WBU Fund Development - Day 2

Tuesday 5 February

RNIB Judd Street, London

Tour of RNIB Fundraising Department

We have a new donor - now what?

LeifJensen, NAPB

A donor base will decline over time (defection curve)and half of donors will not leave a gift in second year
The largest reason for leaving (68%) is due to lack of interest from supplier
Need to build donor loyalty and make donors want to be loyal
Leif talked about drivers of commitment and loyalty; active and passive
Research has indicated which drivers are most important. The perceived service quality is the most important, shared beliefs second and trust third. These are the three drivers for commitment and loyalty to focus on getting right.
Good experiences will affect donor commitment
Showing what the gift achieved creates a positive experience
Trust is created by the organisation demonstrating competence and good judgement
Getting the donor engaged in multiple ways strengthens loyalty and commitment
Building donor relationships over time: awareness; acquisition; engagement; retention; reactivation
Honeymoon period for cash donors is around 30 days - this is the amount of time you have to engage and keep the donor
Need to thank people in a way to produce serotonin!
Saying 'thank you' ends the relationship, but we want this to be the start!
Say how the gift made you feel
Donors remember the thank you letters more than they remember giving the gift
Donors fear that their gift will not matter and will become lost so need to show how their gift has changed someone's life
Fear of 'spam' - put control with donor about communications and show you will listen, e.g. opportunity to opt out of communications
Sending a dialogue letter increases the chance of receiving a second gift from the donor rather then just sending a thank you letter
Fast response gets better response than a slow response - the faster the better
New donors - if let them rest will become cold
Channels - using many channels is better
Always use written letter for first thank you letter
People who donated for the puppy calendar received a SMS (text) thank you message
Invitations have been sent out by SMS, email and letter. Had very good response by SMS.

Steven Greenberg, RNIB

Research propensity of donors to give a gift
Do some database work to find out who your hot prospects are
Personalised thank you based on the appeal they responded to
Welcome programme to convert donor to regular giving could be as long as 12 months
May initially ask for a lower level monthly gift with a strategy to upgrade the donor to a higher gift over time
When calling the donor for an upgrade their attrition is lower and they are less likely to leave
Important to recognise which channel was used to bring the donor in, particularly for digital channels
Conversion rate after 2-3 weeks, 5% conversation. Varies between 3-5%
Older donors - find that after 6 weeks they may have forgotten about making the donation
Monthly gift of £5 via SMS & mobile phone bill. Proving to be quite successful in the UK
In Irelandthere are SMS problems with different providers and VAT on text donations. Believe problem is being sorted in the UK re VAT and around 96-100% of donations being passed to the charity.
SMS donations - set up through street fundraising initially. Donor sets up with Fundraiser on the street. Fundraiser sends text on the street and then technology sets up monthly gifts to go through. Donations show up on phone bill.

Tim Alcock, CNIB

Thank you efforts driven by tax receipts to donors - get response out in 4 days
Seven days after the gift the donor receives a thank you call and four weeks later there is a telemarketing call to the donor
Compare existing monthly base against existing database
Don't tend to use SMS but do use email
Cost of digital printing is falling - materials can be customised and sent out at any time in the year
Communications can be customised, e.g. send a personalised calendar to monthly donors
Attributes to make someone more likely to convert? Use a predictive model to work this out. CNIB have a data team to take care of this.
In Australiathe second call is made between 30 & 45 days and they find that 8% convert. Vision Australia is testing at the moment with asking sooner, including in the thank you letter for the first gift.
In Canada conversion is between 3-5%
In Norway calling after 6 months conversion is around 7%
Australia - majority of donors are cash donors. All action happens within first two months. Thank you, welcome back, ask for regular gift by phone or second cash gift.
Send SMS - answer yes to upgrade your donation - has been tried by another organisation

Anne Marie Tiedmann, Denmark

Called to upgrade donors and response rate was 65%

Eifron Hopper, RNIB - Legacy Fundraising

RNIB team brings in 35-40 million per year from Legacies, about one third of charity's total income
Asked what prompts someone to make a Will? Birth of a child/grandchild. Marriage/divorce. Illness.
Charities used to scare people into making a Will, although this wasn't effective in encouraging people to leave a legacy to charity
What prompts someone to leave a legacy to charity? Affected by the condition, helped by the charity, family member helped by the charity, perception, tax avoidance, religious - a sense of duty
Believe in the cause - and someone asked them to do it!
Research by RNIB showed that over 50% of legacies were from people who had experienced sight loss themselves, or someone close to them had.
Research also shows that someone has asked them to leave a legacy in a Will
Ken Burnett - created the donor pyramid. At the bottom are lots of people who give small amounts of money. At the top, fewer people giving large amounts of money. But giving is not this linear! Journey is more complicated than this.
Eifron showed diagram of a very complex chart showing all touch points that people have with the organisation which could lead to them leaving a legacy. Financial donors are just one part of many.Also members, service users, volunteers, campaigners
Sight loss is a low incidence disability but will become more so as people live longer.
With sight loss need to explain to people what we do before we can gain their support
People don't tend to respond to legacy marketing immediately - takes many touch points
Look into ways of reaching stakeholders with legacy messages
Do a mailing and send a magazine. Recipients largely selected from donor base, but also from other areas. This is first stage of the journey.
RNIB hold 30 legacy receptions per year all around the UK. Colleagues who deliver services for RNIB and Action for Blind People are invited to speak at the events about they work they do and the difference they make. Contacts are invited (filtered by propensity model). They tend to be aged 60 or older; when most Wills tend to be made. The legacy ask is made very subtly at these events.
Wording of the invitation: Hear about the work of the organisation and how you can support it - signed off by a staff member with 'Legacy Development Officer' title.
Retention and recognition of legacy pledgers is important
How do you know how many people will attend? Logistics of venue etc. RNIB been doing these for around 10 years. Invite around 2000 people to each reception and we get around 70-200 people. Different numbers in different areas of the country. We know from responses how many people would like to attend. If too many responses RNIB have then organised another event in that area.
Experience working with financial planners and legal services.
People already decided when seeing lawyers whether to leave money to charities. RNIB don't want to be seen to be influencing lawyers.
Group of 150 charities together working to nudge lawyers & banks, financial planners) to ask people if thought about leaving money to a charity.
Previously the RNIB legacy team have asked RNIB's membership team for their contact list to send legacy information. The membership team were concerned about maintaining their relationship with their mailing list so we asked how they communicate with members. They communicate via newsletters, so we put our messages into their existing communications.
Had an exhibition where we were showing our materials. Had a leaflet for this. Library service asked if could have this in Braille to include in books large print & Braille & audio being sent out. They are now coming to us with ideas of how we can use them to get the legacy message out. Hope to have good results from this.
Legacy marketing is a slow process. Need lots of messages out there to act as prompts to do something. We get the message in front of around half million people per year.
RNIB uses internal marketing within the charity. There is an annual internal marketing campaign about legacies; the importance of legacies and the role that everyone can play.
Delegates asked how they can get involved in this kind of activity with the limited resources they have. A dilemma for regional presidents of WBU who represent a lot of countries. Would like to know how to apply this information to be applicable to organisations such as ULAC.

Next Steps: Going forward strategy

Asked delegates if it is useful to continue meeting in this way. Yes, but need to make it more meaningful. Need region-specific seminar, noting legal, cultural difference of each region
Need to strengthen regions to ultimately strengthen WBU
Has been useful from regional perspective to hear basic premise on which Fundraising to be undertaken well understood throughout seminar
Useful to hear psyche of donor and how we should approach and follow up with donors
Has enriched our knowledge and will be useful
Need to devise similar seminars that address regional specific differences
Suggested organising on a global level to inspire regions to then hold regional workshops
Big differences between regions and even within regions
Fundraising needs to be adapted to each country and each culture
Some regions getting more funds than WBU does centrally
Need to put a fundraising element into other meetings to make fundraising integrated with the work of WBU
Fundraising is now a fully-fledged and highly professional activity. Select from activities appropriate to the region/country
Set up a mentorship for the regions to learn from organisations that have already tried those fundraising methods
Gathering and sharing of ideas has been useful and worthwhile
Brazil - workshop has been useful. ULAC works at political level, umbrella organisation not working with individuals directly. Asked how is the fundraising relevant?
WBU also an umbrella organisation
Suggested offering mentors to less developed regions
In 1992 there was the Institutional Development Partners initiative. Could something similar be done now? Fundraisers would be happy to contribute expertise to a similar programme.
Sharing information using technology such as 'Dropbox'. Allows users to share information over the internet. Could set up a Dropbox folder for fund development.
WBU has a Talking Communities licence which enables them to host seminars over the web. The service is free to use and just requiresan internet connection and basic IT knowledge. It would be possible to arrange 'webinars' on fund development. The service can be used for regular conference calls, so talks about different aspects of fundraising could be set up. It would be possible to have virtual rooms for different regions/groups to use.
WBU should be utilising technology to enable better information sharing with each other

Review and onsite evaluation of the seminar

Evaluation form will be sent out to participants by email
Gained some new ideas from other countries
Would be useful to have workshops where professional fundraisers can help regions and other countries
Will have more participants in future if we continue to do this and will get better and better
Would prefer to have horseshoe style seating rather than cabaret style tables
Has been good to pick up new ideas
Powerful to meet colleagues in other organisations, helps when wanting to contact
Concern about representation from smaller organisations and how much value it has been to them
Suggested that, going forward, have sharing between similar size/types of organisations to make it more relevant
Ask people to come with questions about what their challenge is, make it more practical
Event has been very positive. Suggested that the next event could have connection to be transmitted abroad e.g Skype so that others can join
Dropbox folder and community software would be very useful
A room for executive staff to meet and exchange ideas
Technology would provide useful facility for reaching out to various different members within regions
Large organisations can also learn from the small organisations
Good idea to have segmented seminars for orgs at different levels
The WBUFundraisingSchool?
Fundraisers for the Blind Facebook group? Post good campaigns and websites
Fundraising is everyone's business, not just for professional fundraisers.
Fundraisers also need to immerse themselves in the services of the organisation
Need to strengthen members, regions and WBU
Many organisations don’t have the resources to attend these events
Mentoring and buddying
Add a sequence on how to work with corporates
Fundraising has become an international industry
Useful and helpful to meet with organisations at more advanced stage with their fundraising
Can go back to your region/country as champion of new ideas
Workshop has been useful and work should be continued
Can support with knowledge, not just money
Good for fundraisers to go to international events to pick up knowledge
Thanks were given to Wanda, Jan, Leif & Marianne for organising this workshop

Open Meeting: WBU resource generation working group's strategic plan - Actions for 2013 and beyond

Priority 1 - Engage WBU members

1.1 Membership Fees

Arnt introduced WBU plan for resource generation
Funds in addition to membership fees
Encourage fees to be paid in a timely manner.Fees an important part of income for WBU
Ways to help facilitate paying fees
Translation services could offset fees - speak to Penny Hartin about this
Present operating budget about $500,000. $250k from membership fees, 40% from member sponsors, 10% from other donations. Need to increase what is received from external sources of funding. Based on 2012 figures.
$50k of fees were not paid in 2012. Could we help these organisations with our fundraising expertise? Ask a corporate to sponsor?
Do we know why they have not paid? Need to know this before we have a strategy to collect the fees. If not paid then not a member!
Want to work hard to have everyone as a member. Organisations stay as inactive members with no vote if they do not pay fees.
Countries can buddy up to enable less affluent countries to become members
WBU have been asked if membership fee can be reduced. Need to convince members that supporting WBU is a way to support blind and partially sighted people and to assist their own members.

1.2 Sponsorship

Looking to revise recognition programme
Devised a questionnaire
Achievements page on the website
Acknowledgement of in-kind gifts - could be captured on the website
Make known progress of committees and working group - need feedback so that this can be updated on the website
Need to do more acknowledgement about work through press releases
Find suitable matches with companies CSR policies
Use a description for WBU that is a better sell to investors
Don't want to be seen to be poaching funds away from member organisations
Same 15 organisations being called on year after year. How do we bring in new organisations to support WBU?
Basic value of organisation - money doesn't get access to power (e.g. seat on the Board)
Preference for sponsorship rather than investment

Priority 2 - Fundraising from member countries

How to get other organisations involved and how to raise funds in addition to the membership fee?
WBU needs to have global focus. Case for support would be to have a global effect on sight loss
WBU would like members to send in photos to use from their organisation/region
Suggested organisations could fundraise jointly with WBU and share the funds;direct mail talking about project by WBU as well as project by the member organisation. It was suggested that WBU could create mail pieces that can be used by organisation that do not have their own fundraising team.
Working with WBU shows international responsibility
There is a small segment that was mailed about WBU in Norway and had 85% response rate.

Priority 3 - Develop & provide fund development workshops for member organisations

First workshop taking place today
WBU to look at other ways of doing these fund development workshops; in regions, online
Suggested adding fund development discussion to all regional meetings

Priority 4 - Core funding

Market this as paying for expertise in certain fields
Need to redevelop case statements - why does WBU exist? This will make it easier to make asks and requests.
Open to look at new ideas
Asked member organisations to send their case for support documents to WBU to help shape theirs
World Blind Union is the only international organisation for all blind people
How to get international recognition? For large corporates? WBU and members a source of knowledge for large companies.
Need to decide what budget WBU would like to have for core funds
Have a regional co-ordinator in each region to work with regions and find resources

Priority 5 - Identify & research external sources of funding