'Perfect' face-to-face donor profile to be unveiled at IFC
Howard Lake | 30 September 2009 | News
Face-to-face fundraising pioneers, Daryl Upsall (Daryl Upsall Consulting International SL) and Owen Watkins (UNICEF Switzerland), will unveil the ‘perfect’ donor profile for face-to-face fundraising to delegates at next month’s International Fundraising Congress (IFC) in Holland.
The speakers will present the profile in their 6.5-hour masterclass which covers how fundraisers can maximise the long-term effectiveness of their face-to-face programme.
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Upsall and Watkins will examine the three key factors in reducing attrition, namely targeting the right donor demographic at the outset, better and more appropriate donor communication, and effective donor stewardship.
Having analysed many of the world’s most successful face-to-face fundraising programmes, the speakers will reveal the perfect donor demographic to target for face-to-face fundraising.
She is a 38.5 year old female professional. The speakers will report how this kind of donor wants to be communicated with and what she expects of the charity.
One other lesson from the session will be a recommendation that charities avoid targeting particularly young donors, because they are both very likely to cancel their donations, and to do so quickly.
The only exception to this rule is when fundraising in the developing world, where the average population is much younger and the ideal face-to-face profile is also younger.
Daryl Upsall said that often face-to-face fundraising is used as a method to recruit young donors. As a result many face-to-face fundraisers are themselves young. “To maximise success in recruiting this donor group,” he suggested, “fundraisers would need to mirror the target demographic themselves”. Charities and fundraising agencies might therefore consider recruiting older fundraisers to target the ideal donor.
Both speakers helped pioneer face-to-face fundraising. Upsall initiated the first mass market face-to-face fundraising campaign in 1995 in Austria when working as the International Fundraising and Marketing Director of Greenpeace International. Owen Watkins, spent seven years managing face-to-face and door-to-door agencies in the UK and USA.
Their masterclass ‘Cutting-edge face-to-face fundraising from around the world – techniques that keep on delivering results in challenging times’ is part of the 29th International Fundraising Conference which runs from 20-23 October.
www.resource-alliance.org/ifc
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.