WWF creates 3 virtual events in a week
Melanie May | 29 November 2019 | News
WWF, in collaboration with the agency Open, has developed three new virtual events in one week.
One event, The Big Winter Wander, has already launched just in time for Christmas. It will give families across the UK the chance to turn their traditional Boxing Day walk into a moment of fundraising, fun and reconnecting with nature. The others are due to launch early next year.
WWF and Open used sprint methodology to develop the events fast – creating, testing, learning and launching in one week. The sprint week brought together a hand picked team of fundraisers, strategists, project managers and creatives from WWF and Open. Working in one room as one team, the group collaborated in real-time, sharing roles and responsibilities to hit their deadlines.
Louise Lai, Client Services Director, Open said:
“A sprint week like this is about three things; ambition, planning and teamwork. Everyone must share the same ambition from day one. You need an air-tight plan to hit all your deadlines. And most importantly, you need a team who are empowered to make decisions, be flexible and leave old ways of working at the door.”
Caroline Appleton, Fundraising Innovation Lead, WWF added:
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“In just five days we took three new event ideas from concept to execution, a process that would usually take months. Now we can test, learn, fail, win and adapt in the fastest, most cost-effective way.”
The impetus behind the project was articulated by Kerry Blackstock, WWF’s Director of Relationship Marketing, at a recent Charity Benchmarks seminar.
She said:
“We’re great at regular giving but, as this study highlights, like many charities we have a need to diversify. You can see that our spend on events has been relatively low and so was our revenue. So that’s a good example of an area where we’re investing and innovating.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.