There’s no doubt that your consultant or fundraising specialist has told you that you need a regular giving product, and you know that face-to-face is the world’s leading source of these untied monthly donors. The problem seems to be that no agency will touch you because your name is not big enough. Fear not, just because you are a small regional charity, it does not mean that you do not have a proposition that will work on the streets, doors and in the private sites of your chosen states. You may have to pay a small premium on agency fees, and you might have to agree to a smaller trial volume than your larger contemporaries (500 rather than 1,000) but if those terms suit you, you can begin

If you’ve been tuned into 24-hour news cycle for the last 72 hours you would surely have seen a momentary dip in quality journalism. A slow news day is not necessarily a bad thing, but whilst there are famines and civil wars tearing apart swathes of our planet, it seems odd to see the report of six wedding guests attending a shin-dig in the same dress. I don’t know what the chances of this occurrence are, and I don’t quite understand how it is newsworthy, but it managed to grab my attention and get me thinking. Now, this may not have been the most expensive or stylish outfit but it was right for that wedding. When attempting to calculate the likelihood of one garment being perfect for that w

Many regular giving managers will frequently assess the health of their program by running reports that measure the cost effectiveness of their RG program. These will include, but are not limited to, the breakeven points, CPA, CPL, CPT, average gift and attrition/retention reports that produce a list of figures and graphs to indicate which supplier, team, product, price point, donor journey, and channel is performing at the best levels, and which ones need to be tweaked or need wholesale changes. Your agency, you may be surprised to read, do not do these checks. They are looking at their two main drivers – Volume of Staff and Sign Up/Pledge Rate. Anything outside of these levers are secondar

Have you ever found that your suppliers’ management team did not welcome the results of a mystery shop? Did this strike you as odd? Probably not, but there are a few reasons why your agency may not be to blame for their resistance in accepting all that your shopper tells you. There are currently two types of shopper, and the feedback you give to your agencies must be dependent on this. Firstly, you have the cheap and cheerful ‘retail’ style shoppers that typically inspect retail stores to experience the customer service and presentation of merchandise. These companies also shop fundraisers, but do so in a way that does not critique the content of the conversation, merely the presentation and

I’ve been on the receiving end of charity presentations that bore my socks off no matter how excited I was before entering the room. This is campaign suicide. Here is a quick list of things to keep in mind when conducting the charity training of your f2f team DO Tell them that you and your charity are behind them and you appreciate the vital work they do Give them case studies that were possible because of f2f fundraising donations Celebrate specific fundraisers for their quality v quantity results Offer price-points/shopping list that relates to the amount they are asking for Stick to the template of ‘Intro/History – Problem/Issue – Solution/Your work – Dollar handles’ Give catchy one-liner