Curly Wurlies, Marketing and Fundraising resolutions 2012

Howard Lake | 4 January 2012 | Blogs

• Tagged with:
• brand
• charity communications
• Marketing

By this time each year I’m usually on the verge of blowing one minor resolution (this year’s was to do with avoiding Curly Wurlies, but that’s a different blog).  This minor failure on my part has made me determined to achieve the more important professional resolutions that I believe will help charities, civil sector organisations and social enterprises get more value from their activities in 2012.

Here’s my top six. Let me know what you think and what’s made it into your marketing and fundraising resolutions:

1. Engage more organisations with the approach that their brand should be an asset which needs to be leveraged wherever possible to meet objectives and UNDERPIN activities.  Does your brand support what you do day to day?  If not, it’s not working as an asset should and is likely occupying too much time and effort for little return.
   
2. Inspire teams, audiences and readers to look at the chocolate, not the holes!  Every opportunity has risks and every idea has potential downsides but we really need to stop looking at them from the perspective of what’s not there and look at what lovely chocolaty benefits await if we think more openly about ideas.
3. Try to convince the right decision-makers that marketing and communications are sets of tools and skills that need to be used to achieve core objectives like fundraising and building brand credibility.  They are not by default departments in their own right and should never be perceived as an end in themselves… in fact, they are at their most powerful when applied in a coordinated way.
4. Make sure some APPROPRIATE and targeted aspect of thanks and recognition is included in every fundraising campaign I’m involved with.
5. Treat volunteers like precious gems and encourage others to do the same!  This means nurturing, developing, offering stimulating roles and opportunities for them to support you and yes, recognising their contributions regularly (but I already said thanking).
6. Encourage more charity communicators and fundraisers to empower their supporters and volunteers to use social media to engage even wider audiences with their causes.  Let go of the brand controls and encourage conversations – their value will be much greater than the risk of a few individuals saying something bad about you!

Actually there is one more but it’s quite ambitious…

Share as many examples as I can from as many sources as possible of marketing, fundraising and communications teams choosing to break down internal silos and work together to make the outcomes of their activities so much more powerful than they ever could be alone.

What are your fundraising and marketing resolutions?

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.