Will you be at the IoF National Awards?
Howard Lake | 21 June 2010 | Blogs
Fundraising Team of the Year
Fundraising utilises a diverse range of skills, not always present in the same person. This award celebrates the principle that often ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’. It is made in recognition of outstanding fundraising work by a team. The shortlisted entries are:
British Red Cross, Individual Giving Support Team
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Prince’s Trust, South West Commercial Team
War Child, Music & Entertainment
British Red Cross, Individual Giving Support Team
This is a central and business-critical team within the fundraising division. It works away from the spotlight offering donor care to 770,000 active individual supporters. In 2008 the Red Cross’s individual supporters donated £33.6m (excluding legacies) and 2009 saw the most ambitious growth strategy. The IGS team made a commitment to achieve excellence in donor care, maximise income from individuals, lead best practice and champion its supporters. The team managed all this while implementing a new database and increasing donor recruitment volumes. The end of 2009 saw income of £46.5m – a transformational growth of over 38%. The team describe themselves as ‘perfectionists striving for excellence’ and undertook a number of initiatives to reduce overheads while increasing efficiency.
Prince’s Trust – South West Commercial Team
This Bristol-based team is part of the overall fundraising department and is responsible for raising funds from local individuals, companies, trusts and events. In 2008 the team was raising just £80k. Team head Michelle Moran spent her first year recruiting and building a team and developing a strategy to set the foundation for success. In 2009/10 the team has turned private sector fundraising around and is set to raise over £500,000, a growth in two years of 500%. The team come from diverse commercial backgrounds, giving them a holistic approach to any activity undertaken and have developed common values of passion, inspiration and commitment that they demonstrate in all activities. They have shared their innovation skills with the wider fundraising department through developing a successful corporate fundraising product ‘Enterprise’ where corporate teams compete to turn £1k into £10k. This programme has now been rolled out nationally by the Trust with a £1m projected income target for 2010/11.
War Child, Music & Entertainment
This team came together in late 2008 from backgrounds in event management, record labels and media. It was assembled to deliver huge objectives: engage with a younger audience, raise War Child’s profile in public, media and business, increase revenue significantly. Their teamwork spectacularly smashed these targets, making War Child one of 2009’s highest profile charities. This was only possible through incredible individual dedication and powerful teamwork. In 12 months the team compiled a top 10 album actively supported by the likes of Sir Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Coldplay, released a top 10 single, developed a unique concert immediately following the Brit Awards, described by the Guardian as ‘the charity gig to end all charity gigs’. They recruited leading companies and individuals to provide pro bono support to the value of £1.89m. The team is ensuring their models are repeatable and long-term and their success has impacted War Child’s broader aims and had a huge impact on awareness among all mainstream media and public. In 2008 War Child raised £175,956 from music and entertainment. In 2009 this was £783,762 and the team – which is just three strong – has a target for 2010 of £1.1m.
Best business-charity partnership (small/medium charity)
For the best relationship between a charity and a business that provides benefit to the charity within the eligibility criteria. Applications can be from charities with under £1m annual income The shortlisted entries are:
Green Light Trust
Koru Foundation
READ International
Green Light Trust (GLT)
Virgin Unite and Virgin Money combined forces to help GLT to become financially sustainable. GLT also needed to raise its profile and extend its corporate sponsors membership. Virgin Money staff gave valuable time, energy and commitment first to helping shape and form GLT’s new business plan and its marketing team devoted at least seven people to help out. A five-year business plan was created, plus a marketing plan to raise GLT’s profile. The website has been revamped For GLT the partnership built on a strong reputation of its past track record and the organisation now thinks, feels and acts differently in every way. It has restructured, making it even more efficient.
Koru Foundation
The Koru Foundation partnered with the BWEA (British Wind Energy Association) to raise awareness in the growing and emerging UK and European renewable energy industry and persuade, influence and convince renewal energy companies, individuals and business associations of the multiple benefits of small scale off-grid renewable energy systems to communities in developing countries. The partnership was the first time a charity has sought to partner and leverage support from the renewable energy industry as a whole. The charity sought to raise at least £200,000 from the industry in addition to other income from foundations and trusts. In the end £210,000 was raised as well as additional resources such as support from several UK trusts and foundations. The BWEA gained significant profiling through the renewable energy industry and the relationship with the Koru Foundation and has agreed to maintain a close relationship with Koru as its chosen charity.
READ International
READ is a network of 22 student-volunteer-led READ book projects that collect and store disused books from schools across the UK. These are then matched to the Tanzanian/Ugandan syllabus and sent to east African schools. Irrelevant books are sold online and locally or recycled. Big Yellow Self Storage offers free storage space to READ at any of their UK sites. The partnership makes use of Big Yellow’s empty storage units, publicises the support Big Yellow provides to READ, raises further awareness of READ’s work and save costs for READ. In May 2009, READ shopped 230,000 books to Tanzania. Big Yellow also offers 20% discount to READ’s 750 student volunteers.
Best use of payroll giving
For the campaign that demonstrates innovation linked to success in the use of payroll giving. Applications are open to both businesses and charities participating in payroll giving. The shortlisted entries are:
London Borough of Islington Payroll Giving Scheme in partnership with Workplace Giving UK
ASOS.com’s relaunch of workplace giving ‘Everyone loves a Giver’
ASOS.com
ASOS.com has 500 employees at its headquarters and a further 60 at its fulfilment centre. It introduced a Workplace Giving scheme in early 2009, but it never really took off. Just four per cent signed up for the scheme, and when the company recruited a further 100 staff, this percentage fell considerably. After a meeting with Workplace Giving UK in September 2009 which generated lots of creative ideas to engage with the ASOS workforce a target was set of 10% before the end of February 2010. ASOS were persuaded to allocate some budget to the campaign and new materials were produced to promote the campaign. For the relaunch all staff found a leaflet and a roll of Love Heart sweets on their desk, Posters were placed in toilets, kitchens, reception and canteen and a group email sent out. A guide dog and his owner came in with a guide dog puppy to help with signing people up. ‘Everyone Loves a Giver’ achieved a signup of 14.5% and in total the scheme will raise more than £10,000 this year. More than 40 charities have so far been supported.
London
Borough of Islington Payroll Giving Scheme
The local authority wanted a practical way to fulfil its social responsibility commitment to the community and a number of employees approached human resources and suggested that the council should introduce a payroll giving scheme. After the initial launch in 2007 1% of staff were recruited. This phase was to use more and varied methods of communication to achieve a 5% uptake. Workplace Giving UK advisors visited and information as left on noticeboards and posted on the intranet site. HR put messages about the scheme on payslips and included a website link so employees could also see it online. So far, the overall uptake has reached 7.3% – a 292% increase overall. Islington now has the highest uptake in the 33 London boroughs. The average donation was also £18.22 a month per employee as many supported more than one charity and several sernior staff gave larger amounts a month, taking advantage of the higher tax benefits. The money raised increased from £6,800 to £40,300 a year for 110 different charities.
Best use of Direct Mail
For the campaign that demonstrates the best use of dirct mail in fundraising. The application can be for affinity building, or for new or current donors and should broadly show who the campaign was aimed at, what it intended to communicate, and how effectively it did so. The shortlisted entries are:
Royal British Legion – Remembrance Cross Direct Marketing Campaign
Wood Green Animal Shelters – 2009 Christmas Hungry Mouths DM Campaign
WWF UK – Tiger Appeal 2009
Royal British Legion
The campaign offered supporters a unique opportunity to remember troops lost in service in Afghanistan and Iraq while aiming to raise £100,000 for TRBL. The pack featured faces of servicemen and women who had died in Afghanistan and the creative was current and hard hitting, and focused on the tragic loss of two young men and how their wives were coping. Recipients were invited to have their cross (enclosed in the pack) planted along with the crosses planted by the two widows. A personal lift letter from the two widows was also included in the pack. Actual results beat all targets with £370,645 raised and ROI of 383.5%. The mailing was segmented into 31 layers to interrogate the warm supporter base and identify new pools who may be interested, including those who had shown interest in the organisation’s welfare work. The campaign brought together younger and older generations of supporters and using a stronger, more personal message reactivated supporters who had not taken part in the Field of Remembrance mailings for two years.
Wood Green Animal Shelters
The campaign wanted to recruit good quality cash donors as cost effectively as possible. Wood Green had secured a new investment budget for recruitment in 2008, allowing them to grow their warm cash giving database. Testing during Christmas 2008 showed real success, and the 2009 mailing built on this success. Both cold and warm lists were used and all targets were surpassed, increasing 2008’s response rate by 151%. The campaign message of ‘It’s not just one or two coming for Christmas Dinner’ was accompanied by an image of different animals of all shapes and sizes sitting at a table with their empty bowls, which helped to highlight Wood Green’s USP of helping all animals, not just cats and dogs. The campaign was branded the ‘Hungry Mouths Christmas Appeal’ so that any local PR or supporting media would be immediately recognisable and attributable to Wood Green. Bowl shaped cards were enclosed to fill with a message and return to the animals and the Wood Green staff who would be working over the Christmas period.
WWF UK
WWF’s Tiger Appeal 2009 was a two-stage mailing targeting existing warm appeal donors as well as segments of prospects such as campaigners and animal adopters. It aimed to raise net income, engage donors emotionally with the cause and test whether WWF could use mail to drive donors online and maximise income from The Big Give. The core pack was an A5 format for core donors and a more personal A4 format for mid-value donors. The second stage reminder pack was a lightweight DL format. The first mailing was targeted to raise £53,760 and the reminder £48,980 – actual figures were £343,247 and £108,631, making the first appeal the most successful WWF has ever run. The packs went for a highly personal ‘inside track’ approach and visual impact was via two moderately gruesome images of a snared tiger. Much of the pack’s creativity was within the copy. The reminder appeal generated £84,000 online via The Big Give, which combined with major donor support meant WWF achieved the £100,000 required to secure maximum matched funding from The Big Give in just over two days.
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.