Web-based key recovery service aims to boost regular giving
Howard Lake | 6 July 2006 | News
Professional fundraising organisation Fundraising Initiatives has announced Key2Giving, a new web-based key recovery service that aims to increase the number of donors giving a regular gift. The tool will be unveiled at next week’s Institute of Fundraising National Convention in London.
Key2Giving is designed to take advantage of the trend for “tangible giving” by providing donors with a service that returns lost keys to them from anywhere in the country.
For a donation of £5 a month, individual members of the Key2Giving scheme will receive an engraved key fob, which is branded on one side with their charity’s logo and has a Freepost address on the other side. Should the keys be lost, anyone finding them can simply drop them in a post box and the keys will be returned to their owners.
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As well as individual membership, Kye2Giving offers dual membership at £8 a month for two key fobs, and household membership at £12 a month for up to four fobs is also available.
Key2Giving will be promoted both online and by Fundraising Initiatives’ face-to-face and door-to-door fundraising teams, with the main recruitment vehicle being the key2giving.co.uk website, on which participating charities will have their own microsite.
The company believes this new service “will make cost-effective, risk free regular giving available to all charities.”
Fundraising Initiatives’ deputy managing director Anne Bolitho said: “The problem with establishing a committed programme for small charities is that it can involve substantial investment upfront, for example with direct mail or DRTV.
“But Key2Giving will be self-financing for charities. It is a genuine ‘no-win, no fee scheme’ as, apart from a small set-up fee, charities only pay for the donors we recruit once they have banked their donations.”
She sees Key2Giving as “not just a simple tactical fundraising tool. It is a strategic fundraising mechanism that will have wide-ranging effects on how small charities conduct their fundraising.”
A pilot trial is currently ongoing with mental health charity Guideposts Trust, with donors recruited through face-to-face and door-to-door fundraising, and other confirmed member charities are Childlife, Pattaya Orphanage Trust, The Connection at St Martins, and the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity.
Key2Giving is similar to an established key recovery service that has been run by Canadian armed services charity War Amps since 1946. During that time, more than one million sets of lost keys have been returned to Canadians through War Amps’ ‘Key Tag’ service.
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.