Most innovative fundraising campaign
Howard Lake | 26 April 2007 | Blogs
For a campaign that shows significant innovation in fundraising. This award can be made either to an application specifically for this category or awarded to an entry in another category that shows a suitably innovative approach. Specific innovative ideas and new treatments and new treatments of current fundraising techniques will also be considered, as will the adoption of existing practice in a new and innovative fashion.
The shortlisted entries – in alphabetical order – are:
Barnardo’s Scotland’s Store Wars
Store Wars is a unique team-building event, originally developed for RBS, where corporate partners are thrown into the lion’s den and asked to run Barnardo’s shops across one city for one day – competing with each other for the highest increase in sales. Teams find out their challenge on the morning of the event and each team has a £100 sales and marketing budget to promote their store. The first two events were held over two separate days in summer 2006 with 10 teams from the RBS group in six stores in Edinburgh, which generated £30,000 in donations and sales – a 245 per cent increase in turnover.
The concept was developed by Barnardo’s fundraising team in Scotland who were looking for community challenges that did not incur more costs than the benefits they delivered. Store Wars has a direct benefit to Barnardo’s stores through increased profits and the fundraising department receives a management fee of £1,600 per team. Corporate customers are happy because the challenge can be used for training, evaluation and team-building.
Store Wars has now been added to Barnardo’s corporate challenge portfolio and has become very popular with companies looking for a fun, unique and rewarding team-building exercise that has direct mutual benefits. It is flexible, can be adapted in a variety of ways and works with any charities that have retail outlets. Barnardo’s intends to roll it out to all its corporate partners.
CLIC Sargent National Yummy Mummy Week
CLIC Sargent introduced the National Yummy Mummy Week in 2004 when 1,000 women took part. In 2006 this had risen to 80,000 participating in a range of events that included pamper parties, pyjama parades and sponsored activities. The fundraising team used a number of different, but integrated fundraising techniques such as mass participation activities, cause-related marketing and special events. It also sold specific event merchandise, ran a number of text-based competitions and worked closely with individuals who wanted to organise their own sponsored events.
The original event focused on the traditional ‘yummy mummy’ – ie London’s Sloane Ranger types. A selection of high-profile individuals were invited to a fundraising lunch in London chaired by HRH the Countess of Wessex. Subsequent events have taken a broader approach and ordinary mums encouraged to take part, have some fun and raise some money. The 2006 event raised £10,000 through merchandise alone and in 2007 the event has media partnerships with Mother & Baby magazine and various websites to help raise its profile. CLIC Sargent says its ability to harness the power of a cultural phenomenon – the rise of the Yummy Mummy – has been central to the success of the event and ensured the buy-in of Mums throughout the UK.
Institute of Cancer Research TacheBack 2006
TacheBack 2006 saw men across the UK grow a sponsored moustache throughout September for the ICR’s Everyman Campaign. It communicated directly to the key target audience of men and raised over £155,000 – smashing the £100,000 target.
The original creative appealed to men, inviting them to join the Fan-tache-tic 4, become superheroes and grow a sponsored tache. The PR campaign included TV presenter Dermot O’Leary, and used press, broadcase and online coverage from GQ and the BBC, through to The Times and Heat magazine.
ICR maintained men’s enthusiasm by encouraging them to use the online tache adviser (so they could decide what tache would suit them best), add photos of their tache to the online gallery and fundraise using a bespoke bmycharity page. Weekly TachBack emails with fundriasing, PR and tache grooming advice were sent out and people invited to the Finale Party where they took part in a tache-ion parade before a panel of celebrity judges, with prizes awarded to the Top Tache and the top Fundraiser.
The original idea was from a key Everyman supporter in 2003 and it has so far raised more than £450,000 for the campaign. ICR will grow TacheBack year on year and will look to attract more corporate support, greater media coverage and increase the number of men taking part, plus the level of sponsorship raised.
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.