The First Cut is the deepest

For the boomers (or pop saddos) you'll recall P P Arnold had a huge hit with this in 1967. In 1977 Rod Stewart covered it pretty succesfully though it was actually written by Cat Stevens and sold to P P Arnold for £30!

I'm recalling the lyrics as I read the NCVO report on the impact of the government cuts upon front line service delivering charities. (see www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/cuts-report) Where the NCVO use the government's own spending review figures to highlight a £3bn cut in funding to community groups and charities providing vital services. They admit that the figures are conservative which confirms that LSBU's estimate of £5bn is probably not far off. Effective fundraising can only do so much and replacing government funding is rarely an attractive proposition for givers.

In reacting to these unnecessarily savage cuts charities may fall into the trap of cutting spending budgets across the board, simply in order to survive. However those cuts, if falling on fundraisers could, in fact be the most savage. By cutting fundraising investment organisations will inhibit not only their capacity to weather the storm, but also reduce their ability to provide alternative income streams when they are most needed. The charities and civil society organisations who survive in the best shape to prosper in the longer term have to be the ones that continue to invest in fundraising and continue to develop teams able to do better.

Whilst the first cut is the deepest, it might the the second that kills!



P

The Postman only knocks once!

Or this could be "more about direct marketing" as it concerns the increasing use of couriers by charities and commercial marketeers alike. It's also in praise of the Royal Mail as, usually, they they do only need to call once.

Ordered three items off the net two weeks ago. One from a charity arrived within three days courtesy of good old postman Paul (we know ours on the Towpath). After 10 days neither of the others (via DHL) had arrived. After various lengthy phonecalls to the suppliers one of the packets turned up. Two weeks later the other still hasn't. The supplier tells me that DHL claim to have tried to deliver "on multiple occassions" (twice or six?) and have left cards through the letterbox. Wrong.

Now it's winging it's way via first class mail and I have implicit faith that it'll be here and Paul will only need to call once 'cause he knows where we live.

How not to do direct mail

Got an all staff email at the university this morning asking me to sponsor someone doing the same event as me (albeit for ATAXIA a different charity). Given that there are several hundred staff and about 80 of us doing the event, it was singularly untargeted, had no compelling reason to respond and every reason to ignore!

It seems that even with all the luxuries of social networking, the ease of email and just giving pages we can still make all the basic errors of assuming anyone will give money just because we ask them.

Whislt doing a panel session last week for the Guardian, on charity communications a similar theme arose. Lots of people trying to come into the sector but firing off job and volunteer applications with little thought of what the recipient would make of the communication. Back to basics and reminders to stress everything relevant to the position, ensure that you make sure what you offer is (a) deliverable and (b) wanted. It is all about targetting as the gurus of Marketing - Philip Kotler and Michael Porter will tell you. Simples.

And what a brilliant campaign that is. Post modernism at its best. You advertise something entirely different to what the real product is about, but create brand recall AND (most important) an understanding that the product is all about insurance. Eat your heart out Go Compare and Confused. Targeted, skillfully executed and entirely relevant.

That's all there is to direct mail too.

The Philanthropy Summit

So the Institute of Fundraising convenes a Philanthropy Summit at the convention and invites practitioners, pundits and academics (not to mention the Minister Nick Hurd) - so a big fat tick in the box and A for effort. Well done Amanda Shepherd. However the convention itself had only four sessions loosely connected to research and two genuine pieces of fundraising research. Big black mark against the board. And, a question around all those fine words asking for more research, more rigour and more evidence based reports to help present the big picture (instead of all the guru opinion pieces - fun, but increasingly irrelevant).

The questions posed were really quite good in terms of looking at how we might increase giving (both incidence and propensity) unsurprisingly, I think, they suffered from the lack of leadership that the Institute has (and is) experiencing. That's to take nothing away from Sir Alan (sorry Alan Gosschalk that is) who has in the circumstances steered a pretty steady course since the loss in rapid order of two chief executives and the chair. Now we have a new chair and, we're promised, a new CEO soon. But surely vision and mission doesn't come with the CEO but with the board (especially in the voluntary sector).

That is, I think, where we have a real problem. The Institute of Fundraising could do a number of things really well. It could help to make its qualifications mandatory and incentivise all members to become qualified through a structured CPD programme. It could appeal to CASE and lead the field in growth from educational fundraisers. It could help set the fundraising agenda by holding government to account and, by the by, become a chartered institute in the process.

It could do any of these but, I really doubt that it could do them all. So who chooses and how and why? Nobody seems to know and I fear things might just rumble on as always. I do hope I'm wrong in this instance and prove to be a real grump.

Letter to the Prime Minister from the Boomers

I'm not usually one for passing on the jokes that go round the internet but this, far from a joke is, a mon avis, a perfect example of the application of Keynsian economics and, although some of the maths is wrong, might just work. Being a boomer and of the 10 million I rather like it:


Dear Mr. Cameron,

Forget the Big Society and instead, implement this suggestion for fixing Britain's economy.

Instead of underwriting a hundred billion to the banks that might well squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Boomers Retirement Plan:

There are approximately 10 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them £1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire - 10 million job openings - unemployment fixed

2) They MUST buy a new British car (if there any) - 10 million cars ordered - Car Industry fixed

3) They MUST pay off their mortgage (or buy a house if they're renting) - Housing shortage fixed and the building societies will have money to lend to first time buyers.

4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university - Education and maybe even crime rate fixed

5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week ..... and there's your money back in duty/tax etc plus they won't live for another 20 years needing the NHS and social care.

Power to the grumpies (fundraisers or whatever)

The Merry Go Round

We all know that attrition amongst givers costs a hugh amount of money and the replacement of a supporter is generally far harder to achieve than the retention of someone who is already giving to the charity. Increasingly trustee boards and senior management team understand that we have to invest in cultivation, stewardship, good communications and take time to develop two way relationships with our supporters.

So why do charities continue to hemorrhage fundraisers? Just look at the pages of Third Sector or Civil Society and you seen experienced fundraising practioners, managers and directors changing jobs at alarmingly increasing rates. Ruth Ruderham from Christian Aid to British Waterways, Mike Palfreyman from Help the Hospices to a children's hospice,Liz Showell from Children's Society to Alzheimer's just in one issue. And, of course, you can effectively double that number because of the vaccancies they leave behind.

Investing in staff development, continuing professional development and the opportunity to try new things can significantly enhance individuals' enjoyment and lengthen the time that they stay with an organisation. I used to say of sales staff that if they moved on in under two years we'd done something wrong and we were losing money. If they were still there after seven years I might begin to wonder why. Managers and trustess have a duty to optimise investment and make sure fundraisers stay around, productively for far, far longer.

A dearth of good fundraisers?

Martin Brookes (of NPC), has a pop a major gift fundraisers and the sky falls in. Or does it? He's talking at the Institute Consultants Group next Tuesday afternoon for anyone wanting to grill him on his prognostications. Meanwhile ACEVO report that the biggest barrier to "the big society" is an excess of red tape. NCVO's Giving Commission take a much more optimistic line that people will give more if only they're asked appropriately. Well there's a thing. I wonder if there is a link after all?

I've been asked to find several interns to help new fundraisers in three different charities deliver ambitious targets. Trouble is that doesn't recognise the lack of experience from existing and new staff (who'll be managing them) and the situation, in my humble opinion, is getting worse. Unqualified fundraisers with some experience but little conceptual understanding of giving models, philanthropic psychology (to quote Adrian Sargeant) and sometimes even the development of a powerful case for support. Surely more power to the Institute's Academy and the universities trying to provide sound fundraising qualifications.

If we think fundraisers deserve a better press we'd better do something about it.