Simon Scriver is the co-founder of Fundraising Everywhere, a recovering fundraiser, coach/mentor, trainer, keynote speaker, podcast delighter and lovable imp. Fundraising Magazine named him one of Top 20 Most Influential Fundraisers. He has also won Fundraising Ireland’s ‘Small Budget, Big Impact’ and ‘Supplier Of The Year’ Awards, Eircom’s Start-up Award, and was a 2019 finalist of Charities Institute Ireland’s Communications Agency of the Year. He’s a TEDx speaker and has previously won the Toastmasters UK & Ireland International Speech Contest. He holds a Diploma in Fundraising and a Certificate in Fundraising, and is working towards a degree in Theology.
Consider sending monthly or even weekly updates to everyone in your organisation. It doesn’t need to be a comprehensive newsletter, but a quick email talking about something that’s happened or something you’re planning.
Follow similar rules to when you communicate with your donors: centre your news on your staff. Why does it matter to them? Why should they feel great? What can they do to help? What are their goals and what are they trying to achieve?
It seems crazy, but sometimes being inside the organisation can make it really difficult for non-profit workers to see what they’re achieving. Show them in the same way you show your donors. I introduced this in one organisation and within a year nearly half of the staff had signed up to be monthly donors…inspired by their own work and now donating towards their own salaries!
In particular let your co-workers know about fundraising successes…and make it about them. That large donation didn’t come in because you’re a great fundraiser…it came in because the donor recognised how important the work is and what a great job the staff are doing. Thank them for that.
You might be surprised what works. I remember staff being unimpressed with a four-figure donation from a company they’d never heard of, but a few free Facebook ads were incredible to them. It felt like Facebook had noticed us and the work we were doing!
You can’t make people do something they don’t want to do…and why would you want to? Don’t expect staff to fundraise for you or shake buckets for you or go to your stupid Harry Potter quiz at the end of a hard week working with vulnerable people.
Instead try to get them involved in a way that suits them. This can take time but is going to be much more productive for you. Can they introduce you to a corporate connection? Have they been meaning to take part in a 5km run? Do they want to bake cakes and decorate the room for your Thank-You Day?
Help them be successful with what interests them and you’ll see them step up to help in other ways. And those that don’t…Hey, fundraising isn’t for everyone. Leave them to it and wait for them to come round themselves when they see others involved.
Fundraisers are a bridge…linking your staff and beneficiaries with the general public. You know that part of your role is to show the good work you do to your supporters. But it’s also your job to inform your staff on what your supporters are saying and doing.
If you’re not already doing it, asking your donors and the general public for their own stories, their messages of support and their thoughts is a great way to increase supporter engagement. But then sharing those inspiring words and stories with your co-workers is a great way to motivate them and get them on your side.
Non-profit staff can find it difficult to look outside. But you can easily bring the sunshine to them.
Maybe you’re given opportunities to address the staff or speak at Board meetings. That’s great. But by only addressing the group as a whole you’re missing out on opportunities.
Make time to sit down with staff members one-on-one and understand what their goals are. Build a relationship and build trust. Likewise, invite each member of the Board out for coffee. You’ll learn more about them in 30 minutes then you will in 10 years of Board meetings.
Through these one-on-one meetings you’ll begin to understand your staff and Board better, and understand how you can best help each other.
As if you didn’t have enough to do already!
But by putting the time in to motivating the non-fundraisers in your organisation you’ll see better relationships and better results. And banging your head against the wall will be a thing of the past.
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Guest blog post by David Page
David is a Director of Triceratops Training who offer affirming, accessible and affordable support for small charitable organisations. He has been around small charities his whole life as a service user, volunteer, staff member, leader and now as a consultant and trainer. He too struggles to juggle.
As fundraisers we need to juggle, juggle so many relationships and responsibilities in copious contexts – feeling like we are being judged in all of them.
Consider too those working in smaller organisations, those who in addition to juggling the responsibilities of solo-fundraising, also have the liabilities of service delivery, leadership, communications, volunteer management and more tossed into the mix.
However, let’s not compare the struggles of others to our own, it is hard for all of us, isn’t it? No wonder burnout too often rears its head and the balls fall to the floor, cascading our issues to those who have to pick them up.
We are a people of action and not ones for wallowing in the mire.
I have the joy of connecting with, and hopefully helping, a plethora of diverse charities who appreciate a friendly hand to help guide them.
Recently a charity has approached me with succession planning on their mind. Why? Because the CEO knows that they are teetering under the pressure, and two huge unavoidable events are on the horizon. The Chair of the Board’s term is coming to an end, always a pressured time for leadership, but even greater is the fact that a close family member has been given a terminal diagnosis, and it is recognised that they, the CEO, will need to take extended leave to process the unavoidable grief.
This is astounding leadership, in having the foresight, self-awareness and humility in saying ‘we need help’, as they juggle all the relentless work responsibilities, but also navigate the deep reality of a personal life too.
Help comes in a formal way, through professional external support as I offer, and through the upskilling staff and volunteers to share the load. But importantly, it also comes with peer support, finding those near you who are in similar situations.
Formal and informal, these avenues all offer wonderful wins, which is why our sessions at Triceratops Training try to cover both professional and peer bases with an affirming and understanding tone, one which I think we all need when we are facing up to huge, relentless challenges.
So, my advice is to reach out, connect, extend your supportive network – it is what we all need if we are to thrive, no matter how we are wired.
You see, there are over 160,000 active charities around the UK with an income of under £1m. These charities are packed with people juggling just like you, people struggling just like you, people winning just like you, even if at times it does not feel that way.
I am working on a couple of new communities especially for smaller organisations, neither of which are ready to be public yet, but both of which aim to make it easier for you to get the peer and professional support you need. Visit Triceratopstraining.co.uk, give us your email address and we will keep you updated.
In the meantime, communities already exist for you to tap into. Fundraising Everywhere is fantastic, and your local CVS or VSO are where I would start for that local connection (and maybe coffee and cake too).
It may also help to remember this from the irresistibly quotable author L.R.Knost “Taking care of yourself does not mean me first, it means me too”. So, take care of yourself by finding others who can, as you help take care of others.
Written by Alex Aggidis
With the enactment of the Withdrawal Agreement in January 2020, the UK signalled its exit from the EU and entry into a transition period.
During this transition period, all EU laws would continue to apply. The GDPR was no exception. At the end of the transition period in December 2020, only the UK GDPR remained.
That’s why we’ve invited data protection expert, Mark Burnett, CEO of Hope & May to host a free webinar on this very topic next month.
🗓️ Thursday 27th June
⌚ 12 – 1 pm BST
👆 You can register to attend here
Mark will examine some of the changes and share some early interpretations to help you start thinking about and planning for the future.
The webinar will include a live Q&A for your burning questions.
Claire is a digital mobiliser, fundraiser, and campaigner. Having worked in engagement and mobilisation teams at Greenpeace, ActionAid, Cancer Research UK and Amnesty International, she joined More Onion over eight years ago.
Since then she has delivered dozens of engagement and supporter journeys projects with organisations of all sizes and has trained hundreds of charity professionals in the same. She is now a Mobilisation Expert and Director at MoreOnion
It’s easy to get caught up in our organisation’s needs when talking to supporters. Please give us money, please support our campaign. But to develop a strong, deep and long lasting relationship, we need to consider supporters’ needs too.
Yes, that absolutely means you should be sending loyalty emails to show how their support is making a difference. For example, how you spent their money or how they contributed to a campaign win. But you shouldn’t stop there. So what’s one simple, yet really effective, thing that could take your supporter experiences and relationships to the next level? Engagement actions.
What is an engagement action?
An engagement action is a piece of content that invites your supporters to actively engage with you, and is primarily about one of their needs, not yours.
The ‘active’ bit here is really important. A quick way to assess whether your communication is active is to ask ‘can the supporter experience this fully with their hands in their lap (and without assistive technology like voice dictation)?’ If they can – it’s passive and therefore a loyalty communication, not an engagement action. It’s a fine line and one that’s often pretty easy to get over with a little creative thinking, but by using ‘active’ as the goal you can take something quite simple and create a much richer supporter experience.
For example, can someone watch a video with their hands in their lap? Yes, so it’s loyalty. But what if you made the video slightly interactive, asking the user to make decisions at the end of each section to guide their storytelling? Now, it’s engagement. It’s a fine line that makes a big difference. Now instead of talking at your supporters, you’re engaging with them.
Why bother with them?
At this point you might be thinking – I’m already so busy! Why should I make time for engagement actions?
The incredible thing about engagement actions is that they don’t need to take a huge amount of time or budget to create, but they can uplift the performance of all of your other work. And what’s more, you’ll be surprised at how much fun you have creating them!
Engagement actions can contribute to a large range of supporter objectives, including:
The right engagement action for the right audience can make people more likely to give and to remain donors for longer. One project in which we created a welcome email journey found that people who took a campaigning and/or engagement action were 4-5 x more likely to make a donation than those who didn’t.
Here’s some examples to get you started
1. A message exchange action to build empathy and connection
An engagement action can help you to connect your supporters to other key groups of people, like your charity’s clients or campaigners.
At Christmas, homelessness charity St Mungo’s invited supporters to write a Christmas message of hope to someone experiencing homelessness. These messages were printed and displayed on Christmas trees in St Mungo’s shelters across the country.
2. Gather expertise and build your community
Charity supporters have a wealth of knowledge and experience that could strengthen their work. So ask them for their input!
Environmental organisation Friends of the Earth Scotland asked their supporters to share their tips for reducing plastic usage and then shared those tips back with the community. This helped encourage supporters to think about the topic in their day to day lives, to produce a valuable resource, and help people feel connected to a broader community of like-minded people.
3. A resource finding tool
Help demonstrate your value by connecting people with useful resources.
Sustainable transport organisation Sustrans have a wealth of free resources on their website, but these could be hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
In this simple form they gathered key information on the supporter’s location and specific needs. At the end of the short form they were presented with a personalised range of resources relevant to their answers including local maps, cycle safety guides for children, and much more.
4. Make learning appealing
Do you work on a complex or difficult topic? Engagement actions can help make challenging subject matter appealing and accessible.
Freedom from Torture provide support to survivors of torture as they rebuild their lives in the UK. They wanted to build the knowledge of their newer supporters of the problem of torture and the stories behind it. They made this appealing by using the recipes that they had collected during their cooking classes – one of the many types of therapy that Freeedom from Torture provide. Supporters were asked to guess which country each dish was from and were then told the story of the survivor who cooked it. On the final step they were offered all of the recipes to download and try at home.
Engagement actions not only enrich supporter experience but they also enhance the overall impact of your work, proving that a small investment in creativity can yield substantial returns for supporter donations and lifetime value.
If you’d like to read more about engagement actions, you can download a free report at: https://act.more-onion.com/engagement_actions
If you want to hear more from MoreOnion, Claire will be speaking at Individual Giving Conference 2024 on Enhancing Donor Relationships through Strategic Engagement
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In the ever-changing landscape of charity work and fundraising, you know better than most that leadership isn’t just about steering the ship; it’s about guiding the crew through storms with courage and compassion.
It’s not about having all the answers, but fostering collaboration, empowering others, and harnessing the unique strengths of everyone.
Leadership comes from all levels. Whether you’re a seasoned CEO or a frontline fundraiser, your voice and actions matter more than you realise. Each of us has a role to play, no matter our position or title.
Times may be tough, but tough times call for resilient leaders, like you. Your ability to inspire, motivate, and support those around you is the key.
In times like these, it’s easy to lose sight of the impact you’re making.
But trust us, your work matters more than you know. Your dedication, passion, and sheer determination to make a difference are what inspires us all here at Fundraising Everywhere every day.
So, as we navigate these uncertain waters, continue to lean on each other for support, share insights, and champion one another’s efforts. Together, we can face any challenge head-on and emerge stronger on the other side.
But while you’re busy steering the ship, don’t forget to take care of yourself. You can’t pour from an empty cup, right? Remember to carve out time for self-care, lean on your support network, and celebrate the wins, no matter how small.
And whenever you need us, we’re here. 💙
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Guest blog post by Sarah Tite
As a One of Many™ certified leadership coach and trainer, Sarah Tite brings together many years of leadership experience with tools and techniques that help people face challenges with confidence. She is Director of Sarah Tite Coaching Ltd.
Funny way to start a blog you might think. But maybe not if this is why you haven’t yet taken up the opportunity to try out coaching with the funded session that comes as part of your membership with Fundraising Everywhere.
You may also be telling yourself that…
⏰ I don’t have time.
🎯 I have no big challenge to bring to my session.
😞 I am worried I might get upset.
❓ I don’t know what to expect.
💸 I am going to save my session for something important!
However, they say prevention is better than cure, in fact it is a fundamental principle of modern health care. It’s better to stop something before it happens, instead of having to deal with its consequences after the problem has already happened or the damage already done. And by the way your coach will share with you information about what to expect, and answer any questions you may have.
So, are you ready to talk. Ready to plan for the unexpected?
Not quite yet.
Ok.
Maybe I have made you a little curious about coaching, and how it may be of benefit to you.
Julie, Head of Fundraising was curious and so she booked her funded coaching session with me recently and this is what she said:
“I have always been interested in exploring the benefits of coaching, but I wasn’t quite sure what it would entail. The initial session was the perfect introduction to understanding coaching and gave me a full insight into how it could work for me. I would highly recommend!”
Highly recommended, praise indeed.
When we feel more confident in ourselves, we are better able to deal with conflict, to communicate clearly, take feedback as learning rather than evidence of failure and help create happier workplaces where people can thrive not just survive.
Can I just check that you are not thinking this offer is only for leaders because it says so in the title!
Let me reassure you that leadership is not just a job title, it’s a mind-set too. It’s a way of thinking, behaving, and acting, so in reality you don’t always need a team or a project to lead, you can lead with your ideas, insights, and inspiration to create change and open minds to new ways of thinking.
What we need are people who think, or lead in new ways, with new ways of looking at things to create the change we want to see in this world. I am inviting you to consider that ‘leadership programmes’ like this one: https://www.fundraisingeverywhere.com/confident-charity-leaders/ are not just for those who have leader in their job title!
Are you ready to step into your healthy, happy and harmonious leadership, to focus on what you need to thrive at work, home and beyond then don’t wait until you know what to say because you can be sure that each of the coaching team will help you find your voice!
“Judith embodies a transformative force. I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity to participate in coaching. Thanks to Judith’s guidance and expertise, I was able to pause and gain a broader understanding of my goals. Her motivation and encouragement have truly been invaluable on my journey towards achieving my personal and professional goals.”
Our platform is open to anyone and everyone in the sector that has an opinion, idea, or resource they would like to share. If you would like write and share something, email [email protected] and we will support you every step of the way to share your voice.
Guest blog post by Daniel Servante
I have always really enjoyed collaborating with others, be it the many bands I started as a teenager, group research projects at university, co-op gaming online in the evenings or building a career in face to face fundraising – give me people, and I am happy. Having the confidence to try something new isn’t always easy, but the best punt I ever took was knocking on a stranger’s door, aged 21, and saying “Hello, have you got a moment to talk?”
I immediately fell in love with fundraising; the incredible causes I was able to represent, the inspiring impact of each conversation I had, the soft skills I was rapidly developing without even noticing. All this immeasurably built my confidence both professionally and personally. Of course, more than anything, I stuck with fundraising for the incredible people who gave me these opportunities and put their all into doing a very difficult yet vital job every day.
Fast forward 5 years, I’m at a major fundraising agency managing sites and I saw a few key problems that needed urgent attention. One was sustainability of access, as we often saw the plug pulled on charity bookings after a single piece of negative feedback from a customer or staff member. Sometimes the complaints were fair, often they were not, but either way the site management usually saw no option but to ban all charities until further notice – they did not have any monitoring or quality control processes in place, and did not seek to implement them.
The second problem was a lack of accountability for the quality of private sites and rates being charged. When I discussed private sites with peers in the sector we often found we had all been sold the same unworkable site one after another, all being told how popular it was. We also found that rates were being inflated at the most in demand sites as we were played off against each other for bids to secure them. All in all, we were navigating quite choppy waters.
We set up Green Light Sites with two goals in mind; to build collaboration and inspire confidence. We shared anecdotal feedback on sites between our clients, and developed an in depth team auditing process (Unicef told us this led to a team achieving their highest sign up rate in 4 weeks). We gained access to new and exciting sites such as Westfield shopping centres, while pushing rates down in other key locations UK wide. Overall we offered huge value to both sides by creating much more sustainable and mutually beneficial booking agreements.
When lockdown hit we had the opportunity to reflect, and the necessity to innovate. Returning to face to face was going to be a challenge and we were determined to support the sector that gave us so much on this journey. In part we were well prepped for the new ways of working as we all already worked completely flexible hours from home. This is when our auditing became what it is today. By developing brand new processes we were able to offer our unique auditing product for street, telephone and even door to door teams. We added modules on team management, individual work rate, COVID safety and environmental impact to ensure these reports inspired as much confidence for the fundraisers as it did the venues.
It’s now 4 years later and we have gathered what we believe is the most in depth set of performance and compliance data face to face has yet seen. Overall we’ve observed over 8000 hours of fundraising since then (3300 of those last year) and the incredible ambition, professionalism and determination of fundraisers in the UK is plain to see. For example, last year our clients generated a third of the number of complaints per donor compared to the industry average. We can’t wait to share and celebrate all this and more with you all at Fundraising Everywhere’s Face to Face and Telephone conference on April 17th. If you’d like a copy of our 2023 benchmarking report please get in touch too.
I’ve always known F2F fundraisers are some of the most amazing people on the planet, and now I’m delighted to say we have the stats to prove it
Green Light Sites Ltd is a promotional sites and compliance consultancy and service provider, focused on fundraising and ethical marketing campaigns. We offer our clients access to premium space, strategy and planning, ROI modelling, auditing and mystery shopping services.
Our platform is open to anyone and everyone in the sector that has an opinion, idea, or resource they would like to share. If you would like write and share something, email [email protected] and we will support you every step of the way to share your voice.
Guest blog post by Wayne Murray, Founder of Humanity Squared.
Then there is also the cost of living crisis. It’s hitting society, and our sector hard. Charities (especially smaller ones) are on their knees, and many are closing. The sector is doing what it can, but it’s within the systems and structures we’ve built around ourselves.
It isn’t joined up enough. We’re all trying to put out our individual fires whilst a volcano is erupting around us.
To solve systemic issues we need to work collaboratively, but we’re not. Not enough, anyway. Good people are shouldering this burden, burning out and leaving the sector forever. Who can blame them when the scale of the issues is so huge?
Why isn’t there more focus on that? #ProudFundraiser doesn’t really cut it, does it?
We constantly ask donors to mobilise. To come together and become more than the sum of their parts. To be a collective lightning rod for change. But what about the sector itself? How can we ask people to be collaborative when we as charities, funders, agencies and consultants don’t collaborate enough?
Most of the change we need to see in the world is system change. There isn’t a single charity on the planet that can change deeply rooted, structural systems on their own. We have to put cause before organisation. We have to work together.
Look at the hate, bile and division the Tories are pumping out now. Look at how they view the role of charities. How they want us to be either toothless and appreciative, or to just f*** off under a rock somewhere. Do you think this is going to get better?
Hate, that was once hinted at and alluded to, is now public. It’s platformed, celebrated and central to policy. We need to be as calculated and single minded as they are. We need to fight back.
This fight is beyond our roles, our remits and our salary bands. That’s why it needs all of us.
Working for a charity doesn’t necessarily make you a good person. But my God we need good people right now. Good people who are pulling together across the sector. Good people who can collectively push for change. Good people that see beyond the boundaries of their charity and want to tackle the root causes collectively. Not for brand, or ego, or a bullet point on your CV, but for society. For humanity.
Ideally, this would start with leaders. Senior charity people coming together and setting a mandate for change, for a new way of tackling system change. But we can’t wait that long. Some brilliant collaboration is happening, but it does need dialing up significantly, and it needs to be the default.
We all need to set the precedent for collaborative working. We just need to get on with it. At every level. In every organisation.
We can start by celebrating cross sector collaboration. We can intentionally seek it out. We can learn from it. We can start it ourselves. We can get involved in as much of it as we can. We can have a collaborative mindset. We can take it seriously.
We can approach every single issue by asking ourselves “How do we solve this collaboratively?” We can make sure that every strategy we produce has partnership at its core. We can shift power to every example of it we see. We can amplify it. We can build it into how we all work.
The more we do, and the more learnings and success we have, the more others will get involved. We need to light the spark. This is how we push back.
We’ve spent years fine tuning our skills at mobilising the public at scale. Now we need to mobilise ourselves.
Cross sector collaboration isn’t a ‘nice to have’ any more. It’s how we win.
Our platform is open to anyone and everyone in the sector that has an opinion, idea, or resource they would like to share. If you would like write and share something, email [email protected] and we will support you every step of the way to share your voice.
Guest blog post by Henry Astley, Digital Strategy Director at Open.
Third party cookies have been used in fundraising for as long as charities have been running digital campaigns. They track individuals by leaving a tag on a web browser. This way someone can be identified in one place (an ad), remembered and then observed taking an action in another place (leaving a donation on a website).
Cookies can measure this over long periods of time, if one person uses multiple devices and even if they view things but don’t click them. Cookies have been used to build retargeting audiences and power modelling for targeting new audiences. They’ve had lots of uses. And they’re about to disappear.
This is a good thing. The move toward a privacy and transparency-centric web is behind this. It began with regulation in 2018, was followed by moves from tech companies like Apple’s iOS14.5 update and it’s looking like it will end with Google Chrome discontinuing cookies next year.
They are going – but what does this mean for charities? Well, some change and short term pain, but longer term opportunities for ethical and sustainable fundraising.
So what do you need to do to prepare?
Google Analytics uses cookies. Google Analytics 4 has been built as a solution, which uses a combination of first party cookies in conjunction with AI which fills in gaps in the data.
Google has provided all users of the old GA with GA4 accounts, and now is the time to check all is working ok. Old accounts won’t receive data at the end of June, so it’s important to see if your new account can report on the same information the old one did. You might need a developer or a Google Tag Manager user if you have a complicated setup. You should also download the data from your old GA, as that won’t move across.
Social media companies offer cookieless solutions for measurement and optimisations of ad campaigns. This has previously been done by pixels – code which uses third party identifiers like cookies. The major social networks now offer conversion APIs to do something similar, which use server to server connections rather than cookies. These will need setup work.
First party data collected with appropriate consent will be a legitimate way to target individuals in the future and nurturing these databases will be a hugely important digital strategy for the cookieless future. First party data might include email address, phone number or postal address, all of which can be used online to target. As GA4 data is first party it can be used to segment digital audiences too.
We’ll need to accept that even with the best preparation things won’t be the same in the post-cookie world. The biggest change will be to the measurement of digital advertising campaigns. Fewer conversions will be counted by tracking tools, and the ad algorithms will receive fewer conversion signals, which may in turn lead to poorer optimisation.
This will affect some channels more than others. Display relies a lot on cookies to track response as those ads aren’t very clicky, and often a conversion happens a long time after ad interaction. You may find that very few conversions are counted from display in the future, but other channels like PPC which are much more click based are still counted.
It will affect some campaigns more than others, too. Getting someone to sign up to a marathon involves a long decision making process which might take the runner 2 weeks to decide on. This will be harder to track than something like a petition sign ask, which can be responded to quickly.
It’s important to understand that not tracking a result may not mean a campaign isn’t performing. To analyse performance you might look at other metrics like viewability, clicks and quality of site traffic. We may even see more offline styles of measurement being reapplied online, like sending traffic to different pages, offer codes or A/B testing of locations. The offline world hasn’t ever used cookies but it gets by.
Some methods of targeting will need to change, but not all of them. Remarketing won’t be possible in the same way in the future, as this has relied on third party cookies to build audiences. In terms of prospecting, programmatic display uses cookies to build audiences. In the post-cookie world we might see a rise in display using contextual targeting methods, like placing a challenge event ad in a sports article.
Social ad platforms will have less targeting data if it has been collected from the pixel outside of the social apps, but any interest data collected from people using apps like Instagram is considered first party to Meta and will still be available for use. This means that the tech giants like Meta and Google will continue to be leaders in personalised targeting.
Strategies need to be future proof. It’s going to be harder to measure the responses from a big ask on a digital ad in the future. This might give the sector the opportunity to question whether this strategy was good in the first place. Should the majority of cold communications involve asking for money, a legacy or other large commitments? There is evidence to show this is damaging to charity brands in the long term.
Focusing on what can be measured effectively – for instance lower commitment actions like email subscriptions, campaigning actions and pledges will be both possible in the future and a better entry point into the supporter journey.
There will be other untapped engagement opportunities in digital and innovation here will be crucial. There will be value wherever we capture first party data for conversion at a later stage. This means that integration between charity silos will become more important than ever. It may not be people’s first interaction with us that drives the value – but gathering that first party data will be essential for growth.
There should be more emphasis on the quality of creative, consistency of message and supporter journey to ensure longer lasting and ethical relationships with donors in the post-cookie world.
Guest blog post by Rachel Erskine, Fundraising and Communications Consultant working primarily for Nairobi-based public health NGO Amref Health Africa.
I don't want my life to be all about the worst parts of it. I have more to offer than that.
She has discovered that Alice, the woman she’s been dating, has used Mabel’s life as inspiration for a piece of art. Seeing her painful personal history played out by actors, Mabel feels like she’s been catapulted back in time. In reality, she’s moved on – but the artwork has frozen her in the past. Stripped of its context, filtered through Alice’s own experience, the story paints a portrait of Mabel that she doesn’t recognise.
When charities share the stories of those they support, this is sometimes what we do, too. Through words, film or pictures, we capture people in a particular set of circumstances: circumstances that, given the nature of our work, we hope will quickly change for the better. We reduce them to the challenge they are facing. We trap them in time.
As a sector, I think we are starting to acknowledge the damage we do when we treat people’s stories as our property. In recent years, there’s been a real shift in the way charities are approaching fundraising storytelling, particularly when it comes to the way we represent the people we serve. Organisations working internationally – the sub-sector I’m most familiar with – are coming to terms with the harm they’ve caused through decades of reductive storytelling that centres the charity rather than the contributor.
There is broad consensus as to the direction we all need to move in: one that puts people – their rights, preferences, agency, and wellbeing – first. But from what I’ve seen, there’s less certainty when it comes to how to change course. So how do we begin to shift the balance? Here are some ideas.
There’s a strong argument to be made that to be truly meaningful – and sustainable – changes to our storytelling need to happen in parallel to, and as part of, broader and more fundamental shifts in the role charities occupy. I think that’s true. But I am also convinced that, when it comes to moving away from deeply embedded, decades-old ways of doing things, even small changes are worth pursuing – and we all have a part to play.
This blog was first shared in #FundraisingEveryWeek, our weekly email newsletter which provides fundraising tips, support, info and feel-good vibes.
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