John Grooms to measure role and value of awareness in donor recruitment

Howard Lake | 16 September 2002 | News

John Grooms, the campaign for disability charity, is claiming a UK first for its plan to identify the role and effectiveness of above-the-line activity in raising awareness and recruiting charity donors.

Working with specialist advertising and fundraising agency bluefrog, John Grooms will operate two separate programmes of activity within controlled test areas in North London and Southend. Both areas contain John Grooms residential homes and the campaigns are designed to lever the local presence of the homes in order to increase the effectiveness of spend.

The six-week campaign starts on 19 September, and it is expected to reach an audience of 50,000. Bluefrog hope to achieve an ROI of 0.64, recruiting over 3,700 cash donors and over 600 regular givers.

A targeted above-the-line campaign will be launched in North London (Harrow, Edgware and Boreham Wood) to raise initial awareness. GIFT Fundraising’s face-to-face recruitment teams will support the above-the-line activity.

The campaign will test four forms of recruitment against test cells selected away from the target areas. Comparing results from areas, which received awareness support versus those without, will allow the impact of awareness in donor recruitment to be measured.

John Wallbank, bluefrog Head of Planning commented: “This campaign marks a first for both John Grooms and the UK fundraising industry. We will be able to measure the impact of awareness raising activity on a variety of direct recruitment techniques – including direct mail, telephone and face to face.”

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.