Nobody cares about your charity’s anniversary - there are better ways to spend your time

This is a guest blog by Rosie Oldham. Rosie has more than ten years' experience as a fundraiser, and is currently Head of Fundraising and Communications at London homelessness charity Thames Reach. She previously worked for arts and homelessness charity Streetwise Opera and London Wildlife Trust, and recently joined the Board of the Badger Trust.

We love most attempts to challenge established ways of thinking, so we asked Rosie if she'd be willing to write this blog off the back of her tweet below about charity anniversaries. She kindly agreed - thank you Rosie!

□ Charities, you do not need to celebrate your 5th or 10th or any other anniversary, because no one outside of your organisation cares. Needing to exist for x years isn't a reason to celebrate.

— Rosie Oldham (@RosieOldham8) March 16, 2022

Back in March, I was prompted to tweet about this after reading yet another string of threads in a sector fundraising group about plans to fundraise off the back of a charity’s anniversary. I was honestly frustrated at the precious and incredibly limited staff and volunteer time that was going into thinking about, planning and executing whole campaigns around this topic.

I’m also mentally scarred from seeing a senior member of staff spend an entire day designing a ‘birthday logo’ complete with balloons for a charity very early on in my fundraising career; this has probably clouded my view of charity birthdays forever.
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The conversation my tweet generated was fascinating! Many agreed and many disagreed, presenting different points of view about why their organisations think it is important to celebrate an anniversary year.

What's wrong with celebrating your anniversary?

• Impact first, every time - our charities’ most powerful stories are the difference we make in the world. I just don’t believe that having that impact for 10 years rather than one, or 20 years rather than 10, is more powerful than a good story about real change.
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• It's a distraction - some people made counter-points along the lines of ‘it does no harm’. I’m not convinced - there’s an opportunity cost to being distracted and putting lots of time, thought, and energy into anniversary campaigns. Time is money, and your charity’s already-stretched resources could be better spent on work that will have a greater impact. Spend time on something that will resonate more, and with more people.
  
  
• You are not your donors - of course internally it’s nice to have a celebration of your hard work, of overcoming injustice, and how far you have come in supporting people, places and communities. But it's unlikely to have the same meaning for people less close to your organisation. Even supporters for whom you are one of their favourite charities will be more passionate about the difference they are helping to make with their support, than the length of time that difference has been made for. Questioning assumptions about your campaign’s target audience can be really helpful.
  
  
• Is it really "a good chance to engage people"? - this came up a few times, but I’d argue that you should be engaging with and thanking supporters anyway. Using an anniversary as a hook for engagement feels fairly weak when your charity must have other, more effective stories to engage supporters through.
  
  
• Raising awareness is not a goal - I’d argue that ‘raising awareness’ is not an objective in itself. I attended an excellent training session on communications goals by Sarah Browning recently where she encouraged us to keep asking: "So what?" Awareness for what purpose? When you drill down into any communication, the actual goal is very rarely ‘raising awareness’ - it’s more tangible and useful than that. If your charity has decided that the main aim of an anniversary campaign is to raise awareness, it could be worth using the 5 Whys approach – to keep drilling down into why you think that is important.
  
  
• It's often very random - charity anniversary campaigns I have seen recently have included fundraising asks such as ‘donate £30 for our 30th anniversary’, and ‘we’re raising £50,000 for our 50th anniversary’. It feels like when it comes to anniversaries, fundraisers forget everything we know about why people want to support our charities - to make a difference to a cause they really care about.
  
  
• Often, existing for X years isn't something to be celebrated at all - for so many charities (clearly not all), the fact we even exist is not a good thing. Homelessness shouldn’t exist in the sixth richest country in the world. Food poverty should not exist; children shouldn’t be going hungry. We shouldn’t need to fight for our planet to be vaguely live-able by 2050. For these types of causes especially - when we celebrate, are we really being true to our vision? I don’t believe so.

All that said, when might celebrating an anniversary be appropriate?

My flippant statement about charity anniversaries is definitely not a blanket one, and there were so many good points made in the discussion that followed. I’ve explored some of them below.

• Marginalised groups - I’m aware that I am considering this topic from my own perspective and experience, which is one of white and middle-class privilege and of working in a sector rooted in societal inequalities like those. I understand that for charities representing or led by really marginalised groups, celebrating existence and the very fact they continue to fight against injustice and oppression can be important.
  
  
• Existing in a tough climate is a success - a charity still existing can definitely be cause for celebration in these difficult times, and it could make sense to tie this into an anniversary. For example, if your supporters stepped up during a crisis and your charity survived as a result. (I’d still argue the hook here is the impact you made though, not the ‘years in existence’ story...)
  
  
• Internal audiences - lots of people made the point that a charity anniversary is a nice opportunity to thank, and to celebrate with, staff and volunteers. These are the people who anniversaries are most important to, so absolutely use the opportunity to celebrate internally.
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• Relevance - is the anniversary particularly relevant, or your foundation story particularly compelling? If so then it makes sense to base a campaign around it. For example, Royal British Legion was founded in the aftermath of the First World War and so their centenary could tie in to heightened awareness of their cause area around the centenary of the event itself.​
  
  
• Yes, it can raise awareness - if raising awareness locally is your objective in and of itself, then anniversary campaigns are one way to do this. From what I’ve seen, local press do tend to pick up on anniversary stories. However I’d still question whether a full anniversary campaign is the best use of time in this scenario - could you achieve the same result, and have a clearer call to action, by spending that time writing up an inspirational case study of something your charity has achieved?

An example of an anniversary campaign that I love:

This is great because it’s actually a ‘non-campaign’ and ties this concept directly to the need for the charity’s work:
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Cystic Fibrosis Trust ‘No Party’ - We won’t celebrate being 50 until everyone can

In summary...has my opinion changed, and what should you do about your charity's anniversary?

Generally I still think that celebrating your charity’s anniversary is not a good use of time, and expecting people to give you money just because it’s your organisation’s birthday isn’t realistic.

This mostly applies to external audiences and especially to those who aren’t that close to your work. However I recognise I’m coming at this with a ‘fundraising hat’ on, and there are other reasons to celebrate a charity’s birthday than to increase support.

So when you're next thinking about an anniversary campaign, or this conversation next comes up at your charity, what should you do?
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1. Have a clear objective - why do you want to celebrate your anniversary? Is it around a key message you want to get across, a key audience you want to reach? Keep asking why - and if you can’t think of a reason that truly makes sense, don’t do it and use the time for something else instead.
   
   
2. If you can agree a clear objective, design a campaign that delivers on that and is proportionate - for example, if your target audience is volunteers and you want to celebrate and thank them for their involvement, plan a campaign that reaches and engages those people and don’t get distracted into making it a fundraising campaign as well.