to help the world out. How dare they, how DARE they. Here is a pro tip for people who don’t like face to face fundraisers, ignore them.

If you feel you are doing your part, that’s ok. Don’t stop and talk. If you feel that you’re not doing enough to make the world a better place, but really would rather not do any more, that’s ok too. Don’t stop and talk, you have lost precisely nothing. If you are someone that would like to make more of a difference in the world, but are in a hurry or a bad mood or simply not in a position to do more at the moment, it’s still ok not to stop and talk to them. But why would you want to stop people who want to give from being given the opportunity to give money. Why create a scenario where someone’s life is NOT saved because you don’t like not talking to someone.

Face to face fundraising is a wonderful thing with wonderful consequences. As a nation we should embrace it and the hard working people who do it. Stop using anti-face to face rhetoric as a way to fill slow news days and start telling stories the wonderful work done by Australian charities and NGOs. Negative media doesn’t stop people signing up, but it does make politicians think they should start talking about legislating against it. This is a real risk and one that as an industry we should take seriously. But first lets talk about why it’s fantastic, let’s celebrate the most important fundraising methodology of our time.

*I use the term chugger here in my efforts to reclaim the world. The word obviously isn’t going away. One day I hope that we can use the word “chugger” without confusing asking people for money for a good cause and physically assaulting people for personal gain.

Stupid or Smart? Asking for a donors occupation.

Occupation is field that’s appeared on 90% of RG recruitment forms since the dawn of time. It seems like a logical thing to have on there, after all surely a person’s occupation is surely an indicator of how they will perform as a donor. And on top of that all data is good data right? Spoiler Alert! It’s not. But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to have it on there. Let’s look at the bad and good, the stupid and the smart reasons for including an occupation field.

Stupid

Donors don’t provide good data

What do you do for a living”, . How do you answer that question?  Well I assume you’re a fundraiser otherwise you’re just here for my witty prose, which seems unlikely. But how do you describe what you do to people. Do you say you work for a charity? Or that you working in marketing? All of those are true answers. Even if you’re as specific as “fundraiser” it doesn’t tell me very much. You could be straight out of university and trying your hand at F2F or you could be running a multimillion pound capital fundraising program for a university hospital. Self-declared job titles are largely meaningless and impossible to analyse.

Worse still if you try to coral the donor’s information into sectors or guide them towards certain answers you will still end up with information that is just as inaccurate (again, how would you categorise fundraiser), but this time with the added issue of putting people into a category. People don’t want to be stereotyped, they don’t want to be classified. Telling them they work in marketing when they have given up that job and moved to the charity sector in order to use their powers for good is not going to win you any favours

The Fundraiser’s can make the problem worse

There was a stage when I was monitoring quality F2F programs where we had a spate of people who put their occupation down as “superhero”. As we didn’t have road trips going our to Metropolis or Gotham city, its pretty safe to assume that the fundraisers were prompting the donors what to say.  Although superhero may be an extreme example, it’s a demonstration that as part of  what can happen when two people try collect free text data.  A fundraiser may prompt the donor to give  for purely innocent reasons. For example if they’re studying law, the fundraiser may put down “lawyer”. The issue here is in analysis down the line. If they sign a thousand law students who you think are lawyers, you may find yourself wondering why the legal profession were so bad at sticking to RGs. It could come from a more sinister place. If, for example, employment is mandatory criteria for a valid pledge. a fundraiser may alter to add to the recruitment form in order for it to count. This is why, when occupation is mandatory, a water tight welcome call is needed to ensure that fundraisers know that they cannot do this.

It makes the donor think that it’s being used, when it’s not.

When you ask for data of any kind, you’re entering into a pact with the donor (or er… data giver… there’s probably a term for that). They are telling you something about themselves and they are asking you to keep it safe and use if for a good purpose. Although not using data you’ve collected may not be bad as loosing or abusing it, I would still be pretty miffed if someone asked me something personal under the guise of requiring data and then didn’t do anything with it. If someone tells you they’re an emu farmer, then calls you just after the bottom drops out of the emu egg market, they may be upset you don’t have the details in front of them.

But it’s not all bad, there are a couple of reasons why it can be useful to collect occupation.

Smart

It helps the fundraiser establish a donor’s ability to give.

Prompting the fundraisers to ask what the donor does gives the fundraiser an opportunity to  ensure they donor is in a position to give long-term  and at an appropriate level. If the donor says they’re a student and wants to give $50 per month, the good fundraiser may find themselves talking the donor down to a gift size that more affordable in the long term. It’s far from watertight, as mentioned above the answer is not reliable, but as a guide it can be handy.

It helps build rapport.

Filling out a donation form can be a little stressful. You are asked for a number of very personal details and that can put you on edge. Asking for occupation can be used by a great fundraiser to get the donor to talk about themselves a bit. This can help avoid both the donor getting too stressed by the situation during sign up and also after the sign up.  Although many people can have difficulty defining what they do, most people feel comfortable talking about their job.  This is why it’s often the default first question at dinner parties.

What are your thoughts? Have you found a way to make good use out of the occupation field from a data perspective? Have you sworn off using in data collection after you signed up your 900th caped crusader? How do you explain what you do for a living? Everyone reading this blog is interested to know what you think, join the conversation by commenting below.

 

Top 5 Questions to Ask Before starting an Regular Giving Program

Over the past few months I’ve been talking to a few different people from smaller organisations about regular giving.  As the advantages of an RG program as opposed to just cash gifts are clear, adding the option rightly comes up quite early in the life cycle of an organisation. So how do you know if you’re ready and what should you look into early on?  Here are the most basic questions I think you should ask yourself:

1)      Can we run an RG program? This is perhaps the most obvious point, but an incredibly important one.  Really it comes down to two things, capabilities and capacity.  You don’t want to be in a position that you’re trying to play catch up with systems when you’re already going.   My short and non-comprehensive check list of the basics would read.

• Capabilities: Do your systems allow for people to give reoccurring gifts? Can you track who has made them and who has not?  Can you give accurate tax receipts to people?  Is this an incredibly manual process that is going to take up all your time and stop your organisation achieving its main goals?
• People: Do you have the resources to administer it.  Related to the above point, most technology will require some level of human processing. In addition a regular donor is likely to feel more involved with your organisation and will have the right to have any questions or enquiries answered in a timely fashion.  Generally speaking the bigger and or newer the the program the more incoming issues your likely to have. So don’t try to grow too quickly.

2)      Do we have a decent proposition to recruit people as regular givers?  This isn’t necessarily hard to figure out, it can be your ongoing work and overall goals, just make sure it isn’t timed or too specific. A good formula to think of is “support x so we can y in years to come”, rather than “support x so we can z next year”.  Also work out how you’re going to communicate with your donors, if you don’t tell them how awesome they are and how much their money is helping, then they won’t give it to you for very long.

3)      What’s out recruitment strategy? I’m going to help you with this one, because the answer is always the same, start small and grow slowly.  If you grow slowly then you have the opportunity to work the teething problems you will inevitably encounter while they remain small in volume.  Secondly think about who  you are going to ask and when?  I’m also going to help you with this one.  Ask the people closest to you first then work your way out. Realistically the best people to ask to become Regular Givers are the ones who are already giving to you in some way.  Ask them in the most personal way in which you have capacity for. In the smallest of programs this could be a phone call from you. I know that you’re awesome so you’ll be really successful.  Then when you’ve asked the people who you know best, try some of the people who you know a bit, they might have asked for information from you but not given you money, most people won’t give until you ask them, so ask them. When you’ve exhausted everyone you know then you might want to think about recruiting people you don’t know.

4)      What should our recruitment budget be? Before answering this, go back to the previous questions and answer that.  Don’t be concerned with having a “budget” of any sort before you’ve tried all the stuff that’s essentially free. Then when those people have been exhausted work your way through all the cheaper stuff with a slightly wider circle of people who know you fairly well and when you are absolutely ready start speaking to people outside your circles.  Speak to a few agencies, because if you’re at a stage where you have to describe yourself as small in any sense you’re probably not going to be able to run a program in house. Get a few quotes and find someone you want to work with and who wants works with you. If you’re thinking of getting into F2F make sure you have a lot of money to invest (an excellent presentation by friend of the Blog Peter Coleman of Public Outreach Australia and new friend of the blog Alice suggested $300,000 as the minimum spend – which seems a valid figure, but understand that that doesn’t include what you would be laying out in resources on your own end and you will need to be planning to spend that year on year to make it really work).  Given this, it would be a really unusual circumstance where you’re looking to start F2F in the first few years you’ve been running regular giving.

5)      Am I holding back without good reason?  The biggest thing stopping us from pushing forward our programs is often our own fear of change.  A regular giving program will almost certainly give your organisation a huge amount of benefits, predictable income,  steady growth and so on.  However RG will not be the right decision and and for many more now will not be the right time. That said if you can see a glimmer of hope that you can make it work, stop reading this blog and start putting the pieces together to make it happen. A solid regular giving program is a wonderful thing.

Give More Tomorrow

The last post talked about the vital financial impact that an Opt Out Auto-Upgrade can have on an organisations finances, and the potential bad feeling that can arise from them. I also mentioned that I’d talk about alternatives, better ways of maintaining the value of your data base, so I better keep my promise.

One of the biggest innovations in this space over the last few years has been the variations on the donor opting in to an Auto-Upgrade. At some point, often the point of recruitment, the donor makes a pledge that their donation will increase by x amount at y point. The y could be either 12 months from now or a specific month; the x comes from a number of potential systems of which I’ll outline some below. Before that lets look at why it works so well.

–          It means that they know their gift will retain its power in relative terms over the length of the donation.  Without prompting, most people won’t think about their gift loosing impact over the years, but if you suggest it to them, most will easily understand this.

–          Delaying the increase appeals to people’s knowledge of their own procrastination. In the main people know their lazy, this is a way of giving people the nudge to their future selves to do something their future selves will like, but which they wouldn’t get around to off their own back.

–          As long as they are not a born pessimist, people tend  think that they’ll be in a better position this time next year than they are today (note, I’m basing this on the sunny outlook of Australians). They are likely to get a pay rise of some sort,  they may think they’re in line for a promotion, they may have paid off a bit more of their mortgage etc… A delayed increase works with enthusiasm for the future.

–          It gives the donor control.  They may be a pessimist, they may be thinking of retiring the beauty of the opt in auto upgrade means that the opt in allows for people to be individuals. There is very little chance that the donor will feel negatively toward the organisation as a result.

–          For the charity receiving the increase, not only is there the increase in monthly revenue, but also this is predictable.  You can predict with greater certainty what the monthly income will be.

For the donor and the charity, there are very few negatives.  However, public facing fundraisers and agencies will need to do some extra work.  It takes time to explain the donation increase and to collect the data and to train on doing these things. .  Most cases I’ve seen have not involved an extra payment for asking for an opt in Auto Upgrade. Mainly this is because it would mean paying for something speculative rather than easily quantifiable (the donor could cancel the donation or the upgrade). Even if the increase does eventuate there will be no return on investment for over a year.  In addition any reward passed down to the public facing fundraiser would mean that the PFF is more likely to talk people into doing it who don’t really want to, thus skewing and success rate/ROI estimate. That said, keeping an agency too accountable for something that you don’t directly reward them for  is both difficult and questionable.  Uptake rates in particular are hard to manage if you can’t provide a financial incentive.  For any agencies reading this though, especially those I work with, I would make the point that the increased revenue and ROI is only going to be positive for them in the future.

In terms of what this increase is, a number of approaches are being used. The initial idea was to link the yearly opt in upgrade to the rate of inflation. This is certainly the clearest way of demonstrating that a donation needs to increase to retain its impact, it’s also the most future proof allowing for any unexpected inflation levels.  The unusual the amount by which it increases lends itself to a rounding when the donor is asked for a one off upgrade (eg. If they are increasing their donation from $25 to $25.78, why not just increase it to $26?)  There are some issues with this approach.  Firstly, not everyone finds it easy to understand.  Although the idea of inflation is generally understood, explaining it comprehensively and accurately can prove harder especially in the brief amount of time we get with donors at point of recruitment.

A second idea of an opt in auto upgrade was to have a set amount that the gift increases by each year.  Say a dollar or two.  This is certainly easier to communicate at point of recruitment, but it suffers in that it doesn’t take into account the initial pledge level – a dollar on $30 is half the percentage increase that a dollar on $15.

My personal preference is to allow the PFF negotiate an increase with the donor, this gives them control of the upgrade as well as ownership of it. If pitched correctly, this should not only minimize the number of people who get annoyed by the increase, but potentially also maximise the amount by which they upgrade. One of the added bonuses of this final method is that many donors are actually suggesting they increase their donation by more than inflation.  If they are optimistic about their personal circumstances and believe they will be better off in 12 months, especially those who have recently finished studying. Many will pledge 15-20% increases in the future and it perversely becomes important to limit the uplift amounts to ensure they don’t let themselves in for a nasty shock in three or four years time.

The opt in approach to an Auto Upgrade will always give you a lower uptake level than the opt out approach.  Although there isn’t any clear data to benchmark, figures I’ve seen have varied there has been anything from two thirds opting in to just 20%. Although product and proposition play a role here, by far the biggest influence on uptake seems to be making sure everyone gets asked. But it contains far less risk both in terms of both retention and reputation.  It also should not replace the specific upgrade ask (by phone or DM) as this gives a greater increase per donor and hypothetically better retention.  However due to it’s balance of cost efficiency, low risk and high potency, it’s seems likely to be a part of many RG programs moving forward.

PS.  As fundraisers I’m pretty sure you’ll all be reading this PS. I really appreciate all the feedback from the last article, on my Facebook page, through email and especially from those of you I don’t know well in the comments section.  It’s obvious that opt out upgrades are still controversial and stir up a lot of passions. I welcome any thoughts or comments you have, wether you agree with me or not so please don’t be shy: Comment below, share on your networks drop me a line.

PPS. Apologies for the more irregular updates of late.  A heady combination of End of the Financial Year workload, moving house etc… has held me back.  I look forward to being more regular in the future (I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to make that joke).

Why I stopped hating the opt out Upgrade (and why I probably won’t be doing it again)

A few years ago a fellow fundraiser told me a horror story.  He had heard that another charity had just increased all their donors’ regular gifts without asking them. I was appalled as I liked this charity, but I made a mental note never to support them.  Flash forward a few years and it turns out , that like all good horror stories, although there was some basis in fact most of what my friend told me was not really true.  What the charity had done was an opt out upgrade, sometimes called an auto-upgrade.  They had informed a number of their donors that their monthly donation would increase, unless they asked them not to, then increased the donation of all the non-responders.

Although this may have been the first opt out upgrade conducted by a charity in Australia, its certainly not the last. But even with a number of organisations conducting these programs over the years, it remains one of the most controversial tactics  of Regular Giving programs. When discussed among fundraisers a good proportion of them believe opt out upgrades to be the work of the devil whilst a similar number believe it to be literally a life saving retaining value against inflation.  Personally I started out being extremely against the idea, but over the last year or so I have changed my mind.   Although I didn’t initiate the first one, the program I look after has run several opt out upgrades.  I’ve run a couple of these programs now  I’ve seen the outcomes first hand.

Before I give you the reasons why I’ve come around to the idea of opt out upgrades  I’d like you to ask yourself a couple of questions.

1. If you were to die unexpectedly and your heart to be used to save someone else’s life, would you agree to the transplant?
2. Are you registered as an organ donor?

The difference in the number of people who respond positively to these questions tells you why opt out upgrades have a place in fundraising.  I consider myself to be an engaged, organised and responsible person, but I am also one hell of a procrastinator.  Anyone who’s seen the half finished planter boxes in my back yard can attest to this.  Most people won’t make these decisions unless they either really, REALLY  care about the outcome or they are put on the spot. To continue with the organ donor analogy above, Germany has an opt in system of organ donation, and around 12% of their population have agreed to save someone’s life after they die. Austria on the other hand has and opt out consent to organ donation, meaning that  that 99.98% have agreed to give their organs after death.  I’ve known enough Austrians and Germans to realise that they are not exactly the same, but there aren’t 87 degrees of altruism between them either.  By contacting donors and telling them that their donations will increase if they do not contact you, then you are asking them to say if they really care enough NOT to upgrade.  If they do then they will tell you. If you phrase it correctly, they are unlikely to be angry with you.  An opt out upgrade is not an increase in the gift whether the donor likes it or not, but it is making sure the question is heard and asking if they really don’t want to increase their gift.

The ethical arguments against an opt out upgrade are usually around idea that it’s removing the donor’s choice. But asking them to opt out, still gives them a choice which we are not usually granted in other areas of our lives.  My electricity company doesn’t give me the opportunity to opt out of their price increases. The government doesn’t ask me to contact them if I choose not to increase my taxes.  Cooper’s brewery are yet to give me a heads up about the increase in beer prices and give me the chance not to pay extra if I don’t want to. The option of opting out keeps the choice  in the donors hands, which in turn reflects the optional nature of a donation.

One flaw in this theory is that there will always be a number of people who you haven’t see your communication and therefore are unaware that they had the option not to increase the donation.  They only see that it has increased when they look at their statement. There are two basic situations where this could have arisen.  It could either be because they received, but chose not to read the email or letter or you have their details wrong and they didn’t receive it.

A number of these people will be upset at the increase and a number will tell your incoming call team in no uncertain terms how upset they are. The percentage of these people is comparatively small, but they more than make up for it in their volume. The important thing, as with any complaint, is to listen to them and explain what has happened. Be ready to offer refunds at the drop of a hat. Tell them that you’re sorry that they feel that way, that they have missed the communication or that you didn’t have their correct details. You shouldn’t be sorry for the program of opt out increases.

All of the stats evaluations that I’ve seen on opt out increases show that the increased income far out-weighs the slight increase in attrition. This can be improved by making intelligent who is upgraded based on tenure, gift, age etc…  So  there can be no question that it is very effective and ethical, but I am unlikely to run an opt out upgrade again.

The problem with an opt out upgrade is that some people, even if they understand it, will not necessarily like it.  They won’t cancel their donation, certainly not immediately.  They won’t call you and tell you that they’re upset, but there will be a feeling of negativity there. Fundraising works on a very base level; it’s all about emotions and our lizard brain. If there is a feeling of negativity then there it makes getting people to agree to things later on, much harder.  They may say no rather than yes when you next ask them to upgrade. They may be more likely to cancel when that big bill comes in or that holiday comes up.  We’re not talking about big swings in emotion here, but they may only be 3% more likely to say “no”.  But a successful RG or indeed any wide scale fundraising program is about getting as many of the small percentages work in your favor.

The problem is now you’re aware that there’s one way of making an RG database retain it’s value at low cost, there must be another way which doesn’t colour you negatively.

I’ll save those ideas until the next post.

In-House Vs Agency

Due to the high cost of recruitment  a suggestion often made by senior management is to bring a Face to Face fundraising program in house.  The general conversation seems to run along the lines of “hire some back packers, get them out on the street and it’ll be as good as what we have at the moment but cheaper, more reliable and we’ll have more control over it”. This argument is flawed in a very large number of ways, as well as being really quite disrespectful to the people who have devoted their careers to making F2F work. In case you’re ever in a position where someone in your senior management team suggests bringing the program in house, keep this guide handy so you can smack their arguments down quickly and efficiently.

Recruiting Fundraisers is hugely difficult

Let’s say you’re lucky enough to have recruited a person to who is experienced enough to run your team but not so burnt out  that the thought of ever asking someone for money again terrifies the hell out of them. The first thing you’re going to have to do is find someone for them to work with. Recruiting new fundraisers is one of the most frustrating things in the universe. Very few people wake up in the morning and decide that they’re going to apply for F2F fundraising jobs that day. You have to sell the idea to them in the advert. When you find an advert that seems gets respondents, the respondents will often turn out to be unsuitable. When you find an advert that gets decent respondents one week, you can run it again the following week and no one will respond.  Also be prepared to do this in perpetuity. If you ever get to a point where you think that you have “enough” Fundraisers, you’ll still need to recruit or you will find that the on you had have suddenly all gone and you have no one again.  This process will cost you lots more money than you realise and far more heartache than you ever thought necessary.

The only organisations who have made an in house fundraising team work in Australia to scale are ones that have in-built or adoped recruitment mechanisms for recruiting fundraisers. Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society and UNHCR have all succeeded done this in Australia, for different reasons.  Greenpeace and TWS have a cultural cache built from their public engagement for the last few decades. UNHCR have understandably strong connections to refugee and recent immigrant communities who often face a lot of prejudice when looking for employment. This means that their F2F team often pick up highly intelligent and incredibly skilled people who may have struggled to find work in more conventional sectors.  I’m sure this alone doesn’t make their recruitment a walk in the park, but it helps. Another overseas example of an in house success story was started when one of the charity’s main suppliers going under and the charity hired the entire work force. They were such a large organisation that they were able to sustain the recruitment costs needed to keep a team.

Managing an F2F team is REALLY hard

When you have some fundraisers on board, do not underestimate how much time, effort and pain will be required to keep them out there signing people up. F2F has a ridiculous staff turnover for a reason. The Fundraisers will spend all day in rain, sleet, heat, hail and wind being told “no”.  This means they either resign soon after they start or they are crazy. Crazy is perhaps a little harsh, but in order to survive they will need the following qualities

• Headstrong (this means they will only do what you ask them to if they agree with it)
•  Excellent negotiation skills (they will practice this by negotiating every single possible issue with you)
•  Passionate about the cause (if they are passionate about the cause they tend to be passionate about everything in their life, to the extent that their results will stop should at the slightest thing happen in their personal lives. E.g. One fundraiser stopped getting results because he couldn’t decide what he wanted to get his girlfriend for a birthday present)
• Inspirational (they affect other people, not just when they’re pitching either. If one person is having a bad day, it’s likely everyone will have a bad day

It’s not just about the Fundraisers

If you are running an in house program purely for financial reasons, it’s unlikely that you have taken into account what goes on in the background. Before the Fundraisers go out they’ll need locations and permits booked.  You’ll need staff to enter the data or at least verify it. You’ll want welcome calls meaning more cost internally or outsourced.

You’ll loose flexibility

One of the great advantages of an agency is that when things aren’t going well, they’re likely to be able to move capacity onto you campaign from somewhere else.  If you have an in-house program you’ll never have this option.  You can increase your recruitment budget, but that doesn’t guarantee an increase in recruitment.

It’s not likely to solve your problem

This is the real kicker.  There are plenty of good reasons for starting an in house team, (some willing subjects with which to test new methodologies, a gang of experienced F2fFers knocking down your door in a desperate need to work for you) but they’re rarely themain reason for starting one. More often than not it’s to substitute for a lack of available capacity or a need for more consistency in results. In house teams provide no guarantee of this. This isn’t to say that they can’t be found in an in house team, but there no correlation with their in-house/outsources status. Good teams are good teams no matter who employs them. The main difference is that an agency is far more likely to be able to deliver you a good team in less time than starting one yourself, completely from scratch.

Balancing average pledge

As a fundraiser working for an agency I was very concerned with retention.  Our efforts for recruiting a higher percentage led us to looking at the effects of pledge amount.  We found what most of you reading would expect, that generally. The more you give, the more likely you are to cancel sooner. As we prided ourselves on giving our donors the best return on their investment we then worked hard and successfully on reducing our average pledge.  The followed a positive impact on retention and our clients were generally happy; on top of the improved retention a drop in average place in F2F generally also means a cheaper cost per donor.

However one thing that I didn’t realise at the time was medium term effect of a lower average pledge. The first, most important and perhaps most surprising that a lower average pledge means it takes longer to break even on a cohort of donors. There are a number of assumptions that are involved in this statement, and feel free to challenge any of them, but the evidence I’ve seen for myself plus the anecdotal evidence, backs it up. Assuming that the recruitment cost is based on donation amounts with a retention clawback or built in, assumed discount. Assuming that the reduced gift means that there is a relatively consistent attrition level across all donation rates. And assuming that the improved attrition isn’t more than say 10% better at year one. The reason for this is that there is less money coming in in “profit” from the donors who passed the break even point. The reduction in pledge is necessarily caused by a lowers targets across the board, meaning it stops donors signing up for more than they can afford or care to give, but it also lowers the amount that people who could afford to give more, give less.

On top of this, the reduced pledge means reduced overall income and, to rub salt into the wound, less financial gain from upgrades.  As an RG fundraiser, the frustration felt from these issues is only topped by the knowledge that this is only a medium term problem and you’re actually getting better value for money. Regular giving is all about the long term. It may take you six months longer to break even and be running a $10,000 under budget, but you know in two years time this will have paid off, probably several times over.

So what’s more important here? Higher initial income or more donors down the track. The slightly dull answer is somewhere that you need to find balance that works for you and you’re suppliers. They know that a high average pledge will mean higher attrition and less work for them in the long run, so they’re likely to work with you to try and keep it in boundaries that work for both you and them. It’s also important to remember that constantly pushing the pledge amounts down won’t increase retention after a certain point.

The Active Donor

One of the times I’ve been angriest in my career as a fundraiser, actually in my life, was when someone  working at a charity said the following.  To my face.

“They’re just the Face to Face donors.  They’re not engaged with what we do, most of them probably don’t event know who they’re giving to.”

After I’d been sedated and had time to think, I realised that this is probably the way in which many people in NGOs think of F2F donors. There are some common, but deadly, misconceptions about the donors that fuel our organisations work. This include

• Most don’t know much about the work the charity does.
• They care very little our the work we do, they don’t share the same values
• Many don’t even know the organisations they donate to.

Although there is an element of truth to some of these claims (see the left hand side of the bell curve of engagement) it does an enormous discredit to vast numbers of people.  Part of this attitude comes from negative views on the methodology of F2F, assumptions that people are bullied into signing, or only join because they fancy the fundraiser.

However, we can’t lay the blame for these attitudes solely on others.  The way in which we treat donors reinforces this idea, when there’s the opportunity to do so much more.

In general terms, our communication do little or nothing to encourage anything other than sit back and not cancel. We send them magazines and newsletters telling them how great we are, and, if we’re better at our job, how great they are. We call them up and ask them for more money or to update their details, but none of this invites them to do anything more.  The thing is that we can and we should.

Do not underestimate what kind of a commitment making a monthly gift is.  Admittedly some donors won’t notice the gift going out each month, but declines tell us that a good percentage of our donors don’t have enough money in the account or on their card to complete the donation.  They are committing their last cents to our cause.   If they are doing all they can financially so why limit them to just a financial contribution. Imagine if we tapped into the enthusiasm and asked them to take a small action. Something easy and immediate other than donating that helps attain your organisational  goals: sign a petition, send a postcard to send off, tell a friend about the charity.

Not everyone will take the action of course, as with any call to action there are going to be a majority of people who say no, or who cant be bothered or who forget.  But imagine if just 5% of your donor base wrote to their MP about an issue you’re campaigning on, or encouraged one of their friends to sign up as well. For many charities this would be a sea change in what they can achieve.

On top of that as well imagine the possibilities for retention.  When donors do something other than give you money, the more they are engaged.  The more they engage, the longer they stay, the more likely they are to increase their gift, the more they are likely to remember you in their will. When donors move on being active they become much more than RG donors, they start to become an integral part of your fundraising strategy and even your organisation.

However, all of this requires a change of thinking however and possibly one outside of just the fundraising department.  There needs to be shift in viewing the donor as sitting in an armchair not remembering that they’re giving to you, to someone standing on the front line of your protest, telling their friends that they give to you. And the paradigm shift is only the beginning, when you’re looking at your donor base in this way, the entire way in which you communicate with them changes. It becomes more interactive, more frequent, more inspiring and yes, more work.  But the rewards more than make up for it.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Framing Donation

Creating a connection between donor and charities is the greatest influencer of retention at point of recruitment. But not far behind that lies the way in which that donation is framed. The language used during recruitment, qualifications used to select donors and the way any longevity objections are handled directly influence how far along the bell curve of attachment a donor sits. Here are some of Dos and don’ts of donation frames.

Do – Get the donor to sign some sort of commitment to longevity at point if recruitment. A common example of this is the commitment on a F2F form where a donor signs a pledge to give for at least two years. It’s not a contract but it gets the donor to think about the donation in terms which turn a decent return for the charity. Also it should reduce the number of people who sign up with the idea of only giving for a short while.

Don’t – Limit the donation length with this commitment. Sadly it’s really easy to frame the commitment in a limiting way. Phrases such as “you only have to give for two years” or “it’s just a two year donation” make it sound as if it is a burden that the donor will only have to endure for a relatively short period of time. After that, the world will be saved and the donor has “done their bit”. It’s the opposite of what their RG should be; it’s a joyful contribution to a cause the donor believes in and the languages used should reinforce this framing  In addition by suggesting that the gift only goes on for a limited time, cancelling becomes a question of when, rather than if.

Do – Frame the case for support as something won’t that be solved overnight. Although its important to use pressing cases and current issues to encourage people to  join  today rather than putting it off, any such examples must be put in context of the wider work your organisation does. For instance if there has been a recent disaster your charity has responded to explain the work that you did but be clear that you’ve responded to that disaster; what you need is money for future disasters whenever they arrive.

Don’t – Let people off when they say they’d like to give for a limited amount of time. In one to one recruitment it’s common for people to let the recruiter know they’re going to cancel before the pledge breaks even. It could be that they’re an International student, people they change charities every year or they just aren’t that into your cause. Although the minimum term commitment will catch most of these it’s sadly relatively easy for a fundraiser to get around it, if their unscrupulous enough.

Do – Counter the above objections. If someone does not have the ability to give long term, direct them to other forms of donation.  If they are wavering whether or not they really care enough, put them on the spot.  Be clear your looking for long term supporters, ones there for the long haul.

Don’t – Say cancel. Ever. It’s the original sin of fundraising. It primes a donor to do just that, quickly and without caring for the repercussions