Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online
Research by Written by Sarah Hughes, Sarah Lincoln and Joe Saxton Contents
Foreword: eCharity – still the next big thing? ...... 2
Executive summary of the report ...... 3
Section 1: What is this report all about? ...... 6
Case Study: Amnesty International UK – ...... 8 exploiting the internet’s most natural resources
Section 2: The internet – how it has become central to our lives ...... 9
Case Study: SOS Children’s Villages – breaking the shackles of direct mail...... 15
Section 3: How the public are using the internet for giving ...... 17 and how charities are using the internet for generating income
Case study: email matures at Help the Aged ...... 32
Section 4: What is going on with charities and...... 33 earning income: the view from the frontline
Case Study: FARM-Africa – keeping ...... 36 it virtual, making it real
Case Study: eBay for Charity ...... 43
Section 5: The big trends in earning money online ...... 44
Case Study: Mencap use Ben’s story to tell their own story...... 48
Section 6: In conclusion – the rise of online fundraising 2.0 ...... 50 and online earning 1.0
Case Study: Breast Cancer Care – new media is everyone’s discipline ...... 51
The authors ...... 52
The partners behind this report...... 53
MissionFish 1 Foreword: eCharity – still the next big thing?
Charities have been waiting 10 years for the internet to revolutionise their fundraising. It’s finally happening, in unexpected ways. Charities of all sizes are becoming more confident and sophisticated in using the web to attract, engage, and develop potential supporters. They are learning that success depends on the passion and persistence they show, and the strength of the partnerships they’re able to form. Many are exploring more innovative forms of engagement and fundraising than were possible before the internet became mainstream. User-generated content, online auctions, affinity schemes and ecommerce are all growing in popularity. Those representing and speaking for charities online are finding that they need to engage the public in less formal and more personal dialogue. They must be prepared to take part in lively real-time discussions about the value of their work, rather than posting out their annual reports. Charities are now more willing and able to build relationships with the big players online, such as Google and eBay, who, in turn, are established enough to reflect on how their platforms could be used to support good causes. Conversations between the two sectors could have a profound effect on how fundraising takes place. It’s clear that an online strategy now involves far more than ‘click here to donate’. Charities must recognise the difference that online interaction can make in helping them to achieve their goals, and incorporate online work in all their major initiatives. There’s still a long way to go. Staff who specialise in internet communications or fundraising often feel sidelined, and have a hard time explaining the potential of their work to managers. Meanwhile, many small charities still struggle to develop the tools and content they need for a basic online presence. Yet the internet remains rich with possibilities for charities, providing an ideal environment for them to communicate their work and find new supporters. The illustrations and evidence in this report show how many are rising to the challenge, and we hope it will inspire others to follow suit.
Nick Aldridge, CEO, MissionFish June 2008
2 MissionFish Executive summary of the report
Fundraising online – after the hubris Ten years ago, when the internet was shiny and new, the fundraising community got very excited about the potential of new media and the prospect of a computer on every desk and in every home. Fundraising experts would talk about a time in the future when computers would suggest making a donation to given causes based on past giving patterns: a kind of fundraising autopilot. More generally the internet was seen as ‘the next big thing’ for fundraising: cheap as chips and raising money by the million. Ten years on the story is very different. Online fundraising is not the panacea for all fundraising ills, but a focused, highly cost-effective fundraising tool for bringing in additional money and reaching new audiences for those who use it right. It has also morphed from being seen as a reactive donation platform to a proactive marketing and earning mechanism. Perhaps the only vestige left of the original paradigm for online fundraising is the large but often ineffective ‘donate now’ button still common on so many charity home pages.
The internet is now an indispensable part of our lives The internet now plays a central part in most people’s lives in the UK. Particularly for younger, more professional, and more affluent parts of society the internet is all but indispensible. There are very few activities which can’t take place online: people find love, buy cars, sell houses, go shopping, pay bills and pursue hobbies all from their computers. The arrival of the mobile internet has only increased the ubiquity of the web. People can get their emails and surf the web from just about anywhere: the train, the bed or the sun-lounger. The rise of the internet and the mobile phone has also brought with it new bad habits. Psychologists have observed the phenomenon of ‘continuous partial attention’ where nobody gives anything their complete attention. People shop and talk on their mobiles, watch telly and surf the net, and sit in meetings and catch up on their emails through their BlackBerrys.
What do we know about use of the internet for fundraising? ̈ In 2007 nfpSynergy’s fundraising benchmark survey of 109 charities showed that online fundraising is highly cost-effective, raising an average of around £10 for every £1 spent on direct costs, including salaries. ̈ However as a portion of total voluntary income, online fundraising has less impact, totalling on average just 2%. This compares with supporter development and retention raising 27% of total voluntary income, and major donors raising 7%. ̈ nfpSynergy’s annual Virtual Promise survey of how charities use the internet also shows that, unsurprisingly, there are considerable differences in the use of online fundraising functions on charities’ websites, dependent on size. So while 77% of the largest charities (defined as those with an income of over £10 million) had the ability to donate on their websites, only 41% of the smallest charities (those with under £1 million in income) had the
MissionFish 3 same functionality. The same pattern occurs for the purchasing of goods and services and making regular donations via direct debit. ̈ One of the consequences of these differences in functionality is that the largest charities were much more likely to be positive about the growth in income from the internet. So 67% of the largest charities agreed that income from the internet had grown strongly over the last 12 months – but only 34% of the smaller charities agreed with the same statement. This theme is common across the Virtual Promise research – smaller charities are not seeing the same benefits from the digital world. ̈ Interestingly the constraints on use of the internet are common across all sizes of organisation – inadequate staffing, insufficient budget, and the lack of systems and marketing integrations were all seen as major barriers to success on the internet. This was backed up by the interviews we carried out. One senior fundraiser described the process of trying to get his colleagues to talk about the web as a fundraising tool as ‘like banging his head against a brick wall.’ Interviews for this report conducted in 2008 highlighted other key issues: ̈ A key theme was that the internet works best as an engagement tool initially and as a fundraising tool in follow-up. In other words few people go straight to a website and give. They go to a website, sign up for an email newsletter, take part in some interactive tools (like the Dogs Trust’s www.doggysnaps.com, where 34,000 people have left photos of their pet) and then little by little are wooed into giving, perhaps by making a donation directly, or by taking part in a fundraising event. ̈ For this reason, email communications are seen as a vital tool in developing online relationships – because they are proactive and keep telling donors and potential donors about new content and initiatives. ̈ One of the most difficult themes for fundraisers, as highlighted in our interviews with 21 professionals, was that the rise of social networking means that charities increasingly need to reach prospective donors on sites such as Facebook or MySpace. Yet it’s much harder to maintain a strong and coherent brand in these sites, due to their emphasis on user- generated content. Fundraisers beware!
Five big trends in online income generation Trend 1 – Charities are using the power of their stories online. The advent of blogs and blogging means one of the most powerful tools in the charity toolkit, the people that make the organisation, are now the shining stars. These stories can come from beneficiaries, front-line staff or indeed anyone who conveys their tale with passion, conviction and purpose. Putting these stories online creates great content and compelling messages for prospective and actual donors.
Trend 2 – Charities are engaging first and fundraising second. Many charities still have the ‘donate now’ button on their homepage even though few use it to donate. The internet is now used as a tool for engaging people first – through blogs, emails, forums, interactive games and the whole panoply of web 2.0 functions. Once people are engaged they can then be persuaded over time to become donors in ways that match their interest in the charity and their preferred way to give.
4 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Trend 3 – Social networking is forcing charities to make friends. Charities are being forced by social networking to move away from their websites and into the places where people socialise. This is both scary and exhilarating stuff. Scary because charities are no longer so in control on social network sites, their brand will be diluted and their competitors may also be their next door neighbour. But it’s also exhilarating because individuals are the engine of social networks – so when they start to advocate and network for a charity or a cause they are more genuine and more personal in the eyes of others who see their sites.
Trend 4 – Integration and internal communications are keys to success. Nobody knows quite where to put new media. Is it a communications tool, an IT tool, a fundraising tool or a separate department? The reality is that new media is a multi-purpose tool and wherever it sits it is vital that all the different users work together to maximise the coherence and power of the charity’s message. The result of this should be that earning online is part of an integrated whole – linked with and complemented by other web activities. If an organisation puts its uses of the internet in silos it will dissipate the strength of its web presence.
Trend 5 – Multiple income-generating partners are key. The old paradigm of getting people to give money via credit card donation and a ‘donate now’ button is gradually giving way to a multi-partnership model. In this approach a charity may offer multiple ways to give and generate revenue. The best of these represent the hijacking of a web user’s existing habits for a charity’s purposes. There are already ways of raising money online through search engines, auction sites (eBay for Charity being the largest and most successful of these), affinity partnerships and a host of other mechanisms. These partnership arrangements are a win/win scenario for charities. They help reach new audiences, give supporters ways to raise money without giving, and usually have a low or no cost to set up and can be easily embedded into existing websites.
MissionFish 5 Section 1: What is this report all about?
Introduction The public have taken to the internet and new media tools like ducks to water. Things we never knew we needed the internet for are now an indispensable part of our online lives: buying groceries and holidays, checking train times and opening hours, finding love and bric- a-brac, and much else besides have all become everyday uses of the internet. The public want these new communication tools to be a part of their interaction with almost everything, and that has to mean with charities too. They want to give on their own terms and have their creativity supported. They want to discuss causes and charities, and have their opinions respected. The internet is a can-do world where choice has increased while delivery times have reduced. It is a world which each person can make their own and this applies as much to charities as everything else. The public want brands to recede graciously into the background to make it ‘their’ internet: my eBay, my online banking, my Facebook. The challenge for charities who believe in orthodoxy and control is that the internet offers the exact opposite. When the internet has changed so much else of in our lives it is hard not to yearn for it to do the same for charities. Yet that this has not happened yet: changed, yes, transformed, no. There are many reasons for this unfulfilled potential. Charities are under-exploiting the options, under-investing in marketing and communications, under-valuing people and under- performing in terms of income. That’s a lot of ‘unders’, but where the gains are to be found they are compelling: the return on investment can be second to none, and the relationships found can be lifelong and transforming. This report looks at one particular area of how charities use the internet: fundraising and income generation. When it comes to fundraising, the internet offers its fair share of contradictions. Donors find online solicitation irritating, but less so than direct mail. Only 15% of them give online, but when they do they give more frequently, and more generously. Charities are finding success, but they are often self-limiting in their approach to exploiting digital opportunities. The dynamics of the online world have also changed, and with modern social behaviour patterns come the opportunity for charities to turn a corner. Their grassroots/ community tendencies may offer the genuineness and intimacy people seek, providing they can share real stories and turn punters’ heads. As one expert put it “charities are at heart problem- solvers, they can tend to forget that, but the internet affords them the chance to demonstrate it actively”. Over 50% of UK adults say ‘personal fulfilment’ is a top priority for them1. Online fundraising certainly needs to change, but at the same time it is certainly not the be all and end all of a charities’ online life. Relationships need to be put before transactions, and the internet allowed to enhance every aspect of a charity’s operations. And as brand dominance breaks down in favour of peer influence, there is evidence that small charities have just as many opportunities to punch above their weight as large ones, if not to steel a march.
1 Future Foundation and Gobillot, 2007
6 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online About this report and its structure ̈ Our objective for this report is to build a deeper understanding of how charities are responding to changes in the digital media world, through their fundraising, ecommerce and marketing activities. ̈ We interviewed 12 charities and 9 experts especially for this report: we tried to talk to people and organisations who are doing something others might find interesting or useful. We also used data from nfpSynergy’s latest Virtual Promise survey of how charities use the internet as well as nfpSynergy’s benchmarking survey of UK charities. ̈ As the dominant tool by far in charities’ use of electronic media, and in particular as regards fundraising, the internet and email were the focus of this study. That is not to deny the role of other electronic media, such as SMS, and their potential now and in the future. There are four other sections after this section: ̈ Section 2 looks at the wider use of the internet by the public and examines a number of the key trends. ̈ Section 3 looks at the use of the internet by charities relating to fundraising and income generation using data from Virtual Promise and a fundraising benchmark survey carried out last year. ̈ Section 4 reports on the interviews with charities and online experts and outlines the themes and insights that they provided. ̈ Section 5 pulls together the key trends that we have identified and looks at some of the key actions that every charity can do, and partners that every charity can work with. ̈ At the end of each section is a case study. They focus on a different aspect of what an individual organisation is doing in the online world. Make sure you don’t miss the ‘fermented urine’ picture. We hope you will find this report very relevant and practical.
Acknowledgements First of all our thanks must go to MissionFish UK for commissioning this report as well as the Institute of Fundraising. Thanks must also go to all the people who were interviewed for the project – their details are set out in section 4. Reports like this are impossible without all the people who complete our surveys such as Virtual Promise and our fundraising benchmarking study.
MissionFish 7 Case Study: Amnesty International UK – exploiting the internet’s most natural resources For a campaigning organisation like Amnesty International UK, getting people motivated to take action against the issues you raise is your staple diet, but no-one would suggest it’s any picnic. Activism requires time, energy and dedication. Online activism, on the other hand, is a different ball game. You can demonstrate without going to a demonstration. You can sign a petition online in seconds. Add to this the emerging web 2.0 tools and you have a potentially potent cocktail, as AI UK’s Website Editor Seb Cumberbirch is discovering. His role is to connect with those “inside the social networks. To cultivate them and not to stick behind walled gardens.” He continues, “social networking has lowered the point of entry for activists and for organisations … It’s easier to do, it’s more visible, you can break it down into bite-size chunks, you can wade in deep, or stay in the shallows but still be involved.” Amnesty has official ‘outposts’, as they call them, on all the main social network sites. But Seb Cumberbirch recognises it is early days and the organisation is still getting to grips with social media. He sees it as important not to be too prescriptive, but to take the role of convener, and connector. Rather that dictating the whole agenda, AI brings attention to the issues, often with hard-hitting creative material that grabs attention and is instantly viral, makes available the right tools, and allows the community to do the rest. That means spread the word, inspire or steward others, speak out, join Amnesty. And look at the difference a web 2.0 tool or two makes… In 2000 Amnesty launched its first campaign microsite stoptorture.org, securing 32,791 subscribers from 188 countries in its first year of operation. In October 2007, the Unsubscribe campaign went live, and in half the time it achieved the same number of participants (32,243) and is growing fast. The Unsubscribe campaign focuses on urging existing social networking users to unite against terrorism and human rights abuses in the war on terror. “Get your free campaign tools” the site urges – “As well as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr and loads of other networks, we have tons of videos, widgets, banners and more for you to use.” And these web 2.0 tools are paying off, with subscriptions significantly up since their launch. There is a webpage dedicated to educating people as to how to promote them online. Among the options on offer are banners and badges, email signatures and am Amnesty toolbar. But it’s Amnesty’s recent waterboarding video that must surely have hit the record books with around 1 million views in just a week, half a million on YouTube, and another half a million on AI’s site. Of course, it also helps that the quality press (naturally among the first to embrace social tools) publicised the video and embedded it in their own sites. “Social media is a natural home for Amnesty – we have always been a community of people with shared values, amplifying the voices of thousands of individuals, mobilising them and taking action against injustice. We won’t ever stop protesting on the streets and outside embassies. But now social networks are where people are coming together to get fired up about issues and take action. The Unsubscribe campaign puts social media at the heart of human rights campaigning, bringing people together online and making our voice louder than ever” (Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International)2.
2 Reproduced from Doop http://www.doop.ie/2007/amnesty-international-use- social-networking-for-latest-campaign/
8 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Section 2: The internet – how it has become central to our lives
General trends in the internet and new technology3 Over the last few years interactive technologies have massively expanded, with increasing numbers of devices becoming internet-capable and forms of connectivity and interactivity diversifying. Just over 90% of the population have access to either the internet, digital TV or a 3G phone. Although ability to use these interactive services varies, it is likely that people will begin using different interactive technologies for more and more tasks. The internet, the primary location of interactivity, has grown from being a tool for enthusiasts to become an everyday means of communication, work, information retrieval and entertainment for millions of people around the world. Access to the internet in the UK has increased from 25% in 1998 to over 70% in 2007, and is expected to reach 80% in the next five years. The explosion of broadband in 2003-2005 further increased the numbers who regularly use the internet. The internet is now entering a new phase of growth. The advent of a mobile internet, integration with increasing numbers of devices and the new pattern of relationships encompassed within a more collaborative web platform are all expected to bring about major changes in the coming years.
Internet usage and the growth of the mobile internet In 2007, more than 70% of people had internet access and two thirds had it in their own homes. However, usage declines sharply with age and social grade. Nearly all young people have access to the internet (89% of 16-24 year olds), compared to three quarters of those aged 45-54 (76%) and nearly half of those aged 65-74 (47%). As Chart 1 shows, a growing proportion of people have internet access in their homes, as well as at school or in the office. Chart 1
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MissionFish 9 As the population grows older, the age difference will be smoothed out, with increasing numbers of the over-55s and retired people going online. The social grade difference for internet access looks set to remain at least into the medium-term, however, with AB households significantly more likely than DE households to have a connection (83% compared to 50%). When it comes to mobile phone use, there is far less of a social grade difference, reflecting the more egalitarian distribution of mobile phones compared with computers. In general, mobile phones have more or less reached saturation point in the UK population with only about 10% of consumers going without. The younger profile of ‘heavy’ mobile use reflects the fact that most advanced use of mobiles is to do with entertainment. This will change, however, as mobile phones become increasingly as capable as normal computers. Consumers’ wish to have constant access to the internet is driving the development of more mobile applications. The number of people who claim to access the internet using a mobile phone has increased threefold in a year, from 7% in 2006 to 21% in 2007. This is much more popular among men (27%) than women (15%). Similarly, ownership of a 3G (third generation) mobile phone has increased from 9% in 2006 to 16% in 2007, and is also more popular among men (19%) than women (14%). The ‘always on’ generation is already with us.
Chart 2
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3G technologies enable network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services such as video calls and broadband wireless data, while achieving greater network capacity. 3G mobile access has been touted as a means of overcoming the ‘digital divide’. However, nVision’s forecasts suggest that most people who start using 3G phones in the next three to four years will already have internet access by some other means, so this group will not represent a new demographic of internet users. Currently only around one in twenty people own a hand-held emailing device (such as BlackBerrys), though this is expected to rise with the widespread adoption of 3G.
10 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online The user-driven internet and web 2.0 Social networking and user-generated content are key characteristics of the Web 2.0 world. Whilst initial growth in the popularity of social networking has been greatest among teenagers and those in their twenties, it is likely to become increasingly popular among older groups in the coming years. So far the focus of online networking and collaboration has been around the largest social media sites, but it is now expected that growth will come from niche products, which are more targeted and geared towards attracting users through their interests. “Right now, the world is focused on stand-alone social networking sites, especially Facebook and MySpace, and the fad of the moment is to take brands and services there….but at the same time there's a growing sense that elements of social networking are something all good sites should have, not just dedicated social networks. And that suggests a very different strategy – social networking as a feature, not a destination.” (Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired)4 People increasingly want social media to be intimate, useful and relevant to them. Organisations need to seek to understand and identify their users’ specific interests, and so provide a community that is relevant and retains their involvement.
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Brands that have consumer loyalty and offer strong user benefits can do well from personal recommendations and can indirectly foster this, as with the free iPod social bookmarking and tagging tools. Whilst just 4.1% of social networking site users agreed that they “wouldn’t mind companies I am interested in advertising to me via my profile”, 66% of social networkers say that they are more likely to buy a product as a result of a personal recommendation, compared to 52% of non-social networkers.
4 http://www.thelongtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/09/social-networki.html
MissionFish 11 Online activities Email, surfing the web, looking for information and ecommerce are the most widely- conducted activities on the internet. Chart 4 shows a selection of online activities, distinguishing between those involving commercial transactions and others.
Chart 4
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Ecommerce is expected to continue to increase in popularity. Despite the fact that 39% of people, whether or not they use the internet, are concerned about security online, ecommerce is currently among the most popular types of activities which people are engaging in online. As Chart 4 shows, 40% of people claimed to have bought something online and 28% to have used the internet for online banking over the last 6 months. As more people get always-on connections, as well as mobile internet, nVision forecasts that more admin-style tasks, such as internet banking, will become increasingly popular. See section 4 for more on the implications of the rise of ecommerce for charities.
12 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Only one visit in thousands is to a charity website According to online competitive intelligence service HitWise UK, in March 2008 only one visitor in every 2,500 chooses a charity website giving them 0.038% of all internet visits. Donating online came 18th in a list of a possible 21 things respondents to the annual Charity Awareness Monitor were asked if they had done online in the last 12 months. So why aren’t charity websites more popular amongst internet users? One reason may be that they don’t satisfy some of the top things people go online for: like emailing contacts, shopping, banking, finding out about products and holidays, or downloading music. Oxfam, consistently topping the Hitwise Top 10 online market share for charities, recognises the need to blend charitable giving with people’s lifestyle and interests. At www.bignoisemusic.com visitors are happy to know that 10p in every £1 spent on music downloads goes to help some of the poorest people in the world. There are other reasons for the lack of popularity. Experts believe charity sites are for the most part dull and over-burdened with irrelevant information. They also feel that it isn’t always that easy to find routes to interact with or support charities online. Charity sites aren’t anything like user-friendly enough, and even when they are, they are too prescriptive. And think, when did you last find a charity’s website promoted anywhere other than in the ‘graveyard’ of its print publications or direct mail, and usually sadly lacking any compelling reason to bother to visit? You wouldn’t catch many successful companies behaving like that. “Interaction is the key to any charity’s website. Fail to get a visitor to do something, and you may just have lost them forever” (Sue Fidler). Nonetheless, Continental Research believes the internet is useful to users who want to donate. In their Autumn 2007 Internet & Convergence Report, they found that 42% of internet users who donate to charity at least sometimes look at the charity’s website beforehand, to find out about the work they do. Finding out about a charity online is particularly popular amongst younger donors, with 66% of 16 to 24 year olds sometimes visiting a charity site, indicating that a website can be a first and vital port of call in building trust. The Hitwise UK 2007 Award Winners for market share in the Community & Humanitarian categories were: 1 www.raceforlifesponsorme.org (Cancer Research UK) 2 www.oxfam.org.uk 3 www.walkears.com (Comic Relief) 4 www.nspcc.org.uk 5 www.england.shelter.org.uk 6 www.redcross.org.uk 7 www.christianaid.org.uk 8 www.salvationarmy.org.uk 9 www.barnardos.org.uk 10 www.comicrelief.com
MissionFish 13 The next decade of web use Drawing on the views of experts, here are our predictions for how the internet will change over the coming decade. ̈ The convergence of TV and the internet. We have already seen how products like Sky+ and BBCi player have changed viewing habits. As broadband speeds improve and technology develops expect the TV to become more and more like the internet and vice versa. This will mean the end of TV scheduling as we know it, with watch anytime TV and the rise of internet TV on your mobile. ̈ The internet will remain a perfect medium for rapid trends such as social networking, wikis, internet share-offerings, 3G phones and web 2.0 to take off (or crash). The challenge is to see which trends will endure and which are just hyperbole. Anybody who bought lastminute.com shares has a long wait to get their investment back. Will social networking have morphed by next year and into what? Charities face the challenge of investment to keep up but not to be left high and dry when the next big thing arrives. ̈ The web will only increase in its interactivity and its personalisation. So the more that sites offer the ability for people to make the internet their own (Facebook, MySpace) or offer easy access to a mass audience (YouTube, eBay) or make something happen with ease (Google, Tesco groceries), the better. People won’t visit sites because they have had millions invested in them, but because they do stuff that people find useful, cool or exciting. ̈ The web has the power to be a leveller between big and small. The advent of web 2.0 with its emphasis on interaction and user-driven content will remain the kind of place where the small can flourish. It’s worth pointing out that most of the biggest best known websites were created not by big companies but by individuals with an idea: eBay, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and so on. Similarly blogs have given a prominence to the (often frankly idiosyncratic) writings of individuals who say what they want to say. Meanwhile, companies struggle to get their corporate blogs to be read. ̈ Nobody can escape. Ask any professional about their working lives and increasing numbers will talk about how the combination of mobile and laptop has meant that they are never out of touch with their work. Sometimes this is a good thing. A boring meeting becomes an opportunity to catch up on emails. A holiday becomes an opportunity to never relax. ̈ The mobile is in the ascendant. The mobile is now the most extraordinarily versatile piece of technology. What was once purely for making and answering phone calls has become a music player, a radio, an organiser, a tiny laptop, a GPS positioner, a games station, a camera and a video camera. This small indispensable piece of kit however has yet to be of real value to charities – and perhaps that is the subject of another report completely.
14 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Case Study: SOS Children’s Villages – breaking the shackles of direct mail SOS Children’s Villages is a medium-sized UK charity helping orphan and abandoned children in 123 countries. In 2004, the charity quite deliberately gave up cold direct mail. They couldn’t reconcile the costs. By 2007, due simply to it being a very busy year, they just didn’t get around to any warm appeals or warm direct mail either. They continued newsletters – two a year for donors plus a Christmas card – and child sponsors received their usual updates, but there was no telephone canvassing, no TV adverts, no internet adwords, no commercial internet adverts (just two small ads on a charity site), no chugging and no email appeals. The charity has fourteen staff with a well-formed fundraising team. Had they all gone completely mad? Far from it. As Andrew Cates, the charity’s Chief Executive, published on their website news, it was a “landmark year for fundraising”. They raised £3.2 million, (half of which came from committed giving), triple the amount they had been raising five years previously when their methods were based almost entirely on very costly direct mail. Andrew Cates says openly that they don’t do cold recruiting outside their website, which he describes as “not particularly special. It is cheap and cheerful and far less sophisticated than the old one it replaced…. but the donation and new commitment rate went up 20 times overnight. Now the average one-off donation is about £110, or ten times industry figures for Direct Mail… The website has never stopped buzzing". He attributes their online success to: 1. Being an active member of the online scene; recognising that the internet is not another mail box to post things into, it is a community. A place to display your real self. 2. Doing things which are helpful and right for other people: for example, their free Wikipedia for Schools attracts around 1 million visitors a year, about half of their total. 3. Being easy to find; around 80% of their traffic and 75% of new donors come in to their sites from topic-related routes and their website is a hive of information. Is it really that easy, or have they also had a leg up? In 2006 SOS Children’s Villages were the FIFA World Cup official charity, and got a lot of football related traffic. Their Schools Wikipedia is also hugely popular. Added to this, they are part of SOS-Kinderdorf International, one of the worlds largest and most respected charity groups. Andrew Cates agrees general offline awareness helps and notes that the charity does see peaks during competitor TV adverts or appeals such as Children in Need. But visitors to their site have also bounced onto them after being disappointed with what they found on another children’s charity website, proving that donors are using the web to research the charities they want to support. And SOS Children’s Villages does have a particularly good story to tell, a story which is played out regularly, frankly and transparently on their website. “Online people have far more access to check everything about us. Not just ‘poor child’ but ‘actually how does this charity help find a proper fix for this problem’ or ‘how much money is spent on fundraising and advocacy rather than helping the children’. And of course we welcome this scrutiny as proper fixes are very much what we are about.” In a response to questions sent to the charity by Intelligent Giving, again transparently published on the charity’s site, he explains how online fundraising costs 1p in every
MissionFish 15 pound, and has dramatically decreased expenditure in other areas. This gives donors the reassurance that most of their money goes towards helping the children that count. Clearly Andrew Cates feels it is a relief to be freed from the shackles of direct mail. Charity direct mail has come into disrepute with its stark images, guilt and pressure tactics. He says, “Lets face it, charity direct mail has gone too far and we cannot be as proud of the charitable sector as we would all like.” In the case of his charity, which is also successful at attracting major corporate support and high net worth gifts, he has something he can be singularly proud of. Andrew Cates sums up their approach to online fundraising as “unaggressive, positive and with loads of personality and people in evidence.” His advice to others is: ̈ Keep any website(s) technically simple. ̈ Do not be tempted to use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies. Concentrate on human visitors and let Search Engines do their job. ̈ Never underestimate the surfers' time and intelligence. Internet donors read more, think more and give more on average. ̈ To get links to your website, ask your supporters. If you don't ask you don't get.
16 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Section 3: How the public are using the internet for giving and how charities are using the internet for generating income
How the public sees online fundraising Data from nfpSynergy’s Charity Awareness Monitor (CAM), a periodically conducted survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults in Britain, gives insight into the public’s perceptions and experiences of online giving. The latest data from March 08 is revealing. 21% of people find receiving fundraising material by email or online very annoying, down from 23% in March 07. 15% click off the website or delete the email as soon as they receive it, up 2% since last year. But a greater number (25% of respondents, up from 15% in 2006) understand it is an effective way of raising money. And of all the fundraising methods people are exposed to, the good news is that online fundraising is the least annoying. Under half as many people (21%) find online fundraising annoying compared to the proportion who find direct mail annoying (45%). Doorstep fundraising came next at 42%, telephone at 41% and street fundraising at 35%. Engagement with email/ online fundraising has increased since March 07, with 22% of respondents claiming that they sometimes read the website page or email if the charity interests them (up from 16% in March 07). Interestingly too, there has been an increase in the number of people who wish charities would offer them an alternative way to support them when fundraising online besides donating, up from 8% in March 07 to 14% in March 08. Chart 5
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MissionFish 17 However, perhaps one of the most obvious factors that will affect online giving is the reach of online and email fundraising – which has noticeably appeared to decline (from 40% in April 06 to 27% in March 07 saying that they had been approached online to donate in the last three months). When it comes to actually making an online donation to charity, 15% of internet users claimed to have done this in the last 12 months. Of these donations the majority (78%) were one-offs, and about a sixth by direct debit. Young people may be the least likely to give to charity overall, but they are the most likely to have given online. This is positive news now and for the future. Whilst 19% of those aged 25-34 gave online and 74% of them recently made any form of donation, for those over 65, just 10% of gave online, but 82% donated to a charity. Gender is also reversed, with men more likely to give online then women, contrary to the general pattern which shows that women are likelier to donate to charity. Differences according to social grade are the same for both online and donating in general, with AB households being the most likely to donate online (22% of AB compared to 11% of DE), as in overall patterns of giving.
Chart 6
Gender Age Total Male Female 16-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+
Given to a charity online in the last 15% 16% 13% 18% 19% 16% 11% 14% 10% 12 months
Given to a charity 79% 76% 81% 77% 74% 73% 81% 86% 82% in last 3 months
Unsurprisingly, those who are more likely to give online both have greater access to the internet and are more confident internet users, that is, younger age groups and those in higher social grade households. In short, the signs of online giving popularity are not as discouraging as they might at first seem. Online/ email fundraising is finding its place amongst other more established forms of solicitation, and in a world where information intrusions abound, does not seem to be unduly disliked. Just as internet access age demographics are for the most part well spread, online donor demographics are fairly balanced too, giving charities plenty of scope for whom to reach. And the 15% who give online is not dissimilar to ecommerce in general, where online sales in 2007 were predicted to reach 15% of total retail sales by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). So chins up and eyes forward.
18 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Online fundraising in its fundraising context There is a scarcity of statistics on how much charities do actually raise online. However, fundraising benchmark data from nfpSynergy’s survey of 109 leading UK charities conducted in August-October 2007 shows how online fundraising income and expenditure compares to other areas of fundraising. Whilst expenditure on internet/ online fundraising is just £114,000 (excluding staff salaries), or £143,000 when these are taken into account, this area of fundraising brings in an average income of £1.2m.
Chart 7
Average expenditure Average expenditure Average (excluding staff (including staff expenditure salaries) salaries) income Recruitment/Acquisition 1.7m 1.8m 3.7m
Retention/Development 634k 727k 8.5m
Supporter Care/Service 155k 336k 150k
Internet/Online 114k 143k 1.2m
Major Donor & Big Gift 58k 172k 1.4m
Calculating income/ spending ratios enables easier comparison between different areas of fundraising. Warning and pay attention: the ratios in Chart 8 are averages calculated from the ratios of individual charities responding to the survey, rather than simply dividing the average expenditure by income for each area from Chart 7. This cannot be done since not all charities gave figures for both expenditure and income, so this would skew the findings. So we know that the maths appears screwy, but it ain’t!
MissionFish 19 Chart 8
Average Average income/spending income/spending ratio ratio(including staff (excluding staff salaries) salaries) Recruitment/Acquisition 3.3 (330%) 1.3 (130%)
Retention/Development 13 (1300%) 8.4 (840%)
Supporter Care/Service 4 (400%) 1.6 (160%)
Internet/Online 12.8 (1,280%) 10.4 (1,040%)
Major Donor & Big Gift 31.4 (3,140%) 8.7 (870%)
As Chart 8 shows, online/ internet fundraising has the highest ratio (10.4) if staff salaries are included. Excluding staff salaries, it has the third highest ratio (12.8), following major donor fundraising (31.4) and just behind retention/ development (13). This means that (including staff salaries), average return on internet/ online fundraising is 1,040% or approximately £10 for every £1 spent. In terms of overall contribution to voluntary income, internet/ online fundraising accounts for an average of 2% of the total amount.
Chart 9
Average income/ total voluntary income ratio Recruitment/Acquisition 0.06 (6%)
Retention/Development 0.27 (27%)
Supporter Care/Service 0.008(0.8%)
Internet/Online 0.02 (2%)
Major Donor & Big Gift 0.07 (7%)
Whilst a 2% overall contribution to income is low, interviews with charities suggested it is also the lowest common denominator or the starting point. Charities reported much higher contributions on specific campaigns. One charity just venturing into online fundraising benchmarked their first year activity at 2%, with aims to double it the following year. Another reported 11% of total voluntary income raised through regular direct debits alone. Balanced with its fantastic return on investment, the cards are far from stacked against online fundraising.
20 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Charities’ use of the internet for income generation: the results from Virtual Promise 2007 nfpSynergy have been running the Virtual Promise survey since 2000. It is the longest running continuous survey in the UK tracking how charities and not for profit organisations are using, and how they view, the internet as a whole. (Previous results are available from www.nfpSynergy.net). The 2007 survey, completed by 376 organisations, shows worrying evidence that charities’ use of the internet for fundraising is in decline, or at the very least static. Comparing the figures from 2006 and 2007, the availability of a range of income generating facilities has either stayed the same or declined, suggesting that charities aren’t increasing the options available to their donors.
Chart 10
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Whilst it was true that the largest charities offered more, even these organisations were not particularly expanding their giving menus year after year.5
5 Virtual Promise uses three turnover bands to enable comparisons by size of organisation.
MissionFish 21 Chart 11
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Email: an overlooked opportunity As last year, email communications remains disappointing. Email offers even the smallest charities a range of ways to increase their effectiveness at fundraising at a relatively low cost. For instance emailing donors news updates and other information both increases their intimacy and sense of involvement with the charity, whilst also encouraging them to repeatedly visit its website, so boosting the chances that they will respond to an appeal.
Yet despite the potential benefits of email, it appears that charities are becoming less rather than more likely to use many email-related functions. Comparing the figures according to organisation size, the increases over last year (shown in Chart 12 in red) are few and far between.
22 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Chart 12
Under £1m £1m to £10m Over £10m Facilities on website 2006 2007 2006 2007 2006 2007
Email newsletter 53% 47% 59% 53% 69% 69%
Email marketing* 12% 17% 27% 21% 59% 49%
Email fundraising* 12% 12% 27% 25% 59% 40%
Email enquiry service 84% 53% 82% 71% 93% 75%
News and reuglar updates 86% 83% 89% 93% 91% 94%
Campaigning and online activism 19% 14% 29% 29% 49% 49%
Email for each member of staff 81% 83% 90% 84% 90% 83%
*The 2006 survey combined email marketing and email fundraising as ‘Email marketing/ fundraising’, hence 2006 figures are given as the same for both. For the first time respondents to the 2007 questionnaire were asked directly, “do you use emails for fundraising?” (in addition to being asked whether they have the facility for email fundraising on their website, as in Charts 11 and 12). Although the positive responses to this broader question were higher, the use of email for fundraising is still worryingly low. Just 58% of the largest, 51% of the mid-sized and 33% of the smallest charities said that they use email to fundraise. And when it comes to using email fundraising addresses for regular communications, only two thirds of the largest charities who use emails for fundraising are making the most of this potential, and under half of smaller charities. Just 49% of the largest charities said that they have a formalised email acquisition plan, with the figures as low as 24% and 15% for medium and small organisations respectively. This is fundamentally wrong, according to expert Sue Fidler: “Emails are the single most important pieces of data for charities’ future” she says, “collect them at every opportunity and treat them like tiny grains of gold”.
The value of the internet for fundraising: perceptions and measurements Considering the use of the internet more generally to target new audiences and to build relationships with existing supporters, both key to successful fundraising, it is far from apparent that charities are increasing their confidence in the benefits of the internet over time.
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Yet this is not to say that charities do not see the opportunities that the internet affords them in expanding their supporter base. In the words of one respondent, the top online opportunities she sees are “Reaching new audiences, leading our core audience into the digital age, forming new partnerships, delivering more information more cheaply to tiny niche audiences, extending global reach.” (Charity with 11-21 employees). In a list of the benefits of having a website, charities placed fundraising lower down, on a par to its benefits for campaigning, service provision and customer support. The most beneficial uses were seen to be: provision of information/education, communication, branding and marketing.
24 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Chart 14
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When asked to rate the extent to which they agree that the internet has grown as a source of income in the last 12 months, once again the bigger the organisation, the bigger the perceived benefits of the internet. However, when comparing the figures with last year’s, it is charities with a smaller turnover who are the only ones to show any sign of increase (shown in red).
Chart 15
"The internet has grown as a source of income for us in the last 12 months”: strongly agree or agree slightly
Turnover < £1m Turnover £1m-£10m Turnover>£10m
2006 28% 49% 68%
2007 34% 44% 67%
When it comes to quantifying and measuring the return on investment of their website, the most popular way of doing so is by measuring fundraising income, perhaps because it is the most tangible. This is followed by trading income and putting a value on online PR, brand and communication. Unsurprisingly, the biggest charities are leading the way in making any form of measurement. Nevertheless, a third of organisations with a turnover of over £10m admit that they do not do this at all, as do nearly half of mid-sized organisations and three quarters of the smallest.
MissionFish 25 Chart 16
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26 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Top constraints So what is holding charities back? The two biggest constraints facing organisations in their use of the web highlighted by all respondents are inadequate staffing and insufficient budget. Chart 17
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This is one of the few questions where organisation size appears to make little difference. An exception to this is ‘inadequate skills’, which appears to be perceived as a greater problem the smaller the organisation, no doubt reflecting the limitations of a smaller workforce.
Chart 18 Turnover Turnover Turnover Viewed as a major or moderate constraint > £1m £1m-£10m > £10m Inadequate staffing 73% 71% 73% Insufficient budget 74% 73% 70% Lack of systems integration 54% 56% 72% Lack of marketing integration 44% 59% 53% Reactive not proactive 53% 62% 52% Piecemeal systems 42% 47% 52% inadequate skills 63% 50% 43% Lack of CEO/top team leadership 27% 35% 34% Lack of marketing intelligence 35% 33% 33%
MissionFish 27 Just under three-quarters of organisations, regardless of their size, highlighted insufficient budget as a major or moderate constraint in their use of the web. However the proportion of charities with a specific budget for their website varies widely, from 30% for the smallest charities, 55% for medium sized and 78% for the largest. Interestingly, whilst the 2006 Virtual Promise findings showed a decline over the last few years in small and medium sized organisations having a dedicated budget for their website, during 2007 there was a sharp rise in budget for medium sized charities, and a bigger rise for the largest charities than in recent years.
Chart 19
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Those charities with dedicated budgets for their websites understandably prioritise website development and design and hosting, but fundraising-related spending does follow next.
28 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Chart 20
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Email marketing, online fundraising tools and online donation software are all more likely to be budgeted for than online marketing and promotion. This may indicate the persistence of a ‘build and they will come’ attitude, with charities not concentrating enough effort on outreach (see section 4). Meanwhile, use of an external agency for online donation software appears to be declining in popularity.
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Online opportunities for the future Despite the apparent decline in prioritising fundraising related activities, fundraising in one form or another was mentioned by a sizeable proportion of respondents as being a top online opportunity lying ahead for their organisation. More frequent though, was mention of developing social networking and ‘connecting’ to more people, so increasing support in a range of forms. “We aim to develop a social networking site with registration, email capture and more strategic online fundraising. We feel we can be more 'commercial' with this type of site than our rather staid, corporate site.” (Charity with 500+ employees). Only a third of all organisations surveyed by Virtual Promise are currently using the internet for social networking, but it seems that this figure may well be set to rise, particularly for charities keen to engage more with younger supporters. As another respondent said, their priorities for the future were “Interactivity, engaging with younger stakeholders via social networking sites, 'sticky' applications which encourage users to support us in a number of different ways.” (Charity with 101-500 employees).
In summary The Virtual Promise 2007 results paint a mixed picture of online fundraising as it currently is, with charities apparently becoming more reluctant to invest time and resources in income generating facilities on their websites or using email to its full advantage. This reflects a decline in confidence amongst charity employees more generally, both that their charities are making the most of the internet and that they have a strategic plan for its use.
30 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Chart 22
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It is true that, as one respondent said, “We need to position ourselves into a situation where we can move with [the] trend[s], rather than forever catching up.” (Charity with 51-100 employees). However, equally it is important that charities take full advantage of more basic and readily available online tools such as email communications. But perhaps this analysis simply shows that online fundraising has come of age. It is no longer the ‘next big thing’ nor the ‘silver bullet’ salvation of fundraising. It is now simply part of the basket of ways in which charities can raise money.
MissionFish 31 Case Study: email matures at Help the Aged Alison McCormack, Head of New Media Three-and-a-half years ago we realised that the growing number of email addresses we were collecting presented us with a huge opportunity and also quite a few difficulties. We had invested in a central database system and had a really strong web strategy in place, leading to rapidly growing traffic. What we didn’t have was a way to link the two systems together. Pockets of email marketing were springing up all over the charity, with every department keen to find the most cost-efficient way to speak to their users. Without a co-ordinated approach to data management we would have been at risk of upsetting our users and struggling to keep our good name clear of the spam filters. We wanted a strategy that would help us acquire new supporters and develop our relationship with those we already had. Using new technology to further our charitable aims, such as widening our information distribution, and saving costs were also key for us. Currently our eCRM programme is split into four areas: email newsletters, eCRM for major events, information provision and one-off email campaigns to support appeals. The first thing we needed to do was ensure that signing up to our email programme was simple, so our site has a newsletter sign-up as a default feature of every page. Our six regular email newsletters, covering everything from how to prevent a fall to top tips for marathon runners, are all available on our site. All the data we gather from email broadcasts – opens, clicks, unsubscribes – are fed back into our central database. We constantly increase the sophistication of data segmentation; for example when we changed the content of our campaigns newsletter based on previous actions taken we saw a noticeable rise in response. Our online advice and information is consistently one of the most popular parts of our site, used by older people, their family and carers and health care workers to find impartial information on everything from using the internet to choosing the right care home. Email has helped increase the reach of this service and we’re launching an email sign-up function, allowing users to receive email alerts when information they are interested in gets updated. You can skydive, run, walk or dance to raise money for Help the Aged and, if you sign up, we’ll email you to keep you engaged and ensure you are excited and involved with our cause. From the minute you fill in the online form to the day after the event when, with muscles aching, you log on to see your finishing time or check the online photo gallery, there’ll be an email to guide you. Managing events online has significantly cut administration costs. For international aid campaigns, disaster appeals and seasonal activities we work closely with our central database team. The sophisticated level of selection they provide allows us to mail people based on geographic location, previous behaviour, mailings received and ACORN profile. For events like our Big Spring Walk we have been able to email people based on their proximity to one of our organised walks and have seen a rise in response against more general emails. Email is now a vital part of our communications and marketing strategy and I feel confident that we can stand our ground against other not-for-profits. Our users don’t compare us to other charities, they compare our communications with the mountain of others that they receive. Usability testing on one of our sites returned comments asking for the kind of functionality you experience on the biggest websites – Amazon, Ebay and Marks and Spencer. Our users expect that level of experience from us and why shouldn’t they? We’ve come a long way towards our ultimate goal, communicating with our supporters and service users how and when they want and making their involvement with us something that fits easily into their lives and is rewarding. We want to link all that together with the advances of web 2.0 to make our supporters truly a part of our organisation, helping us to end poverty, isolation and neglect for older people in the UK and across the world.
32 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Section 4: What is going on with charities and earning income: the view from the frontline
It’s a little over fourteen years since charities reportedly began using the internet for fundraising6, so how are they feeling about the changes and challenges they have witnessed in that time, and what the online world offers today? We interviewed 12 charities and 9 experts from the fields of new media and online fundraising: Bertie Bosredon, Head of New Media, Breast Cancer Care Ben Brabyn, Founder and Managing Director, Bmycharity Steve Bridger, Steve Bridger, www.nfp2.co.uk Andrew Cates, Chief Executive, SOS Children's Villages UK Seb Cumberbirch, Amnesty International UK Sue Fidler, Director, Sue Fidler Ltd Polly Gilchrist, Head of E-Fundraising, NSPCC Julia Gorton, Head of New Media & Resources, Unicef UK Polly Gowers, Founder, Everyclick Jude Habib, Founder/ Director, Sounddelivery Mel Herdon, Head of Multimedia Production, ActionAid UK Suzanne Jackson, Head of Individual Giving, FARM-Africa James Kliffen, Head of Fundraising, Medecins Sans Frontieres UK Lekha Klouda, Director, Association of Charity Shops Howard Lake, Managing Director and Founder, Fundraising UK Ltd Caroline Lambie, Web Communications Manager, Mencap Allison McCormack, Head of New Media, Help The Aged Tom Mansel-Pleydell, Head of Client Services, JustGiving.com Jon Parsons, E-communications Manager, The Woodland Trust James Redhead, Development Director, CTT Jane Williams, Online Retail Manager, Sense Trading
People of passion and vision Firstly, a little about the people we spoke with. These were individuals of great zest, enthusiasm and vast reservoirs of knowledge. Many are uniquely positioned to have a 360° view of their organisation or a number of organisations, both internally and from the outside
6 Michael Stein and John Kenyon: A decade of online fundraising’ 2004
MissionFish 33 too. Those working for charities demonstrated deep knowledge of almost everything their charity does and seemed to be exactly the breed of employee which charities would want. Yet sadly the majority are in some way disenfranchised. Our thanks go to them for giving generously of their time and their ideas; without it much of this report would have lacked vitality. It was clear from our discussions that charity practitioners continue to have to find their feet with a constantly evolving array of new media tools and techniques to try out. In that sense, the last decade or so has not offered any let up from the need to learn, adapt, trial and revise. Welcome to the fast-paced world of technology! However, it was recognised that today’s tools were more accessible and affordable than ever before, giving charities new rich pickings with less of a learning curve. And charity web teams are gradually diversifying to include a wider skill-set, focused less on production and more on outreach. Where problems still come is in knowing what to choose for a particular campaign or cause, particularly as it was recognised that basing success on just one or two tools would be foolhardy. As Howard Lake, Director of UK Fundraising put it, “There are very many online fundraising techniques now. It is not one element, but combining them, that matters”. Despite the challenges, charities remain optimistic and positive about new media, believing it has the potential to benefit every aspect of their charity’s work. And many felt it has become easier to operate online in the last few years, for the following reasons: ̈ Charity websites are maturing and with them, a core loyal audience is being secured (most have had a main website for five years or more and many have multiples sites). ̈ There is now a critical mass of people who are well-seasoned in using the web for a wide variety of transactions and although with this also comes high expectations, charities can benefit from the ‘coming of age’ effect. ̈ For a lucky few, major national or global events and high profile corporate partnerships have given them a much needed leg up in terms of raising awareness of their brand online and generating new traffic.
The biggest thing holding charities back is themselves The biggest constraints for charities come from inside their own walls and not from outside. Whether it is investment in budgets, resources and staff; battling against silos and territories; internal ignorance or risk-aversion; or simply the problem of new media teams being disconnected from the major plans, systems and activities going on around them, almost everyone interviewed raised internal issues as a major constraint. The multi-channel and integrated marketing messages, common in the commercial world, don’t seem to have yet hit home, or to have hit the right echelons. Charities that aren’t galvanised into bringing their internal teams together to co-operate for online success ignore these signals at their cost. “I could proselytise what the internet could do but 1) there’s no money 2) there’s no staff time 3) there’s no buy-in at management/ board level”. (Virtual Promise 2007 respondent, charity with 1-10 employees) The advice for making the most from online fundraising from one major charity, and one which would easily be held up as a leading example of how to get things right, was: 1. Get your internal database sorted out 2. Integrate offline with online 3. Solve your internal people issues
34 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Today’s new communication technologies are cheaper, more trackable and more accessible than large offline campaigns, allowing charities to do more with less, “to punch above their weight, reach new audiences, develop new services, and to remorselessly achieve their goals more effectively”. This was the central theme of nfpSynergy’s report on digital technologies Touch & Go: The internet, digital TV and mobile telephony as tools for maximising the impact of charities (July 2004), and it rings as true today. So it makes little sense that four years later charities continue to place their own restrictions on the potential pathways to succeeding online.
Brand and competition online – standing out from the crowd Charities all spoke about the importance of their brand online. An understandable degree of caution and concern was expressed about the uncontrolled dimension of online reputation now that users can generate so much content for themselves, much of which charities may be unaware of, and not all of which may be ‘on message’ or up-to-date. Julia Gorton at Unicef-UK called this the charity’s “hybrid identity” and explained that it was more a case of embracing the chaos than expecting to manage it. However, fear of the runaway brand seemed to be largely an issue outside of the new media department. For those within it, there was confidence that joining in with online conversations could only be beneficial in the long run. The internet can also be thanked for what it has done to support the concept of brand experience – getting to know a brand through the different ways you encounter or interact with it – as opposed to brand image – the way the brand looks and speaks on its own. Charities seem to be getting better at conveying their brand essence (their spirit and values) online, helped significantly by new tools that bring their stories and actions to life (podcasts, video, blogs and so on). They are clearly beginning to take the opportunity to demonstrate rather than say what they do. The competitive nature of the web was strongly emphasised. All charities talked about competing with one another, as well as with businesses and the top online brands, and smaller charities most definitely saw themselves competing with large household name charities. In that sense, you are only as good as the last website visited, or the ones your users frequent. All believed that it takes ongoing creativity and innovation to get noticed in a ‘noisy’ online marketplace, which is far noisier and more competitive than offline marketing, as online users are bombarded with much more choice, and distraction is only one click away. “Commercial rules apply. We’re still asking for money. We are still a brand.” (Mel Herdon, ActionAid) That’s why the need to go the extra mile and stand out from the crowd is so important. FARM- Africa is doing just that with its latest ethical gifts virtual catalogue, FARM-Africa Presents. In place of gift cards in the post, receivers are emailed a film of the charity’s work which the sender can personalise if they wish.
MissionFish 35 Case Study: FARM-Africa – keeping it virtual, making it real Since charity alternative gifts (unusual and memorable non-material gifts that raise money for good causes) captured the public’s imagination, ‘giving the gift of giving’ has become an important part of the modern fundraising mix for charities of all shapes and sizes. Whether you are taken with creating a butterfly haven (The Woodland Trust) or purchasing 100 measles vaccines (Unicef Inspired Gifts), you can buy it online in good conscience. Estimates suggest that the market is worth over £30 million to UK charities. Small international development charity FARM-Africa is one such organisation that has readily embraced ecommerce and alternative gifts in particular. In 2004 they launched their first virtual gift shop (www.farmfriends.org.uk) alongside only a handful of other early adopters, most of them large charities. Today, they have four successful online shops and are a key player in an increasingly crowded and competitive online market. But it isn’t easy to remain visionary and stand out. “Whilst the public have responded positively to the message that ethical gifts can change lives, there is a risk of them becoming swamped. We saw the need to re-invent things which is why last year we decided to launch FARM-Africa Presents…” says Suzanne Jackson, Head of Individual Giving. So if it’s no longer enough to rely on the predictable goat or school pack, is some fermented cow’s urine or banana beer really the way back into the public’s heart? Although ‘quirky gifts’ as FARM-Africa calls them may be more distinctive and so more popular, that on its own is not what makes them stand out. For when you buy a gift on FARM-Africa Presents it is the fact that you, and your lucky recipient, get to see – via a video clip – the actual role that the gift plays in the lives of the farmer or village vet that makes your heart warm and your lips curl. In this sense your gift is figurative, for what FARM-Africa is really helping you to do is to make a lasting difference. Take Jacob. Give him a bottle of fermented cow’s urine and at first he sniffs it and baulks. But he’s only teasing you and the short film quickly shows you its value as a great natural pesticide, so long as you know how to use it! Happily FARM-Africa is on hand to give him the proper know- how and support. “We wanted to bring the real value of ethical giving right back into focus for our supporters. We felt it was time they saw and could share the benefit of giving much more directly, by bringing it to life on film” continues Suzanne Jackson. And she’s right, giving in this way has all the essential ingredients: ̈ You can see the value of your gift come to life through the eyes of the benefiting farmer. ̈ You feel closer to the cause, and to the people you are helping (it’s possible they may also feel closer to you). ̈ You have the added reassurance that FARM-Africa is on hand to support your gift by showing farmers how to make the most of it. ̈ Your gift is sent to your recipients’ email address, making it cost-effective and environmentally friendly. All they have to do is open the film and view it. It’s the next best thing to going there yourself and it’s carbon neutral!
36 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online “Engage first, then fundraise” This was the call from many a charity practitioner. All of the charities interviewed believed it was important to capture visitors’ interest and attention, by showing them a benefit or satisfying a need, before expecting to start a fundraising relationship. Reflecting this, Breast Cancer Care is considering a new search engine marketing strategy that will only present a fundraising appeal to web users after an ‘appropriate number of visits’. Meanwhile Sport Relief recently launched a range of virtual activities on Second Life including surfing, roller-skating and sky-diving, performed by avatars whose job it is to first convince you of the benefits and fun in getting sporty, while also persuading you to part with some funds. For NSPCC, engagement means involving people in something that gives them a sense of satisfaction and pride. Their ‘Be The Full Stop’ website offers 19 deeds from as small as wearing a Full Stop badge to organising an event. The site welcomes you with the message “You've made your first click – which means you're helping already. This is your chance to do something really special.” For the Woodland Trust, engagement, education and interaction go hand in hand as people of all ages are given online tools and resources to allow them to nurture and share their passion for Britain’s woodlands. From discovering a rare tree to recycling 73.6 million Christmas cards, people are involved with the charity’s work and fundraising is a by-product. “The web gives you the chance to engage pre-purchase. With other media, the relationship doesn’t usually begin until the gift has been made. First you must offer visitors something they want, then you must communicate and then you can get on to asking” (Jon Parsons, Woodland Trust). And with 97% of respondents to their customer satisfaction survey saying they would happily recommend the website to a friend, and 171,000 active email contacts, they are certainly seeing the benefits of this wisdom. Part of engagement is in going out to find supporters where they are and not expecting them to come to you. Charities’ own websites no longer take centre stage, although it still vitally important that once visitors are attracted to them, they are satisfied or impressed by what they see. The British Red Cross is tackling engagement and fundraising head-on in its recently launched payroll giving microsite Just One Hour. Visitors can enter their salary to see what one hour is worth before deciding to donate it to the charity through payroll giving. As you are browsing, a sentence on the website subtly updates the wording “Since you've been on this site, the Red Cross Movement has helped (448) people.” The number increases at an impressively fast rate. Our final and favourite example of engagement is Greenpeace’s Mister Splashy Pants who has taken the online world by storm (or should that be by deluge!). His 'splashy' name was chosen by over 150,000 people via an online competition. He has since appeared on hundreds of websites around the world. The viral email was designed to get people to name a humpback whale under threat by Japanese whaling ships.
E-communications – overlooked “You have to cross that anonymity threshold with the web” (Jon Parsons, Woodland Trust). There were signs that charities are at last recognising the need to communicate more online, and in more creative ways, something they have previously neglected in large numbers, as the evidence from Virtual Promise supports.
MissionFish 37 E-communications is much more than sending an email, of course. It goes hand in hand with online marketing to harness the myriad different ways there are to communicate online. James Redhead of Charity Technology Trust believes email is set to take on a new incarnation in the near future, and far from being a stand alone delivery tool, it is going to blend with a whole variety of media to become its own virtual world, or even a miniaturised personal internet. A very exciting prospect. The good news is that charity new media departments look to be evolving too, recruiting the skills required to harness e-communications and e-marketing effectively. Their teams are growing in size to encompass not just editors but online marketers. The ActionAid new media team has recently appointed its first ‘Digital Engagement Manager’, someone who can get the best out of the charity’s own online community ‘myactionaid.org.uk’, a site that has attracted 500 fundraisers and raised more than half a million pounds since 2007. This marks an intended shift away from publishing more and more content which users are required to visit the charity’s website opportunistically to see, to using email as a feature of convenience and a means of inviting two-way dialogue. In this way, visitors might sign up not for the conventional e-newsletter, but for an email alert service, letting them know when something vital has changed, or reminding them of an important diary date. It also links to the fact that the new trends in online communication are centred around postings on messaging and chat services, or via blogs and social networks, where e-communication takes place in a time frame much closer to having a real-world conversation. “The internet is one large community where you have to engage intelligently with people”. (Andrew Cates, SOS Children’s Villages) Well, email communication is one way you can and absolutely should do it.
The wired donor “Supporters are moving with the times, and are moving much more quickly than charities”. (Steve Bridger, Director, nfp2.0). The online world has always been a place where the individual has had more control but the advent of web 2.0 tools, which encourage and facilitate user contributions, and social media, like blogs, podcasts, widgets and feeds, have cemented this shift in power. Charities are proving slow to respond to the change. Typically in the past, charities have been little more than reactive or prescriptive when it comes to donors’ online needs. Now they are seeing just how important it is to allow donors as much control and choice over their giving as they want. As several experts have advised, charities should stop under-estimating donors and begin offering them a role, something they can take a hold of and turn into their own particular style of support. Going further still, charities should be listening out for the opinions and ideas of their best donors, treating them as ‘stewards’ and ‘messengers’ of the charity rather than its ‘customers’. If charities are at all heeding the cry “don’t treat all donors the same” then never was this truer than online where donors expect a richer, more personal experience. Everyclick founder Polly Gowers offered a clear vision for what is needed: “The Third Sector needs to embrace the ‘social’ revolution. We need a personalised, effective giving platform that can offer every option for giving without fuss. This needs to be a collaborative platform where the power is vested with the individual, not each charity or indeed the provider of the platform; where giving is more transparent and rewarding and becomes something that can be shared – we need ‘social giving’. In this way, charities will be able to focus on inspiring donors and leveraging what makes them special.”
38 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online The 21st century donor wants you “to integrate the experience of giving time, money and activism”.7 The online 21st century donor wants all that in a simple, secure and varied donation mechanism and with an array of fun, convenient, viral or interactive tools to boot.
Online fundraising is maturing Not a single charity felt that it was an option not to offer online giving. The concern was more that they should offer every possible mechanism and option for giving online, ensuring that no donor would be turned away or turned off by the lack of something relevant to them. Charities that innovate are finding increasing success with raising money online (although those that simply do the minimum don’t see the same success, as was established in section 3). Online giving as a contribution to a charity’s overall voluntary income was agreed to be low. Nonetheless, the advantages of online fundraising stand head and shoulders above many other types of fundraising. Online donors tend to give more generously, more frequently and are cheaper to service and to communicate with. Echoing the findings from other research, charities felt that the web has broadened the available tools for fundraisers and donors to use and that although this has not brought about a revolution, it is still proving a very positive evolution. What’s more, we are just beginning to see a whole generation of young people who have never grown up without the internet, email, and now, a plethora of other digital media tools. So the charity which stands the test of time with interactive media will be paid dividends when tomorrow’s donors become today’s trendsetters. Those interviewed felt that the areas where they were seeing most success in raising funds online were, in order of prominence, event fundraising, fundraising campaign microsites, and regular giving. In fact, regular giving is about one sixth of online giving as we saw in Section 3, and what charities are seeing is the cumulative effect. Email was felt to be an effective tool in increasing the amount generated online as it provides a timely way of calling donors back to their site to respond to an appeal. When asked “How would you describe your approach to online fundraising?”, Andrew Cates, CEO of SOS Children’s Villages, said “unaggressive, positive and with loads of people and personality in evidence”.
You can never be too popular online! How many online friends can a charity have? The answer is surely unlimited. Charities have received the growth of social networking enthusiastically although some remain cautious about how to use social networks effectively and whether they can or should be used as a fundraising tool. One thing is certain, they can be a natural stomping ground for causes well versed in community outreach and stakeholder involvement. UNICEF’s video of David Beckham in Sierra Leone raised a huge amount of awareness for their work, attracting 4,084 views in 1 month on YouTube. The NSPCC’s Facebook application, the first of its kind for a charity, has been downloaded 25,000 times and has been vital in raising awareness not only of the charity’s work, but of the plethora of ways in which supporters can get involved. Reading about it on their website you learn just how packed with useful features the tool is, from receiving news of campaigns and events, joining the charity and donating to them, to doing a deed to end cruelty to children.
7 The 21st Century Donor, nfpSynergy, September 2007
MissionFish 39 In the “spirit of Facebook”, as Polly Gilchrist, NSPCC’s Head of e-Fundraising puts it, you can invite your friends to join in all this with you. She continues, “Without Facebook and other social networks we are exploring, we couldn’t have begun to open up so many new email relationships with so many burgeoning and established supporters”. Jude Habib, founder of Sounddelivery, a social media company focusing on the not for profit sector, believes that social media is a great opportunity for charities. “Social media and user generated content can really give a voice to charities and communities we don’t often hear from. It should be seen as an important part of your strategy to raise awareness, which can lead to greater donor understanding, which in turn can lead to gifts”. One thing is sure, the phenomenon of social interaction online is more about winning hearts and minds than about opening wallets. Never before have charities had such opportunity to get close and personal with sympathetic surfers.
Online event fundraising: from quirky add-on to vital event tool As in other walks of life, where the need for control is dominant, donors are taking fundraising into their own hands. If there is a success story so far in online fundraising it is probably event fundraising, which lends itself well to the creativity of ‘do-it-on-my-own-terms’ fundraisers. There are a number of online event fundraising tools, of which Just Giving and Bmycharity are currently the most well-used. In 2006, these two companies signed up 207,000 online events fundraisers and raised £72.5m for charities in the UK, a figure which is expected to rise to over £95m in 2008 and which they believe is only the tip of the iceberg. Justgiving now has 6 million users and has raised £250 million for good causes since it launched in 2001. It has become a vital tool in major events such as the London marathon – in 2004 1 in 7 charity runners used Justgiving raising £3.4 million, whilst in 2006 30% of the £41.5 million raised came via Justgiving and this year, £11 million was raised on the Justgiving site before the race began. Bmycharity is also keen to point out how much more of an event pound reaches the charity by fundraising online compared to fundraising offline. For every £1 raised with their tool, they calculate that 13 pence more gets to the bottom line. That’s because they ensure Gift Aid is claimed wherever possible, and because they bring the different costs from banks and service providers together into one simple lower charge. Ben Brabyn, Director of Bmycharity, points out that they ensure that all the vital information captured about the event participant is also passed back to the charity, so it is highly efficient too. Importantly Brabyn reminds us that an online event fundraiser is a different breed of donor. “They have given up their time, endorsed your charity and spread the word around their contacts, but more importantly, they are getting something much more rewarding out of supporting you than simply giving money, they are getting a challenge and a sense of pride”. Online event fundraising is an excellent example of an area where the internet can offer the perfect solution, alleviating pressure on people’s free time, making it easier to publicise their event and to ask for money unobtrusively, and giving them the reward of seeing the fruits of their labour translated in real time into money for a good cause.
40 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Rising star: Ecommerce as a fundraising tool 22 million people now shop online in the UK, spending an average of £647 each in the last six months.8 By 2011, 32 million UK consumers will be shopping online. The value of goods they buy online in 2011 is predicted to add up to almost £52bn.9 While selling online is big business for many retailers, the same cannot be said for charities. An online shop is relatively cheap to build – one expert said less than £1,000 – but it is hard to service. Ecommerce has brought its own challenges, as charities struggle to acquire audiences large enough to make their sales count, and their websites and products competitive enough to succeed in the web’s vast marketplaces. When it comes to selling online, it was clear from the charities interviewed that celebrity merchandise or corporate partnerships offered them the best chance of getting noticed. Virtual and ethical gift catalogues also fared well, despite the number of these mushrooming to around twenty in 2007. There have, however, been some notable examples. The NSPCC saw fantastic success with its 2007 Christmas Wishes site. 200,000 Santa Letters were sent out and 99% of the senders gave at least the minimum donation for them – even though it was entirely voluntary. For the Woodland Trust, who have a diverse range of shops, conversion rates are better for ecommerce than for their transactions overall – one shop averaged 4.51% compared with 0.2% for the charity overall. Affiliate marketing and other cause-related marketing opportunities produce mixed reactions. Some felt these are “unremarkable; something you have to do so as not to turn possible supporters away, but not something to spend much effort on”. Others felt that these opportunities are no-brainers, easy to get involved with, and bonus money whenever you got some. A further group saw cause-related marketing as more important from the point of view of gaining new data on a person, someone you could then start a relationship with. In one sense, affiliate or micro-payment platforms like eBay, Amazon and Everyclick are not creating a revolution, but in another sense they are spawning a phenomenon whereby people can benefit a cause in almost anything they do online. As Nick Aldridge, CEO of eBay partner MissionFish puts it, “Cause-related marketing is becoming better established as a technique for increasing customer loyalty and driving growth. A little “and you’ll benefit a good cause” frisson can make all the difference to marginal online buying decisions. However, the ecommerce sites with staying power are likely to be the ones with huge user bases to build on; many of the others are operating on tiny margins with high marketing costs and may not be able to go the distance.” eBay for Charity shops have been growing in success and present a clear new revenue stream for charities. There are now over 1000 online virtual charity shops or 1 for every 7 brick and mortar shops. And with more than 2000 charities signed up, it’s clear that eBay for Charity makes having an online storefront a realistic option for charities large or small (only 300 charities currently have a high street presence). In fact, far from the initial fear that they would jeopardise people donating unwanted goods to high street stores, they have become the de facto place for charities to offer their best in-store products to a global audience. Jane Williams is Online Retail Manager at Sense and dedicates her time to valuing and listing the best antiques and vintage clothes offered to Sense stores. Sense has had close to 13,000 successful sales on their antiques store alone. Williams says “eBay has given us a vital way of trading with people who we wouldn’t necessarily come into contact with otherwise.” Lekha Klouda, Chief Executive of the Association for Charitable Shops echoes this point: “eBay for Charity has helped make charities with shops selling donated goods aware of the collectibles they were receiving and how these could raise much more from an online audience than from limited local footfall”.
8 BMRB, August 2007 9 Forrester, UK eCommerce Forecast 2006-2011, March 2007
MissionFish 41 Oxfam launched its own online second-hand shop in September 2007 and in its first three months alone it raised an amazing £1 million. The biggest selling items were Oxfam Unwrapped virtual gifts, whilst donated clothes, books and records are also extremely popular. They have since launched the M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange and Valued at Oxfam, some of the items from which are available online. But it is the other, more subtle ways that donors can benefit a cause through their internet habits, which gives pause for thought. Charities can raise money through their donors doing web searches, through the bank account they choose, through the TV or broadband they buy and through the purchase of financial products. Indeed it is hard to think of an online purchase which can’t be used as an income-generating opportunity. The model of the original fundraisers has been turned on its head. We have gone from the internet generating a limited number of donations for specific charities to the internet being the source of a thousand ways of giving tiny donations through everyday ecommerce.
42 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Case Study: eBay for Charity eBay for Charity makes it easy for charities of any size to benefit from ecommerce. Founded by eBay and MissionFish in 2005, eBay for Charity aims to harness the power of the UK’s biggest online marketplace to raise funds for good causes. There are now 14 million active eBay users in the UK, and 10 million items for sale on eBay.co.uk at any one time. The vision of eBay for Charity is to turn this community into a grants committee of millions, by enabling everyone to support the charity of their choice when buying and selling on the site. eBay for Charity works in three ways. First, anyone selling an item on eBay can choose to donate 10%-100% of their sale price to the charity of their choice. When the item sells, MissionFish collects the donation, claims Gift Aid, and passes both on to the charity, making a deduction to cover its costs. David Hyde started using eBay for Charity to sell his collectable sports items and raise money for his favourite charity Cancer Research UK. The fun of auction-style listings and the efficiency of eBay for Charity have allowed David to donate to charity in a way he really enjoys. So far he has raised thousands for charity, and is now a top eBay seller. Second, any charity can sell items to raise funds on eBay. There are now over 1000 online charity shops operating on eBay: one for every 7 high street charity shops. The most successful are now turning over close to £100,000 per year, and many have become highly specialised, spotting profitable niches in the market. Dress*sense, Sense Trading’s designer and vintage clothing store on eBay, has well over 6,000 happy customers. Costs are kept low, as eBay waives its commission on all sales made by charities. Jane Williams, Sense’s Online Retail Manager, says, “Selling on eBay for Charity is like having extra shops but without the overheads!” Third, charities can raise funds through special auctions, selling high value, unique or quirky celebrity items on eBay. The opportunity for the public to own something really special, combined with the familiarity and popularity of eBay, can boost the impact of any charity auction. Books Abroad, a charity that sends books to the developing world, recently auctioned the first complete set of signed Harry Potter books, raising over £18,000. The Task Brasil Trust, a small charity helping Brazilian street children, raised over £26,000 by selling a pair of tickets to the Led Zeppelin reunion concert. Other auctions have ranged from Lewis Hamilton’s go-kart (Tommy’s), through to the chance to appear in a novel (Autism Speaks). So far, almost £6m has been raised by charities through eBay for Charity. In the coming years, eBay and MissionFish aim to grow the programme to the size of a major charitable foundation, by making it possible for anyone to support any charity with any gift.
MissionFish 43 Section 5: The big trends in earning money online
Trend 1 – Charities are using the gift of their stories Charities have the gift of real stories, but too often they overlook this vital asset. Stories are human, real and engender trust. They are not marketing devices; they illustrate the charity at work and at its best. The most successful online charities tell stories using the best tools the web has to offer. They are told on web pages, in emails, videos, blogs, podcasts and in conversations person to person out in the social web. They are viral; people inspired by these stories quickly pass them on. The best stories are told by real people and not by actors, whether they are the charity’s own staff or the people being helped. One example which has received much acclaim is that of Robert Thompson who shot and produced ‘4 Generations’ in 2007 while living in China. His story documents a journey in southwestern China (near Tibet) to first find, then deliver a water buffalo to a poor family. The water buffalo led him to a family with a phenomenal story. In another example, Canadian doctor James Maskalyk narrates his experiences working for Medecins Sans Frontieres in Abyei, Sudan. His inspirational blog has found a massive following, successful enough to warrant him a book offer, but here is what he says about it ending: “As it is, the book will come out on Doubleday in early 2009. It will not be the blog. It will be different. The blog was a living thing, kept alive by everyone who read it. If it was printed and bound it would become inanimate, frustrated, and lifeless.” Story telling is putting your brand in practice. What better way to give it life than through digital media?
Trend 2 – Charities are engaging first and fundraising second In a society where consumers are more discerning than ever, and resistant to overt marketing, charities are realising that a stark donate button or an email appeal can often be offered too strongly too soon. They see the future in engaging visitors first, drawing them into a more intimate relationship with the cause, or offering a tangible benefit, before asking for any money. More and more, it is social media that charities are turning to for the right tools to create this intimacy and engagement. Macmillan Cancer Support’s flagship World’s Largest Coffee Morning was last year launched in 3D virtual world Second Life. The aim was to provide a real environment of support for people affected by cancer, as well as a new fundraising mechanism. Meanwhile WWF has unveiled its Second Life presence with a ‘Conservation Island’ where visitors can view various displays explaining WWF’s work from reducing bycatch to climate change. Several charities, including Jeans for Genes and NSPCC, have harnessed the power of Google map ‘mashups’ (live maps which overlay the geographic locations of participants) to demonstrate where their supporters live and who is doing what where, creating a very real sense of a community in action.
44 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online And the British Heart Foundation has built on its successful virtual postcards service with a new virtual Valentine, which this year was also developed as a Facebook application encouraging you to send a cheeky gift to everyone you admire and to all your friends! Some of these initiatives are so recent that we have yet to learn how successful they may have been, whether in generating funds, or in raising awareness and developing a sense of community. It is clear though that charities are increasingly sensitive to the need to get people to ‘make friends’ with their cause, and their online persona, before getting them more deeply involved.
Trend 3 – Web 2.0 is making charities start socialising to make friends Social media are almost forcing charities to become more sociable themselves, moving from their default ‘we know best’ positions to listen to or, better still, take part in discussions and commentary not initiated or lead by them. For some this is the part of the phenomenon of web 2.0, or user-generated content, that they most fear, whilst others recognise that the best way to manage their brand is to hand it over to the public and to participate with honesty and with passion. This fresh community-style dialogue is only occurring in a limited fashion within charities, most of them large ones, and typically involving just one or two members of the web or communications team. But you only have to look on the web at blogs from leading charity thought-leaders to see how much further they think it should go. In the future, staff from all areas of the charity should find themselves responding to a query on Facebook or providing a link to some service information on SagaZone. Social networking is about taking time to listen, and to talk attentively and respectively to other people. The charities that take up this challenge online can benefit from ‘friend-raising’ as a natural path to fundraising. As Tom Mansel-Pleydell from JustGiving.com says, “How to win friends and influence people – once the title of a famous book now the adage of social networking”. Charities are cottoning on to the fact that social sites are about friend-raising and not fundraising, though some still use it as an opportunistic approach to soliciting gifts. New technology and socialising now go hand in hand, particularly with the young. As Joe Saxton observes “younger people enjoy the newest activity in the world [communicating online] and the oldest – getting people together”.
Trend 4 – The less clicks the better No-one would deny that it is tempting to use your website to convey everything you do. But from visual design to content or functionality, experts agree that the simplest web pages bring the best results. To make their websites as comprehensive as possible, charities face the nightmare of coming up with a navigation system that is easy to follow, and the inevitable internal competition for what gets on the home page. As James Redhead of the Charity Technology Trust put it, “Charity websites simply have too many clicks. Simple offerings get the best results”.
MissionFish 45 As the old adage goes ‘Keep it simple, stupid’ (KISS). The bigger challenge is how to keep it simple within the larger framework of the multi-purpose all-singing all-dancing sites that many charity websites have become. Some charities’ solution is to build separate sites which are only loosely related (if at all) in brand and style to the mother-ship site. The solution to simplicity may come at the expense of brand integrity and coherence.
Fundraising on the internet is much more than a ‘donate now’ button on your home page. Frankly, donating online can be as dull as dishwater. A boring ‘donate now’ button, several clunky steps through a shopping cart about a tenth as engaging as buying from Amazon, a dreadful thank you (if you even get one) leaving you on a page with no further encouragement. Perhaps one of the reasons that fundraising online is still a small part of the total giving pot is that fundraisers haven’t yet worked out how to effectively use the internet to raise donations. Take the ubiquitous ‘donate now’ button that features on the home page of so many charity websites. Now it’s true that it’s good for people to know how to donate when they get to a website. But what happened to making your case for giving? Why is all the persuasion that we see in charities’ direct mail tossed out of the window when asking you to give on their website? Can you imagine how effective a telemarketing call from a charity would be if the caller simply said ‘make a donation please’ with no preamble or explanation? Yet that is all too frequently what charities do online. The ‘donate now’ button is a kind of fundraising pornography – no relationship, no wooing, no niceties, just naked lust for a donor’s money. Put another way charities haven’t yet worked out how to ask nicely online. They haven’t worked out the need for the sweet-talking that the telephone, street fundraising and direct mail can do so well. The internet is a fantastic tool for starting, building and consummating relationships. If you don’t believe me ask all the people who have found love on the internet. So perhaps we need a ‘take our story tour’ button on the home page or ‘donate later find out now’ button or even a choice of buttons for a range of needs. Fundraising on the internet is so much, much more than ‘donate now’ button on the home page. It’s about using the internet as a relationship-building tool and it’s about giving the donor and prospective donor a symphony of ways to find out about your organisations and what it does.
Trend 5: Charities are leaving behind the comfort of their own brand The internet is now characterised (as we saw in section 2) by a small cadre of high-profile, high-traffic sites and an ocean of small sites. Charities have a choice. Bring the traffic to the message, or take the message to the traffic. Originally charities were happy to do the former and try to woo the traffic to the site – and many have got pretty good at this. But it is much easier to take the message to the traffic, particularly for small charities, in an age of social networking, blogs and video clips. This is good sense. The difficulty is that taking the message to the traffic, usually means that the tight brand guidelines that can be so controlled and tightly prescribed on a charity’s own website are often impossible to police outside it. So a group on Facebook or a channel on YouTube or an
46 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online advocate in a chat room cannot ever keep the brand (visual) identity carefully controlled. If charities want to succeed in earning online all but the biggest charity brands will need to compromise their brand integrity for the sake of reach and access to high volumes of users and donors.
Trend 6 – Make new media and old media talk to each other One of the secrets for those organisations who work both online and offline is to join up the activities. This is not rocket science. It’s simply that if your website has the same messages, the same appeals, the same case studies and the same designs as your printed or broadcast materials they will all work harder. However, even if the reason to integrate the online and offline worlds are not difficult to understand, in practice getting the different teams in an organisation to make it happen is much harder. Teams are often managed by different directors in different divisions and may need the calm, gentle but firm hand of the CEO to make sure that they join up their work to increase its power and impact. Whatever the logistical difficulties in joining up the new and old worlds, the reasons to do it are manifold. Any good fundraising strategy will want to know who the audience is, what the message is, and how the audience will be reached. By integrating fundraising (and communications) strategies it should be possible to see how the internet can be used as a tool for reaching those audiences and how it can be a tool for finding new audiences of it own. One way to make sure that all parties within a charity are using the internet to maximum effect is to have a regular marketing meeting for all those who view the internet as a key marketing tool. This can allow people to see whether they can learn from each other’s marketing successes and failures. It can allow an exchange of ideas about which advertising works or what plans people have for emailing key lists. In reality, there is nothing new or revolutionary about this trend. It’s just good marketing management. Sadly, for too many charities it appears to be necessary to reinvent the wheel and rediscover the importance of the management of marketing and marketers.
Trend 7 – Digital fundraisers need a particular blend of skills and an online income czar One of the challenges of generating income online is that it is not just about having a great website, fantastic partners or an amazing cause. It’s about getting the right people to knit all of those critical success factors into one whole – a whole which has more power than the sum of the individual parts. One observation which came out of our interviews was that the organisations who were doing the most exciting and successful stuff in online fundraising tended to have a person – a digital fundraiser czar if you like – who was responsible for pulling together all of the different strands so that the organisation maximised income. In many cases this person was in the fundraising team: because they needed to understand and immerse themselves in fundraising and understand what makes great fundraising. However these individuals need to be equally at home in the world of new media and able to understand the big trends that are driving the way people are using the internet.
MissionFish 47 In too many organisations there is the opposite of synergy. Of the few fundraisers that were available to talk about digital media, and the fewer still that specialised in it, there was mention of their difficulty in bringing the offline marketers and fundraisers to the ‘virtual’ table, as it were, of them simply ‘not getting it’. It’s quite possible that the central problems remain those of age, mindset and (not) talking the same language – perish the thought.
Trend 8 – Online partners create multiple opportunities and multiple revenue streams There are few charities who have the budget to do all the things they want to do online. There are always ways to spend more money – and one of the biggest of those costs is in building the new technology. One response to the need for additional funds is not to bother. Why create your own events fundraising technology or auction site or bookshop when somebody has already created a vastly superior site with ten, a hundred or a thousand times more traffic than any one charity can ever achieve. Outsourcing functionality to third parties allows a charity to do more with less. In some cases this may be specific partnerships such as the affinity relationship between Breast Cancer Care and Interflora, or between NSPCC and Microsoft. In other cases it may be a tie-up which any charity can enter into. Either way in the David and Goliath world of the internet, one way for charities to punch above their weight is to leap on Goliath’s shoulders and tell him which way you want him to go.
Case Study: Mencap use Ben’s story to tell their own story The new Mencap website was launched on 21st April 2008 and the home page very noticeably features the video of Ben, rather than a larger than life appeal or donate box. Ben is a very focused and articulate young man who is determined to learn more languages. Ben is not asking you to donate money, but his story brings home the reason why Mencap needs your support. This is what Web Communications Manager, Caroline Lambie had to say: “We find that nowadays people instinctively look for the donate button on your website. They expect to be able to give online. So you don’t need to force a donate message in front of them, you can let your cause do the talking, and the asking. We try to bring people into direct contact with what we do by sharing real stories and real voices that bring our cause to life. We have also tested the language that we use on our website with a usability company, and we’re careful to speak in ways that people switch on to, rather than off”.
48 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Eight partners to help you raise more money online Sign up with any or all of these partners to create an immediate boost to your online income. Don’t forget to promote them to your supporters as a way of helping too. 1. CAF Online Giving Donors can find and support any UK charity on CAF’s website with a one-off donation or using a CAF Account. Online donations processed by CAF grew from £3.6 million to £6.8 million between 2003 and 2004. Charities can also use CAF to process donations on their behalf from their own websites. 2. Easyfundraising This free service for charities and shoppers has processed £350,000 in donations for good causes since the company's launch in October 2006. Shoppers who click through to buy from over 500 retailers partnered with the site generate free donations to the good cause of their choice. £80,000 has been raised since January 2008. 3. eBay for Charity eBay is the largest ecommerce site in the UK with over 14 million active users. Charities have sold merchandise on it for years but the launch of eBay for Charity in 2005 brought their activities into focus, helping them to set up their own stores and to receive donations from eBay sellers. eBay waives the same percentage from its fees as the seller donates, and Gift Aid is automatically collected. 4. Everyclick.com One of the UK’s top 10 search engines, Everyclick donates 50% of its monthly revenue to charities selected by its users. 114,939 people have already helped raise over £432,829 for charity as they search the web. 5. The Big Give A free to use website that helps major donors find charity projects in their field of interest. Sharing your success stories and big projects with The Big Give may just help you find the major donor you’ve dreamt of. Since launching in December they have matched major donors to 13 projects with a total value of over £2 million. 6. Google Adsense/ Google Adwords Grants Google is the world’s number 1 search engine. It controls 90% of UK searches10 and 69%11 of the online advertising market. Adsense allows you to display contextual adverts on your site and collect commission each time they are clicked on. The Google Grants UK programme awards free advertising to successful charities to enable them to target audiences who search on Google to click through to their site. 7. Just Giving/ Bmycharity Don’t miss out on the growing popularity of online event sponsorship fundraising. Just Giving and Bmycharity are both popular with charities and supporters, and both report high levels of annual growth. Both are increasing their own outreach to communities too. 8. Amazon Associates Amazon controls around 12% of the online book sales market. It first established its successful affiliate marketing programme in 1996. By linking to Amazon products and services you can add interesting and relevant content to your site and receive up to 10% in referral fees. Watch this space. A fifth of the young people who hear about charities online do so through social networking sites such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook. These have all been reporting plans to launch official UK versions of their US causes and citizenship sections. So watch out for Facebook Causes, MySpace Impact and Bebobeone…
10 Hitwise December 2007 11 http://www.browsermedia.co.uk/2008/04/01/doubleclick-deal-means-google-controls-69-of-the-online-ad-market/
MissionFish 49 Section 6: In conclusion – the rise of online fundraising 2.0 and online earning 1.0
In old-school online fundraising, donate buttons were centre stage and became disproportionately important. The expectation was that ‘if you built they would come’ but of course they didn’t. The public discovered a whole raft of things more exciting, involving and rewarding than giving money online. We characterise this approach as online fundraising 1.0. We are now seeing the slow emergence of a new wave of fundraising, developing since the advent of social media, online partnerships and email marketing. We call it online fundraising 2.0 and online earning 1.0. These two new paradigms are all about making meaningful connections. It’s where ‘friend-raising’ and fundraising go hand in hand. Here are some of the other characteristics of these new approaches: ̈ Give donors a role. Let them take up your cause and support their interest by providing helpful guidance, great resources and enjoyable tools. Allow donors to give on their own terms and in their own style. Don’t be too prescriptive. As Steve Bridger of nfp2.0 says, treat donors like ‘partners’. ̈ Reach and engage donors in their favourite places. This requires you to understand their demographics. Don’t expect them just to come to you, entice them and when they arrive at your site, remember your journey with them has only just begun. Now you have to offer them a great experience and cement a relationship. ̈ Inspire donors. Let your donors see how you achieve your goals and lead by example. Be personal and spark empathy. Inspire them to attract others. The viral nature of the web has come further still as social networks are great places for spreading the word. Remember that the negative spreads too. If it does, respond, but with balance and kindness. ̈ Find and then activate your messengers and their networks. These could be existing donors, campaigners, volunteers, beneficiaries, communities, or your own staff. Exploit connections between people and relish in peer to peer influence and recommendations. Demonstrate your cause in action with passion and honesty, and you’re sure to gain supporters. ̈ Release your brand. Let your brand be embodied by the people who encounter it. Do this by telling great stories that are branding in action, so that your work and its impact are easy to understand. ̈ Treat your website as belonging to your visitors and not to you. Think about what your visitors most want to see, read and most importantly do. Interaction is the key to initiating a relationship that will bring you into physical contact with that individual (starting with an email address) and allow you the chance to build something that can grow. ̈ Use partnership to punch above your weight. Why work hard when somebody else can do it for you? Partnerships with those who have the software technology or those who have the traffic or the content can let a charity benefit from the hard work and traffic already harnessed by others. ̈ The internet is not the only fruit. There is plenty of potential in the internet for charities but mobile phones and digital TV remain even more under-exploited mediums for income generation.
50 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online Case Study: Breast Cancer Care – new media is everyone’s discipline Bertie Bosredon, Head of New Media There was a time when managing the Breast Cancer Care website felt like trying to organise Glastonbury: all the managers wanted to be on the front page… often at the same time. Our front page was over-crowded and confusing. Luckily, the importance of new media is recognised at all levels of the organisation which has helped me build a team which operates like a full service digital agency and services all internal departments. The team sits in breast cancer services and the aim of the website matches closely the mission statement of the organisation. In effect, the primary objective of our site is to provide a service for people affected by breast cancer. It doesn’t matter where new media sits in the organisation, the key is to avoid working in silos by building good working relationships with other teams and having a perfect understanding of who the main audiences are and how they want information presented on the website. Since the end of last year, we have worked with a panel of users on our new website which will launch in the autumn. Currently, 47% of our traffic goes to our discussion forums, which now get over 10,000 posts every month. Members of our community told us they wanted to read stories but most of all they want to share their story and network with other site members. As a result, we placed breast cancer at the centre of our strategy and Breast Cancer Care is the organisation that will enable conversations between users. As well as working with our users, we are also working with internal teams to profile our audience, set up goals and identify the right fundraising channel. Last year, we built a stand alone events site, moving away from events pages inside the main website; it now generates most of our online fundraising income. We are also looking outside our own website. In the near future, I see a lot of the income coming from what I call micro- fundraising, small amounts raised by many websites such as everyclick.com or eBay and from users fundraising on their blogs and online community pages. I believe that new media is a discipline, not a channel. By focusing on service delivery first and placing the fundraising ask at the right place and at the right time, I am confident our e-Fundraising will be more effective.
MissionFish 51 The authors
Sarah Hughes Sarah Hughes runs new media strategy, fundraising and communications consultancy Charity21 (www.charity21.co.uk), which she started in 2005 after almost nine years at the Charities Aid Foundation. Sarah has given extensive personal support to the understanding and development of new media in the charity sector, and has been credited with helping to launch several new charitable initiatives. In 2006 she chaired the Institute of Fundraising Working Party tasked with updating and expanding the Internet Fundraising Code of Practice. Top of Sarah's list of passions are modernising charity and enriching the online giving experience. You can contact Sarah on [email protected]
Sarah Lincoln Sarah joined nfpSynergy as a Research Assistant in early 2008. Prior to this, she worked as a fundraising researcher for the national homelessness charity Emmaus, at their Federation Office in Cambridge. In 2006 Sarah completed a masters degree in Science and Religion at Oxford University, following her undergraduate studies there in Philosophy and Theology. She also spent a year at the University of Bonn as part of her degree, and is currently working towards a postgraduate certificate in research methods with the Open University. You can contact Sarah on [email protected]
Joe Saxton As well as being Driver of Ideas at nfpSynergy, which he co-founded in 2002, Joe Saxton is also outgoing chair (2005-2008) at the Institute of Fundraising; chair at student environment and development campaign group, People & Planet; and chair of CharityComms, the new professional body for not for profit communicators. Named by The Guardian (2003) as one of the 100 most influential people vis-à-vis UK social policy, Joe was voted the most influential person in UK fundraising by Professional Fundraising magazine in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. In October 2007 the Evening Standard named him one of the 1000 most influential people in London. In 2008 he was named as one of PR Week’s 500 most influential people in the UK communications sector. You can contact Joe on [email protected]
nfpSynergy nfpSynergy is a research consultancy for the not-for-profit sector. Our goal is to provide research information and knowledge to help non profits thrive. We do tracking research, focus groups and individual projects. We measure anything from effectiveness to advertising. We run both syndicated monitors and individual projects for dozens of different charities, using a wide variety of research techniques. We have also published a range of reports covering a variety of issues, which you can download from our website for free. Our free reports include Virtual Promise, an annual (since 2000) survey tracking charities' use of, and attitudes to, the internet. The report incorporates data on specific information regarding their internet presence and resources, including budgets, staff allocation, hardware/
52 Passion, persistence, and partnership: the secrets of earning more online The partners behind this report
MissionFish We aim to help charities get the most out of online commerce. We want to make it possible for any charity to benefit from any gift from any donor. To achieve that vision we're trying to make it easier to give as a part of daily life online, and working to change the way people think about philanthropy. We are a registered charity (No. 1110538). Our major initiative is eBay for Charity, a unique programme that helps charities raise money on eBay through donations, sales, and special auctions. For more information about our work, visit www.missionfish.org.uk.
Institute of Fundraising The Institute of Fundraising is the professional membership body for UK fundraising. The Institute’s mission is to support fundraisers, through leadership, representation, standards setting and education, to deliver excellent fundraising. The Institute represents over 4,500 fundraisers and 250 fundraising organisations, providing dedicated information and support services for individual and organisational members. The Institute is represented across the UK by a range of National, Regional and Special Interest Groups, offering an extensive programme of networking and training events. The Institute is a charity registered in England and Wales (No. 1079573) and Scotland (No. SC038971) as well as a company limited by guarantee (No. 3870883). VAT registration number 547 8930 96. For more information about the work of the Institute of Fundraising visit www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk
MissionFish 53 MissionFish Hotham House 1 Heron Square Richmond TW9 1EJ Telephone: 020 8605 3095 www.missionfish.org.uk MissionFish Hotham House 1 Heron Square Richmond TW9 1EJ Telephone: 020 8605 3095 www.missionfish.org.uk