In April this year, myself and three other (p)lucky adventurers from Signal set out on the challenge of a lifetime - trekking along the Great Wall of China, where it meanders through many miles of remote villages circling Beijing.

Signal China trekkers, L-R: Karen Wyatt, Lakshmi Balakrishnan, Graham Duffield and Leah Munting.

We prepared ourselves for what was billed as a mental and physical battle between man and the man-made. We were to conquer the impenetrable Wall, with its incessant steps, staggering climbs, demanding descents and searing heat - all to raise money for one fantastic charity - The British Heart Foundation.

Meeting our fundraising target of over £6,100 was no mean feat. We’d been frantically raising money since the previous August. As mentioned in the article I wrote during this time, we did everything we could to encourage donations, including organising raffles, gin tasting evenings, auctions, street collections and bake sales. 

So as we departed Heathrow, we felt lighter knowing we’d smashed our target, raising over £7,900 for BHF. Signal also covered the cost of entry, bringing the final total to £14,177.

Over 10 hours in the sky and 8,000km later, we finally landed and got some rest, having leapt seven hours in the future. We woke up for the first day of our trek jet-lagged and nervous. 

The iron sky outside belied the forecasts of sun, but our backpacks were bulging with wet layers, dry layers and any other layer we thought we could possibly need. So with our belongings stowed safely, we journeyed by bus to our first stop at Jinshanling. 

This is the question everyone asked us afterwards. But it hasn’t been easy to answer.

There are few words that can capture the sheer scale and awe of peering up and seeing the Wall rising in front of you. Thoughts flitted through my own mind about the impossible number of bricks, the feasibility of the challenge itself and just how infinitesimal I felt. 

Clambering up those first steps and emerging through the first watchtower, all descriptive abilities melted away as I looked down and traced the structure with my eyes, seeing it snake away from my feet, hugging the mountain spine and flowing into the endless horizon.

Then the terrain bought us back with a bump. 

We were of course prepared for there being a lot of steps. Extensive scouring of the internet had told us that much. We were sort of okay with the hills too. However, we were not prepared for steps that were sometimes higher than our knees! 

These would often appear entirely at random, hidden on a downhill or camouflaged in an uphill flight – essentially whenever we were just able to get a pace going. Our guide told us later on that this was a deliberate tactic to slow down invading armies from the North (along with us 21st century trekkers).

Sometimes there were no steps but this didn’t bring much relief, as we were faced with smooth stone surfaces worn down into a slipperiness by thousands of footsteps over the ages. 

This brought the high possibility of a long and painful roll to the bottom of the slope, so we were often clinging to the sides of the wall, fingernails digging into the brickwork to stop us from falling.  

We experienced isolated and unrenovated sections of the wall, which had us picking our way through ancient rubble and fresh undergrowth. This pushed us perilously close to several scary precipices.

(The sign shown above on the right translated to ‘Danger! Do not pass’, which we weren’t aware of until we passed it)

And then there were the climbs! These were unpleasantly frequent. The terrain never failed to tease us, so when we thought we could see the top within reasonable distance, the Wall would inevitably climb upwards to the next mountain crest and then disappear from view. 

Whilst it’s a popular misconception that the Great Wall can be seen from space, at times the ascents were so steep and unforgiving that we were sure it actually must be true. 

But for every moment of chest-heaving, sweat-drenching and heart-bursting uphill exertion, there were so many emotional highs. 

There was the zen-like tranquillity of stepping out from our inn in Gubeikou onto a riverside lined with cherry blossoms, whilst kingfishers darted out, scattering the resident goldfish.

Or when we trekked for over an hour through the dense forest at Mutianyu to get to a particularly remote but original and spectacular section of the Wall, only to find the ladder to climb onto it had gone. 

Together, our team built a cairn of rocks and scrambled, pushed and pulled everyone up to the most breathtaking and overwhelming view.

We dedicated prayer ribbons to family and friends and tied them to the trees to whip in the eternal winds at the top of the Heavenly Stairs.

And after a long day of walking, as the last visitors of the day to the Ming Tombs,  we were able to watch the sunset fall down behind the temples.

We walked for between six to eight hours most days, often not seeing anyone beyond our group. We would mostly hear our own voices, our footsteps, the clack-clack of walking poles, deep breaths and quite often the internal pounding of our hearts.

When we woke up on the final day and headed to Huanghuacheng, we were all a little quieter and more contemplative. Scaling the last peak and taking the last step we celebrated the achievement in the individual ways we’d become accustomed to over the past days with each other; Karen’s singing of ‘On Top of the World’ echoing around, Graham beaming from ear to ear, Lakshmi giving it her all right to the end and me simply contemplating the moment.

Before that finishing descent, standing on top of that ultimate peak and feeling on top of the world, we laughed (and maybe we cried). 

We thought about what we’d done, we thought about our loved ones and we thought about home. We thought about walking and we thought about not walking. We thought about the journey and just how good it was, how far we had come and what we had achieved, for us and for the BHF. It left us all speechless.

As the Tang dynasty poet Wang Zhihuan (688-724 AD) wrote:

But you can widen your view three hundred miles

By ascending a single flight of stairs…

Conquering the Great Wall of China for Charity

A team of adventurous Signal staff took on the challenge of a lifetime in China - for a great cause.

Taking on the challenge of a lifetime for a great cause.

The Institute of Fundraising Convention is the largest event for professional fundraisers in Europe - thousands of attendees descend on London’s Barbican Centre at the height of summer for three days of expert presentations, keynotes and panels. Covering the experiences, insights and challenges of charity organisations of all shapes and sizes, it’s a treasure trove of useful information for anyone associated with the not-for-profit sector. 
 
The speakers were diverse and the topics were broad, but we particularly took note of one key takeaway that cropped up again and again in different forms - the idea that moving away from the justification that something ‘has always been that way’ often leads to huge successes. 

We’ll be delving a little bit deeper into some real-life examples of this that were shared during the three days, as well as adding some of our own thoughts on the insights that piqued our interest. 
 
Feeling inspired to challenge the status quo in your own organisation? Here are three ways for you to get the ball rolling.

Status quo challenge #1 - break down internal silos:

The topic of breaking down the long-standing silos between departments was a common theme this year, as our Senior Planner Maxine discussed in her recent post.

There was an underlying message of collaboration, understanding and empathy – the core elements necessary to deliver amazing services to a charities’ beneficiaries - but being applied between internal teams as well as within them. 

For example, the NSPCC’s Ben Ingram (Senior Philanthropy and Development Manager) and Debbie Boughtflower (Head of Planning, Programme and Operations) shared how collaboration across their teams and the introduction of a robust sprint process has enabled them to get quicker decisions from senior management and move faster in response to high value funding opportunities.

Ensuring fundraising and service delivery teams “own and commit to the same language” to describe the work of the charity has helped everyone remember that they’re ultimately working towards the same goals.

A motivated, multi-discipline team can achieve great things because everyone is pulling in the same direction.  So it’s great to see the increased focus on circumnavigating the internal barriers that stand in the way of fundraising success.

Status quo challenge #2 - don’t make assumptions about supporter motivations:

We all know how it important it is to foster long-term relationships with supporters, but it’s equally important to consistently reassess these relationships - remembering that donors are human and that consequently their circumstances and motivations are bound to change. 
 
It’s also key to bear in mind that an organisation’s motivations and concerns won’t necessarily mirror those of their supporters. The National Trust provided a fantastic case study on their recent White Cliffs of Dover appeal that proved this point perfectly. 

According to the National Trust fundraising team, back in the 1960’s their acquisition appeals were driven by the idea that it was better for them to take ownership of the land over a less desirable buyer - a holiday park developer, for example. They considered this angle for their recent appeal (“If we don’t buy it, who will…”) but ultimately opted for something that they felt fit their current motivations better - that of preserving the environment and the wildlife within. 

Interestingly however, when supporters who donated to the appeal were surveyed, it turned out that their motivation was not at all linked to nature preservation. Instead people were driven by what the White Cliffs represented to them, citing emotional memories like childhood holidays, links to their grandparents or the day they arrived in the UK for the first time. 

The British Heart Foundation also shared how they used data analysis to identify and understand the most committed participants of their London to Brighton Off-Road Bike Ride, and then communicate with them as directly and relevantly as possible. 

Despite previously considering professional mountain bikers as the least likely to fundraise, it turned out they were actually raising the most money per head. As a result of providing a better experience for this highly engaged community both in the run up to, and during the event, the charity have achieved an increase in the event’s income from £230k in 2015 to £435k in 2017. 

It just goes to show that not only is audience insight hugely important, it also needs to be an ongoing process - no more relying on outdated assumptions. 

Status quo challenge #3 – change needs to be inclusive and sustainable

Cultural change doesn’t come overnight and it can be tough. On Day 3 of the event, Tom Barker, Head of Digital at the National Trust, compared digital transformation to quitting smoking - you’ve got to really want it, and be prepared to make sacrifices.
 
There’s also a pervasive assumption that everything has to start from the top down, but all changes have to start somewhere and that doesn’t have to mean the CEO. 

Ultimately it’s on the ground where the real change happens, and new processes need to be given space and time to evolve organically through a process of testing and learning. 

It was clear from this year’s Convention that teams and even individuals can absolutely change the way they work to be more inclusive, insight led, efficient and ultimately more successful. We also  saw how reaching out between departments often leads to the discovery that there are many opportunities to collaborate, to share knowledge and to fill in any gaps. 
 
Finally, fundraisers also need to be sure that any plan for implementing change is realistic and sustainable - both for the charity and themselves.  Resilience and self-care is as essential for fundraisers as it is for carers and support workers - all are professions/vocations where others come first as a matter of routine. This is especially important for those fundraisers who care enough to challenge the ingrained status quo of their organisation as well as meeting the income targets they've been set. 

IOF Convention 2018 - challenging the fundraising status quo.

The Institute of Fundraising Convention 2018 - 3 takeaways for charities looking to challenge the status quo.

As well as working with many of the UK's major charities, Signal staff are involved in plenty of our own fundraising efforts.

In the last couple of months, we’ve raised over £450 for WWF by getting in touch with our wild sides for WWF.

And we've volunteered for a number of local charities such as Cheltenham Animal Shelter, CCP (Caring for Communities and People) and Priors Park Edible Garden and Allotments:

But the biggest fundraising efforts of the year are our annual Charity Challenges. Previous years have involved a cycle from Niagara Falls to NYC for Marie Curie and a Peru trek for The Salvation Army.

Here are a few more details about 2017 and 2018’s big challenges.

A massive shout out to our colleagues who went to the northern reaches of Swedish Lapland earlier this year to dog sled over 180km of Arctic terrain, raising over £13k in aid of The Royal British Legion.

They spent five days following a team of huskies through snow-covered forests and mountains, tending to the dogs and battling the elements in temperatures ranging from -5°C down to -45°C.

Signal covered all the costs for the trip, so every penny the team raised went directly to funding The Royal British Legion’s important work. The charity provides financial, social and emotional support to the millions who have served and are currently serving in the British Armed Forces, and their families.

This summer, myself and three of my Signal/Brightsource colleagues (Lakshmi Balakrishnan, Karen Wyatt and Graham Duffield) were chosen at random for another amazing challenge:

“You'll conquer the imperial masterpiece of the Ming dynasty and test yourself on one of the world's most iconic structures. Starting four hours north of Beijing this challenge takes you on a series of upwards climbs of over 10,000 steps over the course of a week, covering approximately 50km over five days.”

Yes, we'll be taking part in a once-in-a-lifetime trek along the Great Wall of China in April 2018, to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation.

Coronary heart disease is the UK’s single biggest killer, and there’s a seasonal spike as we head into the winter months.

It’s no surprise that each member of the team has been affected by heart disease in some way making it a cause really close to our hearts (no pun intended) and one worth striving for. We’ll be keeping this in mind as we try and exceed this fundraising target to help the BHF as much as possible and certainly during the trek itself.

Signal has covered the costs of the trip, leaving us with a fundraising target of £6,190. The good news is that we’re already over 40% of the way there, which we’ve raised by:

Inviting local restaurant The Coconut Tree to come and cook a taste of the East for us in in our Cheltenham office

Providing a tuck shop and making homemade tablet, biscuits and cakes

Leveraging our prize draw expertise by organising raffles and competitions

Standing outside in during a wet, cold and eventful weekend to collect change for the British Heart Foundation. Alongside donations, we ended the weekend up one umbrella and one marriage proposal!

During the same weekend, a gentleman had a heart attack and collapsed around 50ft away from one of the team. There was a brilliant response from the medical staff on the scene and trained members of the public, but it reminded us exactly why we’re undertaking this huge challenge, and certainly spurred us on to head out again the next day with renewed energy:

Over the coming months we have lots more planned so we can raise as much as we can for this excellent cause, including ringing in Chinese New Year in February.

If you’re feeling generous in the meantime we’d really appreciate your support:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/bhf-china-trekker

Charity Challenge 2018: Trekking the Great Wall of China

Find out about our 2018 China Trek in aid of British Heart Foundation as well as some of our other fundraising efforts during 2017.

Fundraising initiatives by Signal staff in 2017 and a big challenge for 2018.

Charity Challenge 2018: Conquering the Great Wall of China

Update: On 29.11.2017 Facebook announced it will no longer charge a 5% fee on donations to charity organisations.

Facebook has recently made a suite of game-changing tools available to fundraisers in the UK and 15 other European countries. These include a donation button which enables users to send money directly to charities, in three taps or less, without leaving the platform.

Since launching in the US in 2015, the tools have helped raise millions of dollars for charitable causes, and European nonprofits are already seeing significant benefits. Save the Children Spain recently told the International Fundraising Congress that it has seen a 26 percent increase in digital giving in just three weeks of trialling the tools.

But can the all-conquering social platform be trusted to have charities’ and donors’ best interests at heart over the long-term? After all, charities are increasingly focusing on retention and building lasting relationships, and relying on a third party platform is unlikely to give them enough data, or control over the supporter experience to enable this.

It’s definitely worth asking what Facebook stands to gain from offering the tools, other than positive PR and a nice warm fuzzy feeling for founder Mark Zuckerberg. The company claims that its hefty 5% cut from each donation is purely to cover costs, but we know that the UK’s most prominent digital giving site JustGiving earns around £20m a year by charging a similar amount.

Like competing online powerhouses Google and Amazon, Facebook wants to keep users within their own walled garden so it can serve them highly profitable targeted ads. So clawing back some of the traffic it sends to third party donation platforms like JustGiving would also be a win, especially at a time when Google is aggressively pushing its AMP format.

It also seems probable Facebook will use any data it collects from donors to its advantage as far as possible. And if Facebook becomes the go-to place for supporting causes, there’s likely to be an increase in charity ad spend in order to compete for people’s hearts and minds.

Regardless of how much Facebook stand to gain, it’s clear that charities can benefit for from embracing the new tools, even if a 26% increase in donations turns out to be a short-lived, early adopter advantage.

Let's start by taking a deeper look at what Facebook is offering for charities, individual fundraisers and supporters. Then we'll consider the pros and cons for charities in more detail.

Eligible charities first need to register with Facebook. Once verified, their Facebook Page will display the new donation button. Charities can also use the donation button in link ads, and Facebook Live video broadcasts.

The new tools aren’t just open to charitable organisations. Individuals seeking to raise money for good causes can also set up their own fundraising campaign via the charity’s Facebook page. (Take that, JustGiving!)

If unsure which charity to support, users can also click on the ‘create fundraiser’ option in the left-hand sidebar of their homepage, or the ‘raise money’ button which can be found in the new fundraisers section.

Individuals will then be given a list of charities to choose from. Other than UK charities showing above those from other countries, it’s not clear how this list is ranked - it isn’t alphabetical or by number of Page likes - but charities may be prioritised based on revenue generated so far. It’s probable that Facebook will tinker with their own ordering algorithm for this list, as they do with everything else.

There is obviously an advantage to being one of the first few results if people are unsure who to fundraise for, but those who already have a charity in mind can easily search for them. UK charities who have already signed up include WWF, Save The Children and Unicef.

When individuals share their fundraising page, the donation button will appear in their friends’ News Feeds. In our initial tests, friends also received a notification directing them to the status update. Individuals can add the button to Facebook Live broadcasts too.

So how does it work for those making a donation? The donation button allows people to make a donation in just a few taps (or clicks). However, for the first donation they make via Facebook, people will need to give the company their financial details, and, if they want to add Gift Aid, their physical address. Facebook saves these details for each user, making future transactions extremely simple.

As part of the donation process, people will be asked if they want to sign up to the charity’s email newsletter.

People who begin a donation but don’t complete it will be repeatedly reminded in their News Feed. In a similar vein, people who begin (but don’t complete) setting up a fundraising page will receive a reminder. In addition, individuals will also receive a message from Facebook two weeks before their birthday, asking them to consider setting up a birthday fundraising campaign.

Facebook is expert at these kind of nudges, and they are likely to help increase donations in the short term at least. If this is overdone, however, it could start to feel all too similar to some of the ‘traditional’ fundraising techniques that have negatively affected people’s perceptions of charities in recent years. And like repetitive banner ads, people may just learn to ignore them.

Although fees are currently waived in a bid to encourage UK charities to sign up, a 5% fee will apply in the near future, as it already does in the US. Facebook says this fee is to cover payment processing and other operational costs, rather than to boost its ever-growing ad revenue (which increased by 45% in Q2 2017).

This means that for every £10 donated plus £2.50 Gift Aid, charities will receive £11.87. As can be seen from the below diagram (based on figures from Money Saving Expert), this is at the high-end compared with other online giving platforms. But it seems to be cleverly positioned to marginally undercut the UK’s most prominent digital giving platform JustGiving, who take 5% per transaction fee and card-processing fee of 1.25% plus a monthly subscription fee from charities. As mentioned above, JustGiving are a for-profit organisation who earn £20m a year from these fees, so it seems unlikely Facebook won’t also benefit financially, conceivably far in excess of £20m a year.

Facebook is still the most used social media platform

Facebook’s scale and ubiquity is a big plus for charities who want to reach as wide an audience as possible, and may justify the fees involved. According to eMarketer, it is the biggest social media platform both in the UK (32.5 million active monthly users) and globally (2bn active monthly users).

Ofcom’s 2017 Adults’ media use and attitudes report shows that Facebook users span all ages, with more users in the over 65s demographic this year than ever before. And while EMarketer’s stats also show that teens and young adults are increasingly migrating to Snapchat and Instagram, the percentages are still relatively small. It’s also worth considering the findings of Third Sector’s Donating Trends in the UK report from earlier this year, which showed that 16-24 year olds are still the most likely age group to visit a charity’s page on the platform. With virtually every charity now vying for the attention of younger audiences, has Facebook just handed the sector a gift-wrapped opportunity?

The company’s reach is actually wider than the main platform alone. Instagram is owned by Facebook and shares the same advertising infrastructure, so we may see a native donation button become available to nonprofits there in the future. And by co-opting some of Snapchat’s most popular features such as Stories, and acquiring challenger apps such as popular teen messaging app tbh, Zuckerberg’s company has so far successfully maintained its dominance across social media users of all ages. Ofcom’s findings confirm this, with eight out of ten UK social media users considering Facebook their main social media profile.

We know that when it comes to online transactions, the fewer steps involved the better. Whether its for charity or ecommerce, the more barriers in the way of making a payment, the greater the likelihood people won’t complete a donation.

And the fact is that charities’ own sites have limited success in converting visitors into donors. According to 2017’s M + R Benchmarks report (which surveys 133 US nonprofits) the average donation page on a charity’s website converts 18% of visitors and the average charity website only converts traffic to donations at 1.2%. So just a small reduction in friction can potentially lead to a significant increase in revenue.

An increase in fundraising activity within Facebook is also likely to lead to advanced targeting opportunities becoming available through custom audiences and lookalike audiences. For example, charities are likely to be able to target their Facebook ads towards an ever-expanding group of users who are regular donors or who regularly engage with fundraising posts by either liking, commenting or resharing.

Retargeting these kinds of influential groups for future campaigns could become a new form of outreach strategy for fundraisers. The more these groups respond to promoted content, the more free organic reach they are likely to generate in the News Feed, not to mention that all important social proof.

It’s tempting then, given the above advantages, to see Facebook’s donation button as the answer to charities’ prayers. But there are also reasons to proceed with caution.

Do people trust Facebook enough to give them their details?

It’s important to remember the caveat that this friction-free promised land depends on people getting over that first hurdle of adding their debit/credit card details and home address.

Whether people are willing to do this or not ultimately comes down to how trusting people are of Facebook, which already holds a great deal of data about us and our behaviour and has a chequered history in its approach to users’ privacy. Recent controversies over fake news, inflated claims about video and advertising engagement results, and its role in influencing the US presidential election certainly won’t help.

However, while many will remain cynical about Zuck & co’s true intentions, the ongoing success of the donation button in the US, with $17m raised through the platform so far to help people affected by Hurricane Harvey, suggests that a lot of people are willing to hand over yet more personal info for what they consider to be the greater good.

It’s also arguable that a dedicated donation page with PayPal or ApplePay integration would potentially have even less friction, but that depends on people having a pre-existing PayPal account with one-click payments enabled, or an iOS device with Touch ID (and eventually Face ID) configured. Again Facebook’s breadth is likely to give it an advantage over standalone payment platforms which require a separate account or are limited to a specific operating system.

This is where charities need to be crystal clear about their fundraising strategy. Despite all the potential advantages we’ve covered, defaulting to Facebook as a source of donations could mean charities miss out on valuable data and the ability to build a long-term relationship with supporters.

The dilemma charities face is analogous to that of news organisations, who have had to decide whether the benefits of Facebook’s natively hosted Instant Articles outweigh the loss of direct communication with their readers.

With this in mind, let’s look at all the limitations of the donation tools as they currently stand:

One-size-fits-all donation sign-up form and receipts, with no option to customise - meaning less opportunity to nudge donors towards specific actions

Lack of customisation of the UX - Facebook controls this and can change it at any time

Minimal data - charities will only receive the donor’s Facebook user name and an email address (if they choose to sign up to their email list). They will not be informed of the user’s location, address or phone number - limiting the channels on which charities can contact them for further donations

Competition is likely to be fierce amongst nonprofits. A uniform UX means a level playing field for all charities, which may be an advantage for smaller charities, but too much choice for supporters can also result in inaction. Facebook has also recentlyenabled personal fundraising in the US, which enables any individual to ask their friends for money (within some specific categories). This could also open the door to more sophisticated Kickstarter-style crowdfunding campaigns in the future. It’s possible users could develop ‘donation button blindness’ if fundraising activity become too commonplace as a result.

It’s easy to default to either an overly optimistic of the potential of Facebook’s new fundraising tools or an overly cynical view of why the company introduced them in the first place.

Like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg has sought to balance concerns about his own and Facebook’s disproportionate level of power and influence with highly public displays of philanthropy. So keeping charity partners on side is likely to be a priority for his PR team. Having said that, Facebook will always put its own interests (and those of its shareholders) over other brands, as demonstrated by its recent test of a separate News Feed for content from business Pages, that could dramatically reduce traffic for all publishers.

Charities would be wise to bear in mind the rocky ride news organisations have had with Facebook’s Instant Articles format. It’s important not to lose sight of the importance of their own online platforms and the ability this gives them to create a nuanced experience for their supporters that encourages long-term engagement.

But at the same time, the charities who succeed now and in the future will be those that accept and embrace the public’s evolving preferences, and have a strong presence in the places where people are spending much of their time. And there’s potentially a huge early adopter advantage with Facebook’s new tools.

If a significant percentage of supporters find donating by Facebook simpler, more compelling, and more convenient, then why wouldn’t charities support that? Especially if a 26% increase in donations is up for grabs for those who are willing to act fast, learn quickly and continually evolve their fundraising strategy to fit with their supporter’s behaviours and preferences.

Facebook’s new fundraising button offers charities mixed blessings

Early results include a 26% increase in digital giving for one charity, but is the social giant’s foray into fundraising too good to be true?

Charities are increasingly turning to door drops* as a way of attracting new supporters.

We’ve been seeing this with our clients for a while now, and the stats back it up. Our delivery partner Whistl have shared some research by Ebiquity with us, that shows that overall door drop volumes were up +2% year on year in Q3 of 2016, which in real terms means almost a quarter of a billion (221m) door drop items were distributed throughout the year on behalf of charities.

This is further supported by research shared by Charles Neilson, Whistl’s Director of Postal Affairs, at a recent DMA event. This showed that market share for door drops has increased by 31% over the past 5 years, while Direct Mail volumes were down 11% (Neilsen AdDynamix October 2016).

It’s a trend that might seem counter-intuitive at first. At a time when many organisations are grappling with digital transformation and CRM personalisation, why are charities leaning more on one of the most traditional, even old-fashioned, forms of advertising?

We’re going to look at some of the reasons door drops are gaining new prominence in the fundraising toolkit.

Cold direct mail is no longer as effective

Whilst a number of large charity brands moved away from cold mail some years ago, many have until recently been reliant on the pulling power of cold Direct Mail, because of attractive response rates and strong acquisition ROI.

However, falling cold list performance, new regulations around data protection and rising costs have resulted in a marked drop in cold DM performance.

Investment in door drop campaigns has risen as a result, and it seems to be working. Whistl have shared statistics with us that suggest door drops are proving increasingly effective when it comes to fundraising.

For example, in Spring of 2015 The Alzheimer’s Society saw a 37.6% improvement in ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) and 50% improvement in ADV (Average Donation Value) compared to the same period in 2012. Similarly, The Scottish SPCA saw a 60% improvement in response rates and 38% improvement in ROMI during the same time frame.

This mirrors our own experience - we are seeing a continued strong take up of door drop across our non-profit client base with most clients reporting higher average gifts and better life-time-value figures compared to cold direct mail.

The new and improved options available are another factor. The days of using door drops as a fairly blunt instrument are behind us.

It used to be that many charities just used an unaddressed version of their cold DM pack, but we are seeing significant innovation in door drop thanks to more effective targeting, improved digital print production capabilities and the resulting increase in hardworking, high impact formats.

While door drops don’t offer the personalisation options of DM, they do offer coverage of 99% of UK households, and within that, very precise targeting (e.g. location, demographics and type of house).

Door drops can get excellent results as part of integrated campaigns. Like addressed Direct Mail, they are tangible reminders for people to take action. Of those surveyed for The Private Life of Mail (MarketReach 2015), 92% were driven to online or digital activity as a direct result of receiving mail, and 87% were influenced to make online purchases. The same research found that door drops deliver a comparable performance to OOH (out of home/posters), cinema and online display advertising.

In addition, Whistl’s own research demonstrates that a combination of door drops and direct mail is more effective for driving response. Their analysis showed that:

40% average increase in Direct Mail response rates following a door drop campaign for a leading retail client

38% average increase in response rates when DM and door drops were combined for a financial services client

That said, measuring the impact of door drops and DM can be tricky compared to other media. To address this, the DMA recently hosted an event announcing a new system of measurement for mail.

In the meantime, there are ways to get a clearer picture of the impact of offline channels. The Private Life of Mail report includes a Salvation Army case study that highlights the use of econometrics as a measurement tool. This takes a holistic approach rather than taking each channel in isolation – giving charities a much more accurate reflection of how each element contributes to a campaign's effectiveness. Crucially for The Salvation Army, this showed that door drops considerably improved income, despite most supporters using online channels when it came to actually making a donation.

Savvy charities are increasingly recognising the lasting power of door drops. Done well, they are a proven driver of action as part of a multichannel campaign. They are also extremely cost effective and with creative use of formats, fundraisers have the opportunity to highlight their cause in innovative, attention-grabbing ways.

Increasingly capable of performing as a ‘one-to-one’ marketing channel, modern door drops also offer excellent coverage and the ability to target specific postcode sectors and demographics with targeted content. 

As with any fundraising medium, it is of course essential to think about how door drops contribute to long-term relationships with individual supporters. Any advertising that arrives through people’s letterboxes will need to earn its place in people’s homes, so door drops require a thoughtful approach that has the entire supporter journey in mind. 

From what we’re seeing, fundraisers – equipped with better options and measurement – are increasingly getting that right.

*For the uninitiated, door drops are a type of print advertising that is delivered directly to people’s homes, usually by the postman, and usually in the form of leaflets or unaddressed mail.

Charities are counting on door drops to attract new supporters

Charities are increasingly turning to door drops as a way of attracting new supporters.

We’ve been seeing this with our clients for a while now, and the stats back it up. 

Not-for-profit organisations are increasingly turning to door drops as a way of attracting new supporters.

The most recent issue of Third Sector caught my attention when it landed with a light thud on my desk, due to the question emblazoned across its front cover: Direct mail – is it facing serious decline?’

It’s true that the way direct mail (DM) is used by fundraisers has changed significantly in recent years. But the cover story also bring to mind Betteridge’s Law, that “any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

Perhaps more importantly, is this the right question to be asking in the first place?

Evaluating direct mail as an isolated channel is the wrong starting point. If we want to consider DM’s future without falling prey to hype, it’s helpful to consider how effective it is through the lens of the two main fundraising roles it plays:

There’s little doubt that DM’s role in attraction is being diminished. Susannah Birkwood, the author of Third Sector’s cover story, states that “raising money through the medium (of DM) has unquestionably become harder in recent times."

Birkwood puts this down to a variety of factors, including increased regulation (particularly around data protection), complaints from donors and an increase in negative media coverage over the last couple of years.

This perfect storm of pressures, along with the high expense of mail compared to other channels, means that addressed DM no longer dominates the recruitment landscape.

While dramatic headlines might make this seem like a new phenomenon, that’s not the case - the effectiveness of rented mailing lists has been in decline for some time. For quite a lot of major charities, the love affair with cold direct mail died way back in the nineties or the noughties.

It's hard to deny that response rates to cold direct mail (DM) aren’t what they once were, and regulatory challenges have increased.

However it’s worth remembering that other traditional attraction channels, such as face-to-face and door-to-door have seen similar disruption, and declines in effectiveness. Telephone fundraising has perhaps fared worst of all. In this context, maybe DM isn’t doing too badly after all.

It’s clear that for many fundraisers, DM has too many recruitment benefits to walk away from. For example, Lewis Coghlin, fundraising director at Cats Protection, told Third Sector that “supporters recruited from direct mail tend to be good, loyal donors who, if treated right, can stay with the charity for many years.” 

Julius Wolff-Ingham, head of marketing and fundraising at The Salvation Army had good words to say about the channel too, telling Birkwood that DM is “still one of the most effective ways for us to recruit new people.”

It's also worth noting that the decline in addressed mail using cold lists has been mirrored by a growth in the use of unaddressed mail/door drops and media inserts.

The latter options provide charities with the medium to tell stories in a similar way to cold DM, without the additional data protection and cost challenges that comes with rented lists and increasing postage costs.

Direct mail’s role in building relationships with supporters

When it comes to longer-term engagement, we need to ask ourselves how we can use multi-channel journeys to put supporters at the heart of fundraising.

Direct mail continues to offers some fantastic engagement opportunities as part of the supporter’s preferred mix of channels.

Indeed, the IOF’s head of policy Daniel Fluskey suggests that, in a world where we predominantly interact online, addressed mail can now have a bigger impact than ever before. This is borne out by Fast.MAP’s latest Media DNA Report, which shows that direct mail scores highly when compared to other channels for being retainable, trustworthy and relevant.

MarketReach’s in-depth The Private Life of Mail research from 2015 came to similar conclusions. It showed that people value items they can see and touch 24% more highly than those they can only see, and that receiving mail actually made 57% of those surveyed feel more valued by brands.

An important channel for individual giving

As to whether direct mail is facing serious decline, Third Sector’s article actually confirms its resilience as a channel, acknowledging that charity spending on DM actually increased by 3% to £265m in the year to June 2016 (Nielsen).

Sure, high volume cold mailings are not about to return with a bang, but DM still has an exciting role to play as a communication channel in the changing landscape and culture of individual giving.

There seems to be a genuine movement within charities to innovate around ‘doing the right thing’ and a willingness to approach relationships with supporters in a different way - and we see no reason why direct mail won’t continue to play an important role in that process.

Does direct mail still deliver for fundraisers?

I examine the question emblazoned across Third Sector's front cover: Direct mail – is it facing serious decline?’

I examine the question emblazoned across its front cover: Direct mail – is it facing serious decline?’

The most recent issue of Third Sector caught my attention. 