We only live once? A worldview that is infinite

By Usha Menon

Click to enlarge. Original image from www.worldmapper.org

Over the lunch break at a board training session, we were sharing snippets from our lives. And one person, very philosophically, said ‘We live only once’. To which his colleague on the board asked, ‘Do we?’ The others at the table nodded appreciatively in unison, while reflecting on this perceptive query.

An interesting and thought-provoking query – I thought.

Many of us have adapted to visible behaviours that could be called ‘western’. Yet, our beliefs and thinking are strongly influenced by our Asian culture, upbringing and religion. A worldview that is cyclical rather than linear – the concept of rebirth being just one case in point. To a large number of Asians, life itself is not considered as one with a finite start and end. Hence when we use management tools developed in cultures that have a logical, linear and finite worldview, we tend to confuse our thinking.

Hence I would like to share three observations.

Strategic planning

Many nonprofits spend hours on strategic planning sessions and well-crafted feasibility studies using tools widely used in domains where reason is paramount. However, the nonprofit decision makers implement strategies based on their instinctive understanding of the environment, making some of the planning a mere technical exercise.

Here is the drawback in this exercise. The vision, values and goals are important concepts. But a linear roadmap generally used in the common strategic planning process and step-by-step action plan does not take into consideration the more intuitive ways in which Asians would like to get to their goals.

Therein lies the frustration that some donors and grantmakers, social entrepreneurs and investors, boards and consultants face when they look at the same thing through different angles. One – where highly logical and institutional thinking is overlaid on social impact organisations run by people who have great faith in their beliefs and intuition and have proved that it works as well.

Hence, an amalgamated approach that takes into consideration the alignment with the philosophies and thinking of the implementer will ensure a better buy-in and hence greater success.

The sea is not just a body of salt water, but one that is filled with many fresh-water rivers.

Evaluation

A recent interview with Ms Yukiko Uchida, Japan’s foremost researcher on ‘happiness’, highlighted a specific example of how cultural contexts mould the framing of research questions to understand the level of happiness. Ms Uchida gave an example from her classes at Kyoto University, where she teaches about the role of culture in shaping ideas of happiness. While her Japanese students usually rate their happiness around five or six, she said studies have found Americans and Europeans usually rate their happiness at eight or nine.

Ms  Uchida said, ‘Japanese judgment of happiness is not just, yeah, I’m happy now, I check 10. They also think about social comparisons and time-frame comparisons’, she explained. Her students have told her that if they check nine or 10, they think they can only go downhill.

‘Absolute judgment is very difficult for Japanese people. But they can judge their happiness compared to other people. Like, “I’m okay compared with my neighbour or my colleague”, which shows that relationship orientation is very important for Japanese happiness.’

Nonprofit leaders and executives in Asia need to be aware of, and develop or adapt materials to, this aspect of our worldview. Blindly providing input into the various matrixes, which are not generally designed with a focus on the relational aspects of our thinking, will provide data that is incorrect, as cited in the example above – that Japanese students are not unhappier than their western counterparts, just that their interpretation of happiness is different.

Communication

‘Yatha dristi, Tatha sristi’ ~ Vedic affirm in Sanskrit, which means that whatever our view is, accordingly the whole world appears.

At a recent seminar in Thailand, a very dynamic speaker shared the importance of activism in civil society development. He then talked passionately about the need ‘to get angry’ with the status quo. And that’s when he lost the plot. The audience, made up largely of Thai nonprofits, shifted uncomfortably in their seats. What was lost on the speaker was that purifying oneself of anger is essential to Buddhist practice, which the majority of his audience was. In Buddhism there is no such thing as justifiable anger.

Being aware of the impact of religious and cultural beliefs and philosophy is the key to communication with any audience. More so in Asia, which is home to over 60 per cent of the global population.  A large number are followers of Buddhism and Hinduism, which are ancient religions with well-established traditions that cut deeply into their followers’ daily life and they are proud of it.

The same is relevant in the cultural context of storytelling. Asian communities, be it through Korean drama, Indian cinema, or Indonesian wayang (traditional theatre), are raised on a solid appetite of non-linear storytelling. Stories of duty, sacrifice, honour and fate resonate very well with the audience. As communicators for the life-and world-changing work done through social-purpose organisations, we have a great opportunity to revisit and learn the basics of storytelling as we know it in Asia.  I will share more thoughts on this in my future blogs.

I would love to hear from you, your thoughts and comments on this post. Have you had experiences that are similar or different from what I have shared?

Common sense and effective fundraising

By Lucy Gower. At Christmas and birthdays my mum used to make me write ‘thank you’ letters to everyone who had bought me a gift. I suspect that you may have gone though a similar exercise as a small child. This means that ingrained into most of us is the belief that we should always thank someone for a gift. It’s common sense. It’s polite. It’s expected. And it’s the ‘right’ thing to do. So I’ve been really interested in reading the recent blogs on the subject of thanking donors that challenges this conventional thinking. If you have missed them then let me fill you in. It started with the findings of an Ipsos Reid study conducted for AFP Canada called, “What Canadian Donors Want” One of the things the study told us was that 52% of respondents said that not receiving a thank you would not decrease the likelihood of giving in the future.  This prompted Chuck English on his Marketing that works blog to ask,  ‘Does saying thank you really make a difference? Do you know of a research study that proves that thanking donors will lead to further or increased donations? It turns out that there is no empirical evidence that directly confirms that thanking donors will lead to improved results.This was picked up by The Agitator in their “No- thank you” blog. The only evidence that thanking donors increases gift levels came from Penelope Burke. Penelope’s experience shows that there are fundamentally two types of thank you; average and exceptional. Receiving an average thank you letter makes no impact on future fundraising performance, however, when exceptional thank you correspondence is tested against the average, and the rate of renewal and average gift value is measured, exceptional letters far out-perform the average. You can read more here in The Agitator OK thank you blog. The very suggestion of not thanking donors has been too much for some fundraisers to bear. It goes against what most of us feel is ‘right’, or is common sense or even best practice. But that’s the point; it’s not about you. You are not your donor.   Tom at The Agitator points out; ‘common sense’ might establish that donors are busy and will respond better to shorter letters. Or that $35 a year donors won’t make bequests. Common sense can often be, as in these two examples; wrong. So when there is evidence that thanking some donors makes no difference at all should we not trust the data and bravely decide not to thank some donor segments? If we look objectively at the data we would conclude that its simply not good business sense to thank every donor. Sean Triner, Director of Pareto Fundraising in Australia, and self confessed data junkie, concludes that, “If there is evidence that not thanking will increase the total charity net income, then the moral obligation is not to thank. You are not employed to be nice, you are employed to maximise your charity net income in the long term.” Sean adds, “non transactional, anecdotal evidence is probably important for high value donors, so consider thanking top donors with a separate letter” You can read more on this topic from Sean on the LinkedIn SOFII debate about thanking. The challenge for fundraisers is to be open minded to the possibility that doing what we always do, because that is what we have always done, or simply because it is common sense, may not be the most effective fundraising strategy. If you knew that not thanking certain donors was what they wanted, or that putting maximum effort into fewer targeted exceptional thank yous would improve your results, what would you do differently? Would you continue to keep doing what you have always done? Or would you be a bit braver and find a low risk way to test the evidence with your donors with the ambition of achieving better results? Whatever you decide, there is one principle that applies to all your fundraising. There is no advantage in being average. If you are only going to be average, it’s probably not worth the effort. What are your thoughts?

The world needs you to be excellent

By Kimberley MacKenzie CFRE

How one fundraiser secured her place at an international conference.

In my years as a fundraiser I’ve come across many inspiring stories. But without doubt the most inspiring tale of commitment to attend a conference is the story of my friend Sudeshna Mukherjee.

Sudeshna Mukherjee

I first met Sudeshna at a conference in Jaipur, India. I was a volunteer SOFII country ambassador at the time and Sudeshna was considering a similar role in India. The second I met her in that hotel lobby I knew that someone very special had just entered my life. Sudeshna was intense, anxious to know what to do and extremely motivated to get started. She also had an amazing smile, a bright lightness in her eyes and an extraordinary amount of energy. Perhaps what I was most taken with was the amount of space she took up in the room. Sudeshna is a small person but her energy and enthusiasm filled that large hotel lobby. I was completely in awe of her and liked her instantly.

After seven years working as a fundraiser for Oxfam India and the Resource Alliance Sudeshna was awarded an Atlas Corps Fellowship and is now working with GlobalGiving in Washington DC. When Sudeshna was invited to attend AFP’s 2012 Conference in Vancouver she had a problem – how to get there. Living on a small fellowship makes a trip from Washington DC to Vancouver almost impossible to imagine. ‘Almost’ being the important word in that sentence. Because, you see, Sudeshna is one of those remarkable people who always views the glass as half full. Instead of seeing her attendance at AFP as impossible she asked herself – how can I make this work? The solution to her was to practise the very skills she is working on honing – she would raise the money. Sudeshna launched an online fundraising campaign.

In her own words on the boostive website:

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

Every day I help nonprofit organizations develop their own online fundraising strategies. While I've learned a lot working with GlobalGiving as an Atlas Corps Fellow, I’d still like to grow and learn more about how I can help nonprofits raise more money and be more effective. The AFP's 2012 edition of the International Fundraising Conference in Vancouver, BC is happening in April, and it will be a great opportunity for me to learn how I can better serve nonprofit organizations. I have been invited to the conference, but I am still required to cover my own travel expenses.  I'm currently living on a fellowship with a limited budget, so it is difficult for me to afford this conference all by myself.

How will this project solve this problem?

I’ve decided to practise the exact skills I’m trying to hone; I’ve created an online fundraiser to help raise funds for my attendance at the fundraising conference and $1000 will get me to the conference!

Potential long-term impact

I believe that this conference will not only help me with my own professional development as I meet other practitioners and specialists from the field, but it will also help me improve my skills. Furthermore, it will provide me access to international networks, help me earn latest skills from the sector, and help me learn from my peers. If I am successful I plan to tell my story on The Showcase of Fundraising Inspiration and Innovation (SOFII), so I’ll help others learn from my experience!

Project details:

I will be in Vancouver, BC from March 30 to April 3, 2012. My budget is $1000 including visa, travel and lodging. I scrutinize project budgets on a regular basis, so I value transparency.

Therefore I'll tell you exactly how I’ll spend the $1000:

-        Flight (round trip – Washington DC to Seattle): $450; 

-        Visa: $75;

-        Greyhound bus (round trip – Seattle to Vancouver, BC): $80; 

-        Hostelling International (4 nights stay): $200;

-        Intra-city travel in Vancouver: $40; 

-        Food: $150. 

Truck drivers, lawyers, farmers, doctors, insurance agents, real estate agents, dentists: all of these professions, and many others, require continuing education and ongoing profession development.  New technology, the environment, fluctuating economies and other external factors change the way in which all professions provide services. The world and the needs of society shift and evolve. Raising money to fund charitable programmes is no different.

In fact, I would argue that staying up to date and inspired is even more important in our profession because as fundraisers we serve a greater good. We fund life-saving programmes. We help those who cannot help themselves. When publicly funded government programmes are eliminated, non-government organsations or the ‘third sector’ steps in. Now more than ever, development staff need to be inspired, motivated and at the leading edge of their craft.

In spite of this organisations continue to see professional development as a perk.  At a time when charities have to do more with less, budgets for professional development often don’t survive even the first round of cuts. This is extremely unfortunate and not good for the overall health of a charity because we know that the best way to build revenue is to keep staff. We also know that fundraisers value continuing education budgets even more than compensation. The best way to keep fundraising staff is to support their professional development.

However, it is a far greater tragedy when fundraising professionals accept the elimination of an organisational budget as defeat. It is not the responsibility of the charity to keep your skills fresh, it is your responsibility.  This is your career and you need to be committed to advancing it. Period.

There are all sorts of ways to ensure you are able to attend workshops and conferences. You could volunteer. You can allocate a portion of your salary each month to your own education fund. You could build conference attendance into your family vacation plans. You could invite a colleague to come and do an in-house workshop with your staff. Or you could simply copy what Sudeshna has done and raise the money yourself from friends and family.

This blog post was originally intended to help a friend achieve her goal of attending the Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference in Vancouver. However within one week Sudeshna had exceeded her fundraising target and I’m very happy to say will not be staying in a hostel, but will be hosted by a fellow fundraiser in Vancouver. Bravo my friend. Well done!

So if next week you are at AFP’s International Conference in Vancouver and you see  a small Indian woman talking a lot, smiling and full of enthusiasm for her profession, please say hello to her and help her feel as welcome as she did for me during my first shopping experience in India.

I hope you find Sudeshna’s story inspiring because she has displayed exactly the kind of determination, commitment, innovation, initiative and tenacity that our sector needs right now.  Remember, this is your career and while it is nice if your employer is able to underwrite the costs of your professional development, ultimately the responsibility is yours. Find a way to stay inspired, refreshed and up to date. The world needs you to be excellent at what you do.

How often should we ask?

It may be the wrong question, but it deserves an answer.

By Ken Burnett

This is one of those questions that pop up with depressing regularity in fundraising and to which there’s really no right answer. Other examples of the genre include how long should a fundraising letter be, how often do donors want to hear from us and how many words should there be in a PS? It’s a bit like, how long is a piece of string? Attempting to answer can be cathartic and at times instructive, but really, if we’re honest, it’s not the question that should challenge us.

The only correct answer is the unhelpful, ‘Well, it depends.’ Which could be followed with another question, ‘How interesting, engaging and worth hearing from are you?’ But I guess that’s really not good enough.

Twenty years ago this coming April I brought out a book called Relationship Fundraising, which made me nearly famous in a small field. Fame of this sort can be a two-edged sword. Over the years people have come up to me at conferences and said things like, ‘You know you said on page 137… or, ‘You said, in your third chapter, that if we would just…’

Usually I’d look at them blankly and deny everything. If quick-witted enough I’d hide my name badge, fake an Italian accent and plead mistaken identity. That rarely worked. Then I’d haver a bit and confess that I can’t actually remember what I wrote all that time ago. That, as you can imagine, impresses nobody.

I’ve found that people often assume things about that book, perhaps because of its title or general thesis. One thing many assumed is that in it I prescribe what kind of relationship fundraisers should have with their donors. And that I decree it should invariably be close, personal, warm – even intense.

I don’t. Because, of course…it depends.

Similarly with how often we should ask. Recently a correspondent in SOFII’s LinkedIn discussion group suggested that I’ve misled the fundraising fraternity all these years. He accused me of, ‘promising people that if they just ask less, they’d raise more.’

That doesn’t sound right. I’m rarely either that specific or that prescriptive. I’ve searched my writings and can’t find anywhere any advice to ask less. Ask better, sure. Ask more sensitively, of course. Listen to your donor and take account of his or her wishes, for certain. But not ask less.

Unless that is, you’re already asking too often. My correspondent (see above) felt the mere mention of this an admission of guilt – he was outraged that I should utter such a phrase. I responded by saying that, by definition, asking too often is…too often.

He came right back at me with, ‘Really? Says who, you?’

I kid you not. This highlights the trivia to which such debate can quickly descend. It’s not merely a question of semantics, it can get plain silly. The other phrase he objected to my agreeing with was, ‘don’t over ask.’ It was time to stop the conversation, I felt. After all, these were his phrases that he ascribed to me, not mine originally.

So, really, how often should we ask?

Well of course we shouldn’t over ask or ask too often, that’s blindingly obvious. However, defining too often would be a generalisation I’m no more qualified to make than anyone else.

It’s not about how often you ask. That’s simply too mechanical. It is about how well you ask, which involves opportunity, sensitivity, setting, language, history, culture, tradition, preparation, empathy, urgency and need. We have to consider our timing, our storytelling ability, the donor’s comfort, interests and potential for resentment and our ability to inspire and create rapport. And the rest. There can be no optimum number to cover such an intimate and personal inter-relationship. I wouldn’t pronounce upon it any more than I might aspire to tell people how often they should have sex.

The first edition of Relationship Fundraising appeared before the recent fashion for making 17 asks on page one of a direct mail letter. Otherwise I might have commented about that. As it happens I know this procedure can be effective. Equally, I can see that from the donors’ point of view the practice might after a while become wearisome. Fundraisers should test it, ask their donors, consider its long-term as well as short-term implications. It may work in some circumstances for some causes, for others not. There is no one size fits all.

The ideal situation is when the fundraiser doesn’t actually have to make a physical ask. The need is so evident and the donor so enthusiastic she will volunteer her gift at the right time or even jump in ahead. The fundraiser still needs to control this situation, but it’s a nice place to be.

We should recognise and cultivate the implicit ask. When Mohammed Amin filmed those long, disconsolate lines of mothers and babies starving in Ethiopia the ask was instantly evident from the faces in that queue. So people here were queuing up to give well before Bob Geldof issued his famous profanity. Many organisations benefit from the implicit ask – the Red Cross, Salvation Army, NSPCC. We close our eyes, imagine and the case is made. Lesser known causes have to work at it. Often the ask needs no more expression than the look in a child’s eyes. Or the offer in a headline. The fundraiser still needs good timing, judgement, inspiration, persistent application and luck. Often we have to learn to let our cause do most of the work for us.

Is a long-term relationship more important than a short-term ask? Again, I don’t think I can always answer that question, for every situation. You must decide. Generally it is. Are there times when a short-term need might necessitate putting other considerations aside and asking anyway? I can envision that, sure. And if the relationship is worth anything, I think mostly it’ll survive and even thrive because of that short-term need. If the ask is right.

The ask is often – even usually – for something much bigger than money. Will you make a blind man see? Will you change a child’s life? Good feedback too can replace the need for an explicit ask in the donor’s mind. It worked, was great value for money, so I’ll do it again.

Saying thank you, we all know, can present the best fundraising opportunity of all. But if while thanking you ask again, you’d be wise to be careful and be sure to ask right. Any fundraiser can decide, after reviewing the arguments for and against, whether or not it's right to ask in a letter of thanks. Then to make a policy decision for them and their organisation. But clearly this also is a question where there’s no absolute right or wrong.

Can less sometimes be more? Well, talk to donors. I’ve not met many who relish being asked for money 17 times within the first few minutes of meeting a fundraiser. Ask like that and before long fundraisers will be regarded with the same enthusiasm as insurance salesmen. If we’re not there already…

So for the fundraiser what matters is not just to ask but to ask right. Asking right isn’t easy and presents fundraisers with several challenges: who to ask, when to ask, where to ask, how to ask and for what? If you really understand your donor and are sensitive to the signals he or she is giving, how often to ask is perhaps the least difficult of these challenges.

I will say though that generally we should ask more. Because asking is the high point of effective donor relationship development. And the more we do that the better. But bald, naked, random, indiscriminate and repetitive asking, that I am sure we should avoid. We can aim higher.

So there are my views. I don’t recall ever suggesting we ask less. Less stridently, perhaps. Less insensitively, I hope so. But not less, absolutely. For that is what we’re here to do: to ask. All I’ve learned is that it really pays us to ask right.

I hope I have now made this clear.

© Ken Burnett 2012

Ken Burnett is a director of Clayton Burnett Limited, The White Lion Press Limited and he’s a former chairman of the board of trustees at the international development charity ActionAid. He’s author of several books including Relationship Fundraising and The Zen of Fundraising and is managing trustee of SOFII, The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration. For more on Ken’s books please click here. To sign up for free notifications of Ken’s future blogs, click here. You can unsubscribe at any time.

This article also appears on Ken Burnett’s blog, see here.

What can fundraisers learn from Steve Jobs?

By Lucy Gower.

In the 56 years he was on the planet Steve Jobs made a difference to the world. He changed the way we think about technology, from the first ever Macintosh personal computer to the development of tablet computing with the iPad. He changed the landscape of the music industry with iTunes and the iPod and led the development of smartphone technology with the iPhone. So given that making a difference is a fundamental of fundraising, I’ve picked out some of Steve Jobs attributes that I think you can apply to make a difference to yours.

Focus

Steve said, ‘Focusis saying no to a thousand things.’ Your efforts should focus on the activities where you will make the most difference. So perfect the art of gracious and firm rejection because saying no to the activities that won’t help you achieve your targets is as important as saying yes to the ones that will.

Passion

Steve did what he loved. He believed that the only way you do great work is if you love what you do. As a fundraiser you have to be passionate about your cause. Sometimes, after a rejection letter from a funder, a difficult conversation with a volunteer, or a pitch that fell flat it can be easy to lose sight of why you do the job you do. So you need to build up a personal collection of inspiration to remind yourself why you are here. Make time to visit or call your beneficiaries and see the difference you are making. Collect stories and write them down, share them at team meetings, refer back to them, keep those special thank-you letters somewhere close. It’s as important for you to know that you are making a difference as it is for your donors. And if you can’t get passionate about what you are doing you are in the wrong job.

Make connections

In his 2005 commencement speech Steve talks about joining dots, or making connections. He tells a story about how dropping out of college gave him the opportunity to drop into classes he was interested in; the courses he was passionate about. He joined a calligraphy class. At that point in his life calligraphy had absolutely no practical application for Steve, it was only 10 years later when designing the first Macintosh it came back to him. Personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do today if he hadn’t been captivated by that calligraphy class.

Steve said, ‘Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, and poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.’

You can only join the dots looking back. So it’s important that you deliberately make connections now, as the more experiences you have, the more you will be able to combine to bring new perspectives to your fundraising.

Perfection

Steve was a perfectionist. I don’t think it’s possible to be perfect in every area of your work, so focus on the things you do well and then be the very best at them. Play to your strengths. Aim to do at least one thing better than anyone else, for example, thanking donors, running events, or developing volunteers. Tweak other organisations imperfections to make them perfect for you, Steve did.

Prototype

Despite Steve’s quest for perfection, Apple release versions of non-perfect products that they test with their customers and are then quick to make changes and improvements based on customer experience. How many of your projects fail to get off the ground because you are waiting for perfection? Life isn’t perfect and neither are we, so expecting that a new product or service will be perfect the first time makes no sense. Test on a small scale, learn and make changes. Aspire to perfection and value your journey to get there.

Failure

He got fired from the company that he started. That’s pretty rubbish by anyone’s standards and it was very public. But he bounced back, started two companies, Pixar and NeXT, which somewhat ironically were bought by Apple and facilitated Steve’s return. So he failed. But more importantly he had determination, resilience and some may say arrogance to brush himself off and get back in the game. Your fundraising may not always work out first time round, even some of the biggest successes took years to get off the ground. Macmillan Coffee Morning started in 1990 and took years to establish. The key is being brave enough to try something new and to accept failing as important learning to drive your fundraising onto greater success.

Simplify

Apple product design is about simplicity. No product is any more complicated than it has to be. How often are you working on a project that seems over complicated? Keep projects simple, keep messages simple. Think about campaigns like Make Poverty History and the NSPCC’s Full Stop Campaign.

Tell more stories

Steve was a great storyteller; he used visuals and descriptive words to take people on a journey into the world of possibility. He didn’t describe the product, he painted a picture of the benefits, the iPod isn’t an MP3 player. It’s a thousand songs that fit in your pocket. That’s what you must do for your donors. How can you tell stories to help donors visualise the world of possibilities that they are helping to create?

Insight

‘If you ask people what they want, they will ask for a faster horse.’ OK so Henry Ford said that, but I think Steve would have said it first if he had been born in time. Steve disagreed with focus groups because he felt people would not have the ability or vision to know what they would want. Instead he looked to the future to what people didn’t know they wanted yet, and created the need. Did you know 10 years ago that you needed an iPod? No me neither – but turns out I did. How can you get real insight about what your donors want that will help you develop what they will want in the future?

Customer experience

Exceptional customer experience is a core element of Apple’s brand. Buying a product, either online or in store, is designed as an ‘experience’. Apple is a loved and trusted brand, with real brand loyalty. Would your donors queue at your office for your latest fundraising pack, like Apple customers queue up at Apple stores for the release of the next iPhone? How do you develop an equivalent donor experience and keep donors coming back for more?

Think differently

In a world in which we are bombarded with information, the only thing that sets you and your organisation apart from your competition is the ability to interpret that information in a different way from everyone else. Steve thought differently and, for me, this advert from 1997 sums it up.

So love him or hate him, the fact is in the short time he was here, Steve Jobs put a dent in the universe. He made a difference. And now it’s your turn.

Can we say the F word please?

By Lucy Gower.

Edison said, ‘I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that don’t work’.

And if Edison hadn’t kept discovering all those ways that didn’t work, it may never have led him to discover a way that did. The electric light bulb might not have been invented. Imagine how different life would be.

The point is that failure is part of life; it’s part of the process that enables us to discover new things and therefore it’s part of innovation. If something is genuinely new it’s likely to fail because no one has done it before. You cannot be innovative without failing. So get used to it. In fact I think deliberately failing should be part of any innovation programme.

Charities are especially afraid of taking risks. They are afraid of being seen to waste donors’ money. I would argue that if an organisation does not take risks and does not invest money in the development of great ideas for increasing the size and scale of its work, then it is not doing the very best it can for its donors, or its beneficiaries. I actually think that, in a competitive marketplace, unless you have something that makes you different from the competition it’s more risky to be the same as everyone else.

Because we don’t like to share failure it’s really hard to find examples of where things have gone wrong. Failures tend to get swept under the carpet and for every failure that isn’t shared a huge amount of learning is wasted.

One person who is bold enough to share failure is Richard Turner, former director of fundraising at ActionAid. He told me about ActionAid’s ‘What a Feeling’ campaign that failed earlier this year. He wanted to say what happened and what was learnt so that other organisations don’t repeat the same mistakes.

What a feeling

On blue Monday, the second Monday in January and officially the most depressing day of the year, ActionAid in the UK launched ‘What a Feeling’. Prompted by the high attrition rates of face-to-face recruitment, the aim of the campaign was to attract new supporters and get them really involved.

The idea came from meeting supporters. The team deliberately got a diverse group together to hear them talk about ActionAid. What stood out was the way they spoke about what they gained. This tallied with the anecdotal comments from supporters when meeting fundraisers; as a result of donating, fundraising, or campaigning for ActionAid, supporters would frequently describe their feelings. Therefore it was decided that this would be the basis of the campaign - real supporters sharing their real feelings to encourage other people like them to sign up to help ActionAid.

The campaign ran over two months and focused on London and the South East of the UK. It used a mix of media ranging from press, inserts, adverts on the London underground, radio, digital, social media and PR. The supporter care team was trained in social media specifically for the campaign.

Check out the What a Feeling video used below

click here to watch video

Despite the conviction of Richard and the fundraising team that they were onto something great, the campaign failed. ActionAid didn’t reach the targets for sign ups to new direct debits. They missed them by a mile. But there were some interesting results, for example a surge in website traffic and take up of people wishing to go on overseas challenges (called First Hand Experiences) at a time many charities have reported a decline. But this was not enough.

Why did What a Feeling campaign fail?

• More time should have been spent on understanding why attrition was increasing and the cost of acquisition was rising (i.e. the underlying causes not just acknowledging the symptoms).

• The general public simply didn’t believe that real people were talking about their feelings (they were).

• The campaign didn’t have a strong enough link to ActionAid’s work and the people it works alongside.

• Great conversations took place on the phone to follow up leads, but the campaign simply didn’t generate enough leads in the first place.

• There was internal pressure to deliver the campaign, as well as to bring in income in the short term. Financial measures were applied but in retrospect the campaign should have been measured for return on engagement rather than the traditional return on investment. It was more a relationship-building exercise than a way to raise more money.

• ActionAid started big, an initial smaller scale approach to inform and develop a larger campaign in the long term would have worked better.

• Because of quick timescales there was less buy in from stakeholders, both by senior staff and those responsible for delivering it.

What did you learn?

• It is crucial to spend time really understanding the challenge you are trying to solve, time spent at the beginning of a campaign will pay off hugely in the end.

• Minimise risk by testing and piloting on a small scale, make refinements before scaling up.

• Be clear on what you are trying to achieve, the What a Feeling campaign was about engagement but it had immediate financial measures. In hindsight, based on those measures, it was set up to fail.

• Build failure, refinements and changes into the development process.

• Get buy-in for your idea and spend time getting the right people on board.

• You need individual and organisational support to make ideas happen.

• The campaign could have been more strongly rooted in the cause and the people that ActionAid work with.

It really is all about engagement

Subsequently Richard did some reading on how marketing is changing which gave some more food for thought about the What a Feeling campaign. He says, ‘I now understand the full nature of the problem. I feel a bit like a doctor who having heard of the symptoms now knows the cause.’

Simply put, Richard had a revelation: the way people decide how to spend their money has changed. Shouting about your product and broadcasting about you is not what customers or donors want to hear. Think about it. Nowadays a lot of people shop online and before they buy they ask their networks or will do a search and, even then, most of them look at customer recommendations. This is why the days of traditional forms of broadcast marketing are in decline and the interactivity of social media networks is becoming increasingly important.

Why should giving to charity be any different? People want to know how what you do is relevant to them and how it will make them feel to be involved; and most importantly how it will help them to feel good. It’s now about connection and being recommended. Your brand, your reputation and what you stand for are more important than before. You have to live and breathe your brand values.

Your people are your brand. So ActionAid were onto something with What a Feeling.

The challenge now for ActionAid is to learn from What a Feeling and to develop the concept into a successful campaign. Often people and organisations want to forget about failure. That is risky. This is the biggest failure of all. Failure gives us all a springboard for success. What we need to do is carry on and even fail again.

I’d like to give a heartfelt round of applause to Richard for being so open about the failure of a campaign he was very much involved in. I hope that sharing his experience will help us all learn, as well as encourage us to be more open about failure in order that we can ultimately all fundraise more effectively for the causes that we are passionate about.

Does anyone else want to be brave and share his or her stories of failure to help prevent others from duplicating your mistakes?

You can follow Richard on Twitter @ifundraiser or his blog at http://ifundraiser.wordpress.com/?'