If you’d like to be doing more with digital techniques to help your fundraising succeed, irrespective of what kind of donors you work with, I’m excited to share Four Key Principles that Emily Casson explained in Episode 94 of the Fundraising Bright Spots podcast. Emily is Digital Marketing Manager at the Salvation Army UK and a hugely experienced fundraiser.
Think Big, Start Small, Scale Quickly, Fail Fast
Emily explained that while the tactics vary, it is her core philosophy about digital fundraising that are at the heart of the phenomenal growth that she and her teams have achieved.
There are several stunning examples of this growth, but we explored an emphatic one in Episode 15 of my podcast when Emily explained how, over a four-year period at Cats Protection, digital income grew from £250,000 per year / to £6 million per year.
All of this growth, and more recently, the massive increase in digital income at the Salvation Army in the last year, has been made possible by Emily’s philosophy, neatly summed up in the team mantra. Though both the charities I have mentioned so far are relatively large, Emily often helps small charities improve their digital approach, and has found that these ideas are effective irrespective of charity size:
- Think big – how can you use digital to transform, not just your fundraising, but maybe even the impact of your entire organisation?
- Start small – in order for your ‘big ideas’ to feel less scary, what are the really small steps you could take? What small, very do-able changes could you put into practice today or tomorrow?
- Scale quickly – One exciting thing about digital is that when something works, its often very scalable. Knowing this can help you be truly ambitious, so Emily urges us to aim for e.g.100% or 1000% growth (rather than 1% or 2% growth).
- Fail fast – Another great thing about the digital world is that you can test ideas relatively cheaply and quickly. Each time you try something you can learn important information that helps you do it better next time. If you’re not trying things and ‘failing’, you’re not innovating.
Fixed vs Growth Mindset
Instead of talking about ‘digital transformation’, which implies that you’re going from A to B, Emily believes you should think of it more as a ‘digital journey’. An important part of this is the way you ongoingly create a growth mindset and culture in your charity. A fixed mindset about any topic is one where we don’t believe that progress is possible and so tend not to risk effort to try new ways of doing things.
If you or a colleague has a relatively fixed mindset, what can you do to change this mindset and help people believe that digital techniques will pay off?
First, we have to understand that change is often very scary. What could you find and share that might reduce this fear? How can you reduce the sense of risk (of things going wrong) and show the potential upside? One powerful tactic is to find out and share what has worked for other charities.
The idea of starting small reminds us that it’s much easier to get permission for a small pilot, with little or no risk, than it is to secure sign off for a whole revolutionary new strategy.
Attract the butterflies
Emily used the term ‘butterfly donors’ to help us understand the motivations of people who ‘flit’ around, giving to different charities. This behaviour is different from the way most traditional supporters behave, in that more than ever they are attracted by the cause and messaging rather than the charity itself.
Although they don’t appear as loyal as traditional donors, they’re increasingly important. So how can we attract and inspire them?
One crucial ingredient is messaging – it needs to be strong and clear. What is your aim? What are your goals to achieve this positive difference?
Equally important, get clear about your objectives for any given digital activity – what exactly do you want them to do? Answering these questions helps you clarify your messages.
Understand your audience
It’s also essential that you understand the audience you’re targeting. You don’t need fancy tools or a big budget to achieve this. A good place to start is to look at and potentially change what data you ask for when people contact your charity.
Gathering relevant insight makes it easier to provide your particular supporters with the right message, through the right medium, at the right time.
For example, while at Cats Protection, Emily and her team gained increasingly clearer insights about the motivations and behaviours of supporters.
For example, she shared that they were able to predict what message would be most likely to appeal to a 42-year old woman on the way to work on a Tuesday morning. And the more they tested (eg headline / breed of cat in the image / type of story etc) they could predict with increasing accuracy, what treatment would be most likely to inspire that type of person.
Rather than feel compelled to jump on the hottest new platform or craze, or feel a sense of guilt that you haven’t, gathering sound insight on who your target audience is helps you make informed decisions. So for example, TikTok may well be a platform worth experimenting with, if you can find out whether and how your audience use it. Or you may conclude that it isn’t.
Emily found that this approach is very effective. For example, her initial target at Cats Protection was to recruit 2,500 new leads who were interested in the cause through Facebook, that they could start to build a relationship with. Because it was working so well, they scaled up and achieved over 100,000 new leads!
And these people weren’t just one-off donors, they have been stewarded and given opportunities to become regular givers, volunteers, campaigners and legacy pledgers.
Start by putting half an hour aside this week and consider – ‘who is my target audience and how can I reach them?’. That might be a small scale Facebook advert with a £50 spend, or it might be a campaign where you simply ask friends, family and supporters to spread the word for you. Once you have tested at a small scale, then you can use the data you gather as a case for investment.
Nurture your online relationships
Once you’ve attracted the butterflies with great content on the right platforms, how do you add value to these relationships? Emily’s top tip for relationship building is ‘be more Geordie’. (For our international readers, Geordies come from the North East of the England and have a reputation for being friendly and down to earth.)
One charity that does this really well is ‘Feeding Families’. Emily is an enthusiastic supporter of this small charity because she is inspired by their simple, clear messages and the very human way in which they explain the difference you are making.
Started by Juliet Mission, Feeding Families gives peer-to-peer support through food banks and hampers. What they do really well is show the impact of donations. They think beyond the fundraising shopping list (eg X level gift pays for Y resource), and show that your donation is more than just a box of food. It’s a lifeline for someone; and that box of food shows them that somebody cares.
Another great example is The Chronicle Sunshine Fund in Newcastle, which is a brilliant local charity that supports disabled children in the North East. Every year, the local bus drivers dress up in silly outfits and collect donations. This is a traditional annual fundraising event, but finding ways to spread the word online, as well as lovely heartfelt thank you videos every year, has enabled a local charity to grow impressive fundraising results.
If we’re not careful, the so-called ‘The Curse of Knowledge’ can make our tone of voice too formal or technical. To overcome this pitfall, how can you describe your events and the difference donations are making, in a tone that is more down to earth?
Don’t get distracted by shiny new toys
Digital and innovation go hand in hand and although Emily loves innovation, she believes it’s important not to get distracted by the ‘shiny new toys’. You don’t need to be leading digital innovation. For most charities it is more effective to be a follower, taking advantage of what is working well for others – what I would call a ‘learning from the bright spots’ approach.
That said, one relatively small charity that has done a great job at the forefront of digital innovation Edinburgh Dogs and Cats Home. Nicola Gunn and her team have embraced the opportunity of cryptocurrency. They’re one of the few charities to accept this kind of donation and this risk has paid off. One example was a donation of £87,000 last year, but they’ve also found it’s not just about the value of donations in the short term. Their readiness to work with donors who favour cryptocurrency has helped them build relationships with a younger and more international demographic of people who care about animal welfare.
We’re not suggesting this tactic is appropriate for every charity, but we share it as an example of the rewards that can come to charities that are willing to work hard to explore, test and adapt. Nicola and her colleagues have spent time learning about digital opportunities and thinking big. They have also recruited a digital trustee, which is a practical step that Emily urged all charities to consider.
It’s important to remember that digital innovation is achievable no matter the size of your charity. While budgets can help you scale, many of the tactics Emily recommends are more about mindset than budget.
Good luck! Do let us know how you get on. Emily and I are on LinkedIn, and on Twitter Emily is @EmilyCasson and I’m @woods_rob.
These ideas are taken from Emily’s keynote talk at our March Breakfast Club for Fundraising Leaders, and Episode 94 of the Fundraising Bright Spots podcast.
You can find more of Emily’s insights on the following podcast episodes:
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