On-line Upgrades - The Easiest Way To Boost Your Donations?

When we set up Sponsor.ie we added a little tick box to "Cover The Charity's Fees". When donors tick the box it increases their donation to cover all credit card, admin fees, etc. so that the charity walks away with the full original amount the donor was trying to give.

Essentially it's an upgrade - on Sponsor.ie it increases a donation by about 4%. (Sales pitch: Sponsor.ie doesn't charge any monthly, annual or registration fees. No risk)

We shamelessly stole it from a small Irish competitor, and I'm delighted to see more and more of the big fundraising sites rolling this out now.

On Sponsor.ie between 10% - 20% of people tick the box. It's not huge but it's an easy boost of income to charities for the sake of a tiny tick box. It should be on every charity's website.

A different on-line giving platform came out with their results this week and have managed to get about 95% of donors ticking the box...amazing! How did they do it? By having the box ticked as a default. The donation is rounded up unless the donor specifically unticks the box.

Personally I think that's a bit cheeky...but brilliant. And having seen the 95% figure I'm seriously considering rolling this out on Sponsor.ie.

The next logical question is: How far can we take this?

Through testing different wording and different layouts I've no doubt we can boost the number of donors that want to cover the donation fees. But more than that, what if the tick box wasn't just about covering the fees?

What about a tick box to increase donations by 10%, 50% or 100%? "If you tick this box we'll double your donation and double the impact you have."

Or what about adding a small fixed fee. "If you tick this box we'll add €5 to your donation to save one more child's life."

Let's test it...

"The Casement Quotient" vs. Working In Centra

Just back from the Fundraising Ireland conference and I'm trying to get everything clear in my head - you're probably the same.

One of the ideas that stood out was one I'd heard Denisa Casement mention before: her very own Casement Quotient. She asks what is the value of your fundraising team's time?

The Casement Quotient

Income ÷ Individual Hours = Team Value/hr

In her case, 4.5 fundraisers are bringing in €2.4m per year, which breaks down to about €1,100 per hour for the team. Each individual's time is worth about €240 an hour.

Now that's not a target, it's a value she puts on her team which allows her to be brutally careful about how they spend their time each day. She argues that it makes it easier to say No to low value ideas and really question whether the short- and long-term results are going to justify the time spent on them. And it helps answer the question outsource or not?

I like it because it's no longer looking at your fundraisers as a cost, but as income (which all good fundraisers already knew). If someone is worth €240 an hour rather than costing €15 an hour then does it change how you approach their happiness...and their training.

There's crossover with an idea I've been peddling lately when charities are looking at fundraising ideas, in particular events and social media: Would you raise more if you got a job in Centra?

In other words, would you raise more money for your charity by spending a day a week updating, engaging and cruising Facebook...or by working one day a week in Centra and donating your pay to the charity?

At your next event, look round at all of your volunteers and staff and ask yourself If these people were all stacking shelves for minimum wage right now (or working in a eye-wateringly high-paying job), and donating their pay, would I be raising more money?

But it would be a brave person that responds to a potential volunteer by asking them to go and get a job.

The 20-Day Fundraising Challenge

We're running the first 20-Day Fundraising Challenge. It's for fundraisers or anyone responsible for the fundraising in their charity or non-profit.

I was inspired by a 10-day meditation challenge and a 30-day yoga challenge. Each of these give you a little bite size chunk of information and help each day and then send you on your merry way.

The 20-Day Fundraising Challenge will be similar: everyday we'll talk a little bit about a different form of fundraising, give you a few tips and tricks, and then give you a little task to go and do for your charity.

These challenges won't answer all your problems. But they'll help build fundraising knowledge and perhaps give you a chance to try something you've never tried before.

I'm excited-ish.

Are you?

Is Donor Retention THAT Bad?

I read another article about how bad donor retention is: this one. Not only is rentention abysmal...it's also a crisis.

"Donor retention is at 40% or less". You've seen similar stats - I presented Irish stats myself that saw 40-50% of monthly donors say goodbye in the first year. I'd be the first to say we're not doing enough to keep donors happy.

It's true, there are huge amounts you could be doing to improve your own donor retention right now...but let's stop for a second and ask, "Is donor retention that bad?"

Well, how is everyone else faring?

• About 45% of gym members quit in the first 6 months.
• 25% of people give up on New Year's resolutions in the first week. 88% of people eventually give up.
• Ninety-one percent of Millennials expect to stay in a job for less than three years.
• The average worker today stays at each of his or her jobs for 4.4 years.
• Remember The Cranberries? When they released the album 'No Need To Argue' they sold about 1 million copies in the UK alone. 5 years later about 7% of that number were still buying their new stuff.

We are flaky...we are fickle. The banjo, surfboard, pond pump and juggling equipment I have in storage are proof of that. And those are physical objects: I got something in return for my money. The majority of charities aren't showing donors what their money is doing, and yet we're still beating so many industries.

My first ever monthly donation - to UNHCR about 10 years ago - only ended because I maxed out my credit card trying to get to Adelaide to meet a ginger-haired Danish girl who claimed to be a witch in her previous life.

Yes, let's keep scolding each other for our poor retention. Let's work together to improve it through care, love and technical wizardry. Let's not get complacent - We have so much to do.

But let's allow ourselves one blog post a year to say, hey, donor retention isn't that bad.

GUEST BLOG: Why Everyone Loses Over the World Vision Controversy

This week World Vision USA changed its guidelines to allow the employment of people in same-sex marriages. Sadly, a few days later they reversed that decision. From a fundraising perspective it is interesting to consider how the flip-flopping in policy could and would lose them supporters on both sides of the fence. But the story is bigger than that, and I asked my good friend Tom Read to write a guest post.

Tom was my best friend in school in Hong Kong and I've known him for nearly 25 years. He is a singer and a songwriter - topping HK iTune charts (beating Adele). He blogs, he tweets, he is one of my favourite people in the world. And he is a Christian.


This week’s controversy surrounding World Vision’s decision, then subsequent reversal of that decision, to allow gay married couples to work at World Vision represents one of the saddest turn of events I’ve witnesses as a Christian in recent years.

For those who haven’t followed the story, World Vision's initial decision was met with a swift backlash from many Christians, particularly those in the American Evangelical community, with many organisations renouncing their support and cutting their funding to World Vision. As more Christians began to cancel their sponsorships in protest, World Vision panicked and quickly released a statement reversing their decision.

Throughout this whole sad affair there really are no winners, only losers. Here’s a look at who loses out the most:

1. The Children
The biggest losers are undoubtedly the thousands of children that World Vision support. If reports circulating on the internet are true, as many as 5000 sponsorships were cancelled this past week. Each one of those sponsorships represents a genuine child in need, and the effects of this will be devastating. The idea that these children have effectively been held as ransom over ideological differences is sickening.

2. World Vision
You can’t help feeling sorry for World Vision, but there can be no denying that this has been a disaster for them, and their credibility as an organisation will have been damaged.

One must assume that their original decision was not something decided over night, but rather something that has been a long time in the making. A decision like this for a Christian organisation would have been talked and prayed through over and over and certainly not something they would have taken lightly. Which makes their reversal of the decision all the more tragic, because it’s makes them appear to be pandering to their donor base rather than standing firm on their convictions.

It’s unlikely that they will recover the majority of the supporters that they have lost over this, and in the process they have ended up disappointing both sides of the divide.

3. The Church
Some Christians will see this as a victory, but it isn’t. There is a time and a place to “make a stand” for what you believe in, and this wasn’t one of them.

The simple truth is that it doesn’t matter one single bit to the children being supported by World Vision whether those working there are gay, straight, single, married, divorced, black, white, or green. What this has done is further expose what I consider to be the "dark side of Christianity”, a side that has nothing to do with Jesus, and everything to do with religion, politics, and ideology.

It doesn’t matter how you term it, it’s rotten, and it’s something that Christians should be ashamed of. There is not a single instance in the bible where Jesus refuses to help someone because he disagrees with their lifestyle. He loved people unconditionally. The moment we put conditions on our love and support, we lose the heart of Jesus.

As I followed the events unfolding online, my first response was to try and counter the cancelled sponsorships by sponsoring a child. I proudly updated my social networks with a status declaring that I was a new supporter of World Vision. I now realise that this puts me in exactly the same boat as those people who cancelled their sponsorships over the decision. At the end of the day, my charity must be motivated by compassion and not agenda.

When charity becomes more about promoting an ideology than helping people, everyone loses.

So I'm Delivering This Fundraising Seminar In A Swimming Pool...

"I'm delivering this fundraising seminar in a swimming pool." That's what I would have said if things had gone to plan.

Let me explain...

I love going to fundraising conferences because...well...fundraising. But also it's a little holiday for me where I manage to get away from the people I love the most. And the highlights for me are always getting room service, having a nap...and going for a swim.

But it's hard to find the time, and at last year's International Fundraising Congress in Holland I found myself with the tough choice of going to another amazing seminar or going for a swim.

I went for a swim.

And I found myself thinking: I wish there was a seminar in this swimming pool.

So I came back to Ireland and put in a proposal to speak at the 2014 IFC on Telephone Fundraising...in the swimming pool.

All attendees would be in the swimming pool, relaxed and happy and wet, while they listened to me present stats and advice, and talk about why the telephone is probably the most cost-effective way to raise money for amazing causes.

We would then have a question and answer session in the jacuzzi.

That's the proposal I sent off.

And it was accepted.

But without the swimming pool part. Instead it's just going to be an amazing, fun and informative telephone fundraising session on dry land.

Still...the dream lives on...

So this is an open offer to any fundraising conference anywhere in the world that has a swimming pool. I would love to run a seminar in the pool. Please e-mail me if you're interested.

#NoMakeUpSelfie - What Should Your Charity Learn From It?

I'm usually sceptical of on-line 'like and shares', petitions and awareness raising campaigns. Not only do they achieve very little, but they can have a negative effect on donations as people feel they've 'done their bit'.

But I like the No Make-Up Selfie campaign - primarily because it's raised loads of money. As well as taking part, the friends on my Facebook timeline are also donating - I've never seen that before. I've never seen people actually post screenshots of their donation receipts. It's amazing. (And here's a nice post from Emma Hannigan).

But let's look at the dos and don'ts of what fundraisers can learn from this:

• DO have a mobile friendly donation page. It should go without saying by now, but around half of these donors are going to be on their mobile or tablet. If your donation page makes it difficult then they're going to give up.
• DO have a SMS donation facility. But only if it's cost-effective. They can be pricey to set up but more and more it's getting affordable or even zero-risk.
• DO engage. Thank everyone that takes part. Take part in the conversation.
• DO encourage your supporters to reach out to their friends and family. Coach them on how to do so. Some call it 'member-get-member', which is such a stupid name, but think 'refer-a-friend'.
• DO be ready to move quickly and make the most of these type of campaigns.
• DO follow-up. If you're fortunate to have received donations then make sure you show how you spent them. This will be the end of the story for many donors, but for some donors it's the beginning of your relationship.

• DON'T try to make your own viral campaign. You can't force viral. It'd be like buying a lottery ticket as part of your fundraising plan. Denisa Casement put it well: If it can't be reproduced with a degree of certainty it doesn't belong in your fundraising plan as anything but a contingency response.
• DON'T believe anyone who tells you they can make a viral campaign.
• DON'T entertain anyone that suggest you just do a #NoMakeUpSelfie campaign or something similar. You will hear this from your Board and other people with good intentions. It almost certainly won't work.
• DON'T forget staff costs. When we look at social media costs we pretend they're free - we forget to take in to account all the hours your staff or volunteers spent cruising Facebook and Twitter. You could have spent that time earning or raising money.
• DON'T forget that Irish Cancer Society (probably the biggest beneficiary of this campaign in Ireland) put years of work and money in to being the 'first choice' for people to donate to. If you're a small, young organisation you're not going to have that.
• DON'T believe the hype. We're probably going to hear conference speakers and on-line consultants cite this as proof that social media is killing everything else. For every #NoMakeUpSelfie there are a million efforts that raised nothing. Get the basics right first.

Anything else? Please feel free to comment!