Getting Advocacy and Fundraising Propositions To Play Nice

For some organisations, training phone or F2F teams on a proposition is comparatively easy. They have a simple idea which will work pretty much forever; give us $25 p/m and we’ll save someone’s sight each month or $30 month buys rations  for a family in an disaster area. Campaigning organisations however are often working on things that have a time defined outcome. Maybe they are campaigning to free a prisoner of conscience or stop a liquefied natural gas hub being built on one of the most beautiful parts of the world.  There are a number of potential benefits with mixing advocacy and dialogue fundrasing, increased media exposure and public knowledge, greater urgency in the ask, but there are just as many potential pitfalls.

So how do you choose what to get them to talk about?  Here are 5 simple rules to help you decide on what you should guide your dialogue fundraisers to.

Do People Care

The first thing to think about is how good the story is. There needs to be something in danger, it needs to be a thing that a lot of people will care about (no one would give to a campaign to save the plastic tags on loaves of bread) and the donor needs to be the hero of the story.

Simplicity

Fundraisers will need to explain the issue in simple terms and very quickly. I care passionately about the role new economics plays in creating a better future, but I can’t explain sufficiently to get people to care about it in less than half an hour. Ideally you want a story that can be told in 30 second.

Consistency

It’s common for advocacy campaigns have a lot of two-ing and froing, highs, lows, victories and setbacks all the way throughout their life cycles. Sadly for fundraising purposes this is a pain in the bum.  If a campaign is going to be evolving every month, the fundraisers will have to write a new script every month.  This makes it harder for them to hone it down and easier to loose track of what they’re supposed to be saying.

Time

A paradox exists that when campaigns come closer to their point of victory or defeat (hopefully victory) the greater the urgency proposition and the more successful it will be in winning people over. However, once the victory has been won, donor can loose a little of their anchor to the organisation.  If you’re looking for a long term gift then this presents a problem.  On top of this, you’ll have to largely tear up the script that your fundraisers have been using, which will frustrate the hell out of them and can hurt results.

Similarity to Other Work

If the topic you pick is similar to other projects your organisation works on then it should be easier to transition the dialogue teams and the donors to the new topic. Pick something that has transferable themes and aligns strongly with your core values.

Do The Fundraisers Care?

Perhaps above all else you need to make sure that the fundraisers care about what they’re talking about.  All dialogue fundraising works because the fundraiser is using their enthusiasm to build enthusiasm in the potential donor.  Your organisation may see one campaign as a priority, you may think that its something that resonates with donors, but if the people actually doing the asking don’t care, your fundraising campaign will be dead in the water.

Getting fundraising and advocacy to be nice to each other is possible and it can be very successful, but remember that the fundraisers priority needs to be raising the funds.

The Donor’s Decision to Cancel (and Buckaroo)

A lot of the posts in here have been about point of recruitment, that moment when someone decides to join your organisation and donate to you, but what about the other end of the journey, the cancellation point. This is harder to talk about,  but in many ways more important.

We all dream of recruiting donors who stay on until they die, but the reality is that most of our donors will decide to cancel at some point and the more we know about their reasons for doing so, the better equipped we are to stop them. There are a few different pathways to the cancellation, but let’s start with the most common the donor decision to stop giving.

This journey to the cancellation point generally starts with a mild discomfort. Its fairly safe to assume that to a greater or lesser extent this mild discomfort is present in most if not all of your donors. If your totally honest with yourself you’re also likely to notice this in your own giving patterns. There is often a nagging part of your brain that asks if money is best directed towards The Human Fund or would putting it towards Far Cry 3 be a better investment. It doesn’t make you or your donors a bad person, it makes you and normal.

These nagging moments are usually prompted by something, which for dramatic effect we’ll call “straws”( as in those things that break camel’s backs, a metaphor I will decline in a couple of paragraphs). These straws come in several basic categories.

Specific Personal Straws

Something that affects the individual and probably none of your other donors.  This could be loosing a Job, a big bill coming in, saving for something. It could even be someone having a getting out of bed on the wrong side. 

Values Straws

Anyone who’s been to a school reunion will vouch that people change over time; their priorities change, their start to care about new things and stop caring about some other things. They may have may have starter giving to your environmental organisation when they were an idealistic geology student with dreadlocks, but now they work for a mining company, they not so hot on you. On the other hand it could be that your organisation has changed and the donor hasn’t changed in the same way,

Public Straws

These are things that affect people on a wider scale. The most obvious example would be the GFC. But others could be along the lines of the natural disasters, cost of living increases, changes in legislation etc…

Communication Straws

This is a specific thing that the organisation has done which has annoyed the donor.  This cold be on the level of organisational mission such as policy the donor dislikes or negative media involving your organisation. Or it could be the way in which you’ve interacted with then from the tone of a letter they received or an-opt out auto upgrade.

Now imagine the game, Buckaroo.  If you don’t know the game it involves placing bits little plastic items on a spring loaded plastic mule.  One wrong move or too much weight and the mule kicks and who ever placed the last piece is the loser. The crucial thing is you never know what is going to be too much, it could be the first piece or the tenth piece.  The more items are placed on the mule, the more chance the next piece will set off the mule.

Now, prepare for a stretched metaphor.

Donor’s decision to cancel is a lot like the game.  Their donation is the mule; the different straws are the items.  The straws are placed on the mule, without you knowing what’s being placed, when it’s being placed or whether it’s being placed in a way that sets off the mule. You do know however that different items are being placed on the mule at all times and as time passes, the more items are being added. When the mule kicks, the donor cancels and you both loose.

You’re not privy to the any of the pressures being put on the donor’s desire to give and each donor will be loaded to spring under a slightly different weight.  You do know that as time passes and more items are being placed on the mule, the more chance there is of the next piece setting off the mule.  This means you have to be ready for the mule to spring at any time. Identifying the potential influences, especially the ones that  tip donors over the edge most regularly, will help in objection handling with individuals. The bigger question is how we can use our knowledge of the model to improve our retention long term.

Charity Training Horror Stories

Charity trainings for suppliers teams are a vital part of any relationship between supplier and Charity.  They inform the team of F2F or phone reps more about what the charity does, they are an opportunity to answer any of the questions that the reps have been pondering during their pitches over the last few weeks and months. Most importantly however, they are an opportunity to inspire the team, giving them the passion for what you do and it’s this passion that will translate to the regular givers who fund your work.

The problem is that most trainings are appalling.  For every session that has inspired and educated a team to go out and achieve better results, there are 3  that have wasted everyone’s time and another which has actually demotivated the team from working the charity.  I know of a least two organisations who have been dropped by a supplier at least in part because of the way in which they tried to train their teams.  Here is a collection of some of the most common issues I’ve seen with training sessions.

Picking the wrong person to speak

Having the right person in front of the team may seem obvious, but isn’t necessarily the case. Most of the time the training will be delivered by the NGO person closest to the supplier (RG coordinator, acquisition manager etc…)  and most of the time this is a good thing… but not always.   Public Speaking needs to come relatively easy to the trainer, otherwise they will just spend an hour whispering their way through a slide show. If this is the case and someone else from the organisation can be great, an expert in the field, a manager or a comms officer.  Even better, having a CEO or beneficiary will reinforce the teams connection to the organisation. But whoever they are, make sure they’re on board with the program, the memories of the training session which started with a 20 minute diatribe about how much the presenter hated F2F will live with me for the rest of my life.

Not knowing who you’re talking to

Again this seems like a no-brainer, but it’s been the source of many an own goal. I once heard of an organisation asking which fundraiser “ had signed up the most number of people on the street in the past week”.  Not only had the agency not started on the campaign as yet, they team they were speaking to were a welcome team call team, who remained unimpressed.  Not quite as dramatically I’ve also seen groups of fundraisers who’ve been working on the client for years given the idiots guide and a team of newbies hit over the head with an in depth analysis of new policies the organisation were considering.  Speak to the manager before you go in, find out who they are.

Telling them the Wrong things

Public facing  fundraisers  do like to hear a little about the history of the organisation.  It gives a bit of context and if anyone asks when it was founded, it’s good to have an answer. However, unless you’re Amnesty International, the story of your founding is probably best kept to a couple of sentences. In the scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter. Other things that don’t really matter include you’re governance process, the date your 14^th office opened and who designed your logo.  A rule of thumb is that if you’re quoting more than one date from the past, it better be the year you won a Nobel Peace Prize. Again, speaking  to the manager beforehand and find out what they really want to talk about.  This will generally be successes you’ve had recently, things your doing right now and things you want to achieve in the next few years.

Refusing to tell them the right things

We all know that administration costs are a terrible way to judge a charity.  However leaving your public facing fundraisers without an answer to one of the most frequently asked questions is no way to deal with it.  Give them the figure in your annual report and remind them to engage (briefly) with the donor explaining why they shouldn’t care about that figure.  Ask for a list of FAQs before hand.

Telling them how to do their job

You are there to tell them about the charity you work for, not to regurgitate what you once read about alternate ask closes.  Even if you were a phone fundraiser for 5 years, go in with the attitude that they are better at their job than you are. Every team you teach will have different ways of doing things and  too many ideas at the wrong time can be really confusing for the fundraisers.  Tell them what you have agreed with their manager will be useful.  Remind them that they’re representatives of the organisation you work for and they need to act appropriately, but don’t tell them how to objection handle.

Telling them how hard their job is

They know how hard their job is.  Reminding them will only demoralise them, especially  the newer fundraisers.  Imagine turning up in your first week of any job and someone in authority tells you how rubbish your role is going to be. I don’t know about you, but I’d be finding a way to leave as soon as possible. Instead, tell the teams how much you respect them and how important their work is to the organisation.

Going on FOREVER!

I was once in a training session for 4 hours.  No break.  At the end of it no one could remember the name of  the charity let alone what the trainer had wanted to convey.  Ask the team how long they want to be trained for and fit the most important parts into that length of time.

So there are a lot of potholes and potential pitfalls, but hey, that’s life.  There is a lot to be gained from regular training of Public Facing Fundraisers.   Some of the most inspiring and rewarding moments of my time as a fundraiser were being given trainings by the NGOs I represented.  I’ve been brought to the point of tears and inspired to have my best days from having that personal contact.  So speak to the manager of the team. Tailor your presentation to what they want and the results will go through the roof.