“Have you got a good template for developing our fundraising strategy?” This is one of the most common questions we're asked, but one that we don’t have a very helpful answer for. Which is another way of saying that our stock answer is “No”. There’s a very deliberate reason for this. A fundraising strategy template puts the emphasis on writing – it fuels the common myth that your fundraising strategy can be written by someone in isolation, with just a handy structure to help pull out and shape the information in their head. But I’ve seen plenty of beautifully written fundraising strategies that ended up in the bin or a dusty drawer within six months. Writing isn’t the most important part of creating a fundraising strategy – it’s talking. To create a really good strategy, first you need to assemble the key people who understand your organisation and your previous fundraising efforts. Then you need to discuss your key opportunities and challenges, and make difficult decisions about how to use your limited resources. This is why, instead of a fundraising strategy template, we have a series of exercises and processes that we can help you work through to arrive at some key decisions and conclusions. Yes, we can ultimately help you to write up those decisions and conclusions in a structured way, but – cheesy as it sounds – our emphasis is on the journey as much as the destination. Of course, just saying "No, you can't have a template - go away and do loads of work instead" feels a bit mean. So here are a few reasons why developing your strategy needs to be a collaborative process, and what to focus on: No one person has all the right answers Even in a very small organisation, it takes more than one person to create a great fundraising strategy. You’ll benefit from involving your wider fundraising team, project staff, trustees, even key volunteers, supporters or donors. Often these people won’t have the right answers either, but they can ask the right questions to help you get there. Sometimes they’ll even have the wrong answers, but a successful strategy relies on bringing them along for the journey (more on that shortly). Of course, involving lots of people in the process can feel unnerving – what if certain voices dominate the discussion, or nobody has anything to say and there’s an awkward silence? When we support an organisation to develop their strategy, we work through a series of processes and structured exercises to help everybody contribute objectively to piecing everything together. This includes:
You need to debate, make and document difficult decisions Some organisations mistakenly think that creating a fundraising strategy involves listing out all the conceivable types of fundraising you could do, with an action plan and an income target for every area. The big issue here is assuming that you have the resources to do everything, and that all types of fundraising are equally valuable. For smaller organisations, this usually results in spreading yourself too thin, and doing many things badly rather than a few things well. Even for bigger organisations with capacity to try everything, it still ignores the reality that spending twice as long on Activity A might be better than doing equal amounts of A and B. So Challenge #1: Making Difficult Decisions. If we focus on an individual giving programme rather than trying to do an annual event too, can we expect a better return? Do we need to prioritise some quick wins from trusts and foundations in Year 1 to safeguard our key service activities, before we try to tackle corporate fundraising? It takes more than one person to answer these questions – you need a collaborative process, built on the processes and exercises described above. That still leaves Challenge #2: Documenting Difficult Decisions. What if you’ve decided to discount a type of fundraising that some of your staff enjoy and have good previous experience with? What if a new trustee joins tomorrow who loves major donor fundraising, and can’t understand why you’re not doing it? A good fundraising strategy doesn’t just explain what decisions you’ve made, but why. Crucially, this applies just as much to the things you don't do. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for deciding not to do certain types of fundraising – for example we don’t have the right expertise, the organisation isn’t ready, it’s too risky. Documenting these choices builds confidence in your strategy, and makes it less likely that people will challenge it in the near future. Fundraising success depends on the whole organisation
Successful fundraising requires a lot more than a good fundraising team – management need to know how to support your efforts and set realistic targets, project staff need to provide the right information to help you write convincing proposals and report back on grants, and you’ll need cooperation and a joined-up message across your social media, newsletter and at events. However, all staff are busy and they’re not going to drop everything to prioritise fundraising, particularly if they don’t understand the significance. So taking a collaborative approach to developing your fundraising strategy – and involving the wider team – helps people to appreciate any challenges that are blocking successful fundraising, and the often small things they can do to make a big difference. Creating a fundraising strategy is a dynamic and different process for every organisation We’ve successfully helped dozens of charities and social enterprises to create their fundraising strategy, but it’s never been exactly the same process twice. Depending on your focus and circumstances, you’ll need to do bespoke bits of extra work. This could include anything from analysing why you keep losing out to similar organisations for key grants, segmenting your database to analyse how many people are donating at different levels, or creating an ethical fundraising policy to help you decide when to accept – or reject – donations from companies. If you involve a broader range of people in developing your fundraising strategy, you have more chance of identifying any weak spots where you need to do extra work, then getting everyone on board to fix them. This is another reason why a fundraising strategy template is misleading – because it implies that every organisation can just work through the same content, whereas in reality everyone’s circumstances are different. For more info on how we help organisations to develop their fundraising strategy, click here. Alternatively, check out our fundraising strategy training courses and free resources.
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Trustees’ Week is a great opportunity to celebrate the amazing contribution being made by over one million voluntary trustees in the UK – and rightly so. But are trustees doing as much as they can to support their charity’s fundraising efforts – and is your organisation missing a trick? The UK is the sixth most giving country in the world and has a proud charitable tradition, despite plenty of negative media coverage in recent years. This simply wouldn’t be possible without the work of trustees, who dedicate their time to making vital decisions about a charity’s work and strategy. On average, trustees give almost five hours per week of their time – based on the median hourly wage, this is worth a staggering £3.5bn a year to the sector (source: Civil Society). However, in our experience, often only a small amount of this time is dedicated to supporting fundraising. Generally, the charities that we work with have few (if any) trustees with fundraising expertise or knowledge. Smaller charities inevitably tend to have few paid staff, so it’s essential that their Boards bring expertise related to governance, financial management and their specific area of work (for instance, education or social care). As a result, fundraising can seem a lower priority – charities may never get around to looking for trustees with fundraising experience, lack the contacts to find the right people, or not have a vacant space on their Board. Many trustees therefore feel they lack the knowledge and confidence to support fundraising – but with a bit of encouragement, there’s so much they could do. Leading the way on a whole-organisation commitment to fundraising Fundraising relies so much on contacts and having a captive audience. However, for obvious reasons, smaller charities rarely have the large supporter bases, volunteer networks and marketing budgets enjoyed by household name charities. As a result, they need as much help as possible from all the people already involved in their work. Charities raise more money when all their staff and trustees recognise the value of fundraising and the importance of supporting it however they can. That doesn’t mean people need to put their hands in their own pockets, or feel under pressure to always help in the same way. There are so many small things that trustees and staff can do that help to make a huge difference:
Developing the right culture for fundraising
As well as leading by example and providing hands-on support, great trustees can also shape the entire working culture of a charity, creating an environment where fundraising – and fundraisers – are able to thrive. Here are five ways of doing this:
Developing a whole-organisation commitment to fundraising, and creating the right culture for fundraising to thrive, is of course easier when you have fundraising expertise on your Board. However, in a tough financial climate, you can’t wait until tomorrow to start. While most trustees won’t be able to help with all of the above, we guarantee that every trustee can do something - and staff will appreciate it more than you may expect. Just when many charities were wondering how things could get any worse, along came the decision to leave the EU. There were already plenty of worries to keep people up at night. Sustained media scrutiny of fundraising practice and charity governance. A disillusioned public with decreasing trust in the sector. The need to get to grips with new fundraising responsibilities for trustees and a new Fundraising Regulator. Further clouds on the horizon in the form of the much-discussed Fundraising Preference Service and incoming EU Data Protection law. Brexit has now added a load more challenges into the mix. It's confirmed a growing belief that the values of many charities are out of step with a large part of the general public, and emphasised the need to win back public trust. Another financial crisis would mean that your beneficiaries need you more than ever but funding would be harder still to find. The huge uncertainty may make many trusts, corporates and high net worth individuals more reluctant to hand over money in the short term at least. Are you feeling depressed yet? Believe it or not, the aim of this blog is to make you feel more confident and positive about these challenges so bear with us for a bit longer! The sheer volume of bad news for charities recently can make it tricky to absorb everything, understand how it impacts your organisation and decide what to do next. Every day brings new articles and concerns. But if you can cut through the noise and work out how to identify what really matters to you and what you can do about it, you can feel a lot more confident about the future. Last month we ran a workshop at JustGiving about how to future-proof your fundraising efforts in the current climate. We worked with a range of small charities to explore the biggest current challenges are and how to move forward. A big part of this focused on what tools you can use to understand the impact of external factors on your charity and plan for the future. Here are four great tools for future-proofing your fundraising in the current climate: 1. Horizon scanning There's a big difference between being broadly aware of the challenges facing the charity sector and being able to decide and prioritise what's most relevant to your charity. Doing a horizon scanning exercise is a great first step. Start by brainstorming a list of all the different possible issues and trends that you're aware of. Be as specific as possible – for instance don't write 'Brexit' but focus on individual factors like 'corporates less likely to make donations in the short term due to uncertainty'. Next, estimate the likelihood of these things actually happening and the size of the impact they would have on your charity. Plot them on a grid as follows: This is a great warm-up exercise to get your staff and trustees thinking more clearly about things and prioritising what requires further attention, because trying to react to everything as a small team is impossible. In the graphic above, the issues in the top right quadrant are likely to be the things to discuss further, as they're most likely to happen and will have the biggest impact on your charity. 2. Play to your strengths and win back trust With public opinion in charities at an all-time low, there's a clear need for charities to win back trust and engage with their supporters as positively as possible. Many small charities have a natural advantage here, so it's important to think about how you can make the most of this. While larger charities are currently re-evaluating how they fundraise, most smaller charities that we know are in a better position because they:
Developing a public supporter promise is a great way to set out your fundraising values and demonstrate how you're different from the 'bad' charities that your supporters may have read about. This is a chance to explain how you treat donors, how you use their data and how you ensure that any other organisations that you work with uphold your high standards. Here’s a great supporter promise developed by Mind. By all means look at supporter promises developed by other charities for inspiration but it's important to avoid just copying them. You need to decide what values are important to you and how you're going to work behind the scenes to honour your promise. This may require you to review your training, induction and administrative processes. When your promise is finished, publish it prominently on your website and make all your supporters aware of it by shouting about it in your newsletter, emails and on social media. 3. Review your organisational culture and governance The Board of Trustees plays such an important role in defining a charity’s approach to fundraising, especially in smaller charities. The Board must collectively understand fundraising, engage with it and care about how it's done. Together with your senior management team, trustees should now:
4. Review your fundraising strategy
We don't know exactly what the future of fundraising will look like, but we do know that now is as good a time as any to do a proper review of your fundraising strategy and evaluate whether you're setting yourself up to succeed in a changing climate. An initial horizon scanning exercise will have helped you to explore the possible impact of various issues on your fundraising activity. A strategy review will now enable you to identify where you are over-reliant on certain fundraising activities, such as individual giving, and what you can do to diversify your fundraising and reduce your vulnerability over time. Diversifying your fundraising and investing in new areas isn't easy because fundraising growth takes time. However, a strong fundraising strategy will allow you to decide where to invest resources, forecast how long it will take to achieve results and justify the business case for investing now. If you need some help with your fundraising strategy, join our mailing list to access our strategy helpsheets and look out for our upcoming workshops and webinars. We explore all these tools for change and many more in our “Fundraising in a changing climate” workshops. We're planning another one this autumn, so please get in touch with us if you’d like to find out more or provisionally reserve a place. On 4 February 2016, the Small Charities Coalition and the Institute of Fundraising jointly organised a public forum to discuss proposals for the new fundraising regulator and Fundraising Preference Service (FPS). The forum was a response to criticism that small charities had not been consulted in the development of the new proposals. It was the first public consultation of any kind and the first opportunity for charities to engage directly with Stephen Dunmore, Chief Executive of the new regulator, and George Kidd, the Chair of the Fundraising Preference Service working group. Big changes are coming and they will affect all charities, large and small. As a fundraising consultant and small charity trustee, I’ve felt the need to keep abreast of developments and air my own views. I'd recommend that you do the same. I've written this blog to help anyone who needs to get up to speed. Below you'll find links to key documents, a quick summary of the headline news and our recommendations for what to do next. KEY DOCUMENTS
HEADLINE NEWS
WHAT TO DO NEXT?1. Meet as a Board or Senior Management Team to discuss the implications
While small charities may yet be exempted from the FPS, the forthcoming changes could well have a real impact on your charity. You may be forced to pay a levy towards the new regulator, dedicate additional resources to preparing your fundraising campaigns, and face sanctions for inadvertently breaching new rules. Your supporters could sign up to the FPS because of aggressive marketing by a larger charity without realising that they won't be able to hear from you again. We'd recommend reviewing the key documents and making sure that you're up to speed now. Even if you can't take direct action until more details are revealed, you can discuss how to monitor developments, whether you want to have a voice in the consultation process, and how you can stay flexible in order to make any necessary changes later. 2. Review your fundraising strategy and assess your vulnerability Are you over-reliant on individual giving? What would happen if a percentage of your supporter base suddenly became uncontactable tomorrow? Are there any fundraising opportunities open to you that you could start to develop now in order to be less susceptible to the changes? Do your existing trustees have the confidence and knowledge about fundraising to navigate the changes effectively? Periodically reviewing your fundraising strategy and testing how it would stand up to possible external changes is always important. Doing so now is strongly advisable. Find out more about how we can help you with your strategic planning. 3. Assess your supporter communication to stay ahead of the curve It's easy to kick and scream about the forthcoming regulation changes or blame it all on the big charities. However, we're undoubtedly in this position because public trust in charities has plummeted, and many of the reasons are justified. Now is a good time to evaluate how well you communicate with supporters. Do your staff and volunteers have everything they need to do this properly? Is there guidance for communicating with vulnerable donors or evaluating potential corporate donations? If the answer is 'no', be proactive and change now. If you're doing this well already, make sure your supporters are aware of it. Media and public scrutiny of charities is likely to keep escalating, so stay ahead of the curve and inspire trust by saying "these are the steps that we've voluntarily taken" rather than appearing to only react to enforced changes. 4. Make your voice heard The forum on 4 February was a very positive first step, but charities must keep engaging with the process and keep the pressure up by highlighting which issues and unanswered questions are important to them. There are still too many grey areas. How will the new regulator and the FPS be funded without jeopardising the viability of small charities? Will potential FPS subscribers realise that they may be blocking all future fundraising communication from their local charity, school or hospital? Will the FPS truly remain "a last resort for vulnerable donors" and not an easy button that everyone can press when, for instance, the Daily Mail or the One Show run their first feature about it? I believe that we all have a responsibility to the sector - and also to the public - as well as ourselves. Some of the criticism of charities is justified and many of the proposed changes are needed. However, it's so sad that the first ever communication preference service to target a specific industry is aimed at charities. We have a proud tradition of charitable giving in the UK but, if new fundraising regulation goes wrong, we could decimate this. Can you really afford to stay silent? Keep in touch with the Small Charities Coalition and the Institute of Fundraising to stay abreast of developments and further opportunities to have your say. Contact them to actively voice your support. Share this blog post and spread the word to colleagues and friends. Recent events have proved that your voice can make a difference. Please keep using it. This blog is based on one of seven free fundraising helpsheets for small charities published by Lime Green Consulting in May 2015. Click here to access the helpsheets. Strategy. It's a word that gets some people very excited and causes others to glaze over. I've worked with many small charities to help them to develop a fundraising strategy. My aim is to ensure that they have a solid foundation to build upon, a clear picture of the resources required and the confidence to know which fundraising opportunities they're backing and why. While every charity is different, a number of common problems and questions tend to pop up. Charities often approach me once they have already had multiple meetings and discussions that have gone round in circles. They're faced with many fundraising opportunities and find it difficult to decide between them, yet are fed up of trying to do everything well and failing. Trustees and senior staff tend to be very passionate about their organisations, which can occasionally be a barrier to balanced and objective discussion. Frequently somebody will make the valid point that "we put a lot of effort into developing a fundraising strategy a few years ago but couldn't follow it because <insert reason here> - why should we spend time doing it again?" Invariably it's not the concept of devising a strategy that was wrong, but the way that it was done. I'm a firm believer that having a good fundraising strategy is of paramount importance, even if changing circumstances force you to tweak it later. In the words of former US president Dwight Eisenhower: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Having spent much of the past 18 months supporting small charities to develop a fundraising strategy, I wanted to share my top ten tips for doing this effectively: 1. Involve the right people – be clear about who needs to be involved in the process. Varied expertise is important but too many voices can confuse or derail progress. The full Board may wish to delegate most of the work to a sub-committee. Senior staff should be able to input and take ownership. You might decide that you need external expertise from a fundraising consultant. 2. Establish a timescale - trustees and senior management are busy people and the strategic process can involve a lot of research and discussion, so things can drag on. Provide all-important focus by setting deadlines along the way – for instance at the research stage, drafting and final sign-off. Be clear about when you need to have a finished strategy but also be realistic – unworkable deadlines force you to rush critical work, demotivate those involved and tend to be ignored. 3. Consider the context – you can’t make sound strategic decisions without it. It’s vital to consider factors which are both internal and external to your organisation before devising a strategy. If done properly, a SWOT analysis is the bedrock on which a robust, resilient and highly effective strategy is developed. See our helpsheet ‘The SWOT Analysis’ for more information. 4. Identify some figures – what’s the absolute minimum income needed in the coming financial year to sustain your charity’s activities? Are there any co-funding gaps and unfunded core activities or overheads which you need to be aware of? What do you hope your turnover will be in 3-5 years’ time? Fundraising always works better when it’s target-driven so start thinking about the numbers, even if you have to adjust the more long-term, aspirational figures later in the process. 5. Know your fundraising activities – before deciding what’s right for you, you need to understand the general characteristics of different activities. Research the expected return on investment, time required to achieve it, resources you need to put in and level of risk involved – there are various guides out there that will give you a useful starting point. 6. Aim for balance – the ideal fundraising portfolio balances high-risk and low-risk options; quick wins and slow burners. Invest in several activities which take many years to bear fruit and you’ll run out of money before success arrives. Focus only on stable options with little growth potential and you’ll never be able to take the charity to the next level and will probably hit problems later.
7. Play to your strengths – if you’ve done a proper SWOT analysis then a clear picture should be emerging which will inform your final decisions. Be clear on what your ‘unfair advantages’ are – does your charity have strong links with big companies, in-house experience in events fundraising or trustees who are well connected with trusts and foundations? An effective fundraising strategy must play to these strengths – don’t make your job harder than it needs to be. 8. Be prepared to discard options – many charities make the mistake of overcommitting themselves. If you try to do too much, you’ll end up doing a lot of things badly. Be clear on the limitation of your resources and don’t be tempted to pursue every opportunity – the ideas which you discard are as important as those which you choose to invest in. 9. Set realistic targets – aim low and you might just achieve it, but with little reward. Aiming high is important but being completely unrealistic is a sure-fire way to demoralise staff. Use your general fundraising knowledge (see 5. above) to set realistic targets. Crucially, think about outputs as well as outcomes – there’s little point in measuring trust income in the early months, but knowing how many carefully targeted applications are being sent each month is important. 10. Commit to a plan – the worst type of fundraising strategy is one which is re-written every year. Commit to a plan and give staff the time and space to execute it – nothing erodes confidence like suddenly switching focus to a new idea just because another charity has had some success with it, or giving up on something before it’s had time to bear fruit. Establish a clear timeframe, monitor progress, and don’t deviate unless there’s a really compelling reason to do so. What do you think of these tips? Do you have any of your own advice to add? Please comment below and let us know! Isn’t it fun when you find a hidden gem? London is full of places to eat and drink which you stumble upon by accident and wish you had found sooner. A while ago I happened to walk past the understated front window of Max’s – a new place in North London offering a simple but enticing menu of fresh sandwiches and a small selection of beer and wine. Last Friday night, wanting a quiet night before an early start on Saturday for my AbleChildAfrica Board Meeting, I finally decided to check it out. Max’s simple vision is to offer customers a chance to indulge in his four favourite things: "Drinking booze, eating sandwiches, staying up late and not getting ripped off." The experience didn’t disappoint on any of these four points. The sandwiches were colossal and tasty, the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed, and the bill at the end was the final pleasant surprise of the evening. I left a very satisfied customer. Max’s does a brilliant sandwich but you’d be unlikely to know about it if you hadn’t strolled past the door by chance. Caught between the cosy charms of Crouch End and eclectic Finsbury Park, it’s on a quiet stretch of road with just a couple of pubs for company. The bus is regular and the weather is usually miserable – so most people will hop on the W7 and never even see poor Max’s. This reminded me of the situation which I think many small charities find themselves in. They might have an enticing shop window which gives you plenty of reasons to walk in the front door – but they’re on a quiet street with not enough people walking by (so to speak). As a charity, you could be writing brilliant appeals on a regular basis, full of inspirational and emotional stories. You could create a unique and thrilling fundraising event to entice your supporters. You could work wonders with your newsletter template and double your open rate. However, none of this will translate into crucial income unless you have enough people “walking past your window” in the first place. With literally thousands of charities out there competing for the same donors, small charities often struggle to get attention, even if they develop great fundraising products. What you really need is a base of loyal, committed and engaged supporters. I developed my ‘donor journey’ approach to supporter communication to address this. It helps small charities to develop a smarter and more pro-active strategy for targeting communications, attracting supporters and growing their loyalty and generosity over time. I wanted to quickly share a few of my top 'donor journey' tips with you... Be strategic and proactive Most people don’t have a pre-determined certainty to support or not support a particular charity. While people will naturally have preferences and beliefs about certain causes, they will be influenced heavily by many factors – such as how they are asked, when they are asked, by whom they are asked and how often. The way in which you communicate with supporters over time will shape their response at the crucial moment. Your communication strategy must keep in mind the end goal of developing relationships and making appropriate asks. This is critical because not everybody wants to receive or should receive the same message. If you ask a high value donor to make a small one-off donation, or ask a potential London Marathon runner to do a small fun run, you could be “spoiling” future asks and missing out on income. Supporters are likely become less responsive if they receive every event invitation, donation request and news update. A strategic approach avoids inundating supporters with too many messages or conflicting pleas for support. So I support charities to develop two key documents. Firstly a donor pyramid, identifying the different levels and categories that their supporters fall into. Secondly, a communications calendar – planning in advance when to send key messages, how to take advantage of the best communication opportunities and how to sequence things effectively. Maximise ways in 1. Via your website – site visitors may not feel ready to make a donation or sign up to an event – but if they leave without doing anything, you may never hear from them again. So feature a newsletter sign-up box prominently on your site and plan what you will send to new subscribers during those crucial first few weeks. 2. Social media is a great way to attract followers. However, it can be difficult to develop that relationship outside Facebook, Twitter etc. Try posting links regularly to your newsletter and website content and encourage people to join the mailing list. This gives you another platform on which to communicate. 3. Sharing is caring – don’t underestimate the power of advocacy and word-of-mouth recommendations. Your followers will have ‘social currency’ with their own contacts – take advantage of this by urging them to recommend and share content with others. 4. Look out for free opportunities – Google allows charities use AdWords for free via the Google AdWords for Nonprofits programme. Most charities are eligible and the application process is fairly quick and simple. There are some limitations and you may require some expertise to get your account working effectively, but in the long term it can make a big difference to website traffic. 5. Think about your own unique points of entry – every charity engages with the public differently and this will provide its own opportunities for recruiting new supporters. However, many charities aren’t great at capitalising on this. Brainstorm all the different ways in which people are likely to first come across your charity and try to make sure it is a positive experience and that you are doing what you can to stay in touch with them afterwards. Keep it simple This is where Max really knows his stuff. A simple, easy menu of four sandwiches – consistent quality, no frills and no overly difficult decisions to make. Don’t confuse people with endless different ways of supporting your work and hundreds of links in each email. Everything you write must be short, clear and punchy. Be confident that what you offer is of value, provide a simple choice and leave people to do the rest.
Being strategic is very important but don’t over-complicate it or spend too long planning. At some point you just need to get started and accept that you will learn things by trial and error. I hope these initial tips provide some food for thought, just like my trip to Max’s did for me. There's plenty more I'd love to tell you about this approach - both in terms of getting set up and also how to move donors up your pyramid. Please get in touch with me if you’d like to discuss this further. I’ll also be running a session on my donor journey approach in my workshop on Thursday 26 March. Finally, I’d thoroughly recommend popping into Max’s to appreciate how to keep things simple and to enjoy a really good sandwich. The braised beef focaccia is worth the trip alone! |
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