Consultancy offers fundraising advice due to impact of virus
Howard Lake | 23 April 2020 | News
Irish not-for-profit consultancy firm 2into3 has provided online guidance on how charity fundraising can adapt to the impact of the shutdown due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic.
The first step they recommend is that charities assess the potential loss of fundraised income for their organisation by taking last year’s fundraised income by method by month and calculating the impact using a list of factors. Based on their own assessment of existing statistics on giving, if steps are not taken they assess the impact as follows:
- No impact on major gifts, trusts and foundations and emergency direct marketing;
- 10% reduction in regular committed giving and direct marketing appeals and campaigns for one third of the year;
- 25% reduction in corporate for 1/3rd of the year;
- 25% reduction in value of legacies for the full year;
- 75% reduction in selling something for half the year;
- 100% reduction in local and community fundraising for 2/3rds of the year.
The steps they suggest to try to offset the downturn in income include:
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- Applying for the Covid-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme, if applicable, which would allow charities to maintain their teams;
- Re-looking at potential major gift and trust income by undertaking prospect identification, wealth screening and building your case for support;
- Adapting communications of regular committed giving and direct marketing appeals to take account of the likely impact of Covid-19 on some donors’ ability to give and the propensity of other donors to give more;
- Investing more resources on an existing online channel or establishing a new online giving platform to fill the gap;
- Getting in touch with all existing corporate donors and being proactive where their capacity to support is adversely impacted;
- Developing a new plan for charitable trading and local and community activity post-Covid-19 while maintaining contact with volunteers;
- Reassigning resources based on the above;
- Monitoring performance carefully, comparing each month with the same month of the previous year and benchmarking with peers and the sector.
2into3 has also produced a report with more detail on the likely impact of the virus on specific areas of fundraising for the rest of this year. In their view Irish fundraising income is likely to fall by €179 million in 2020 compared to 2019.
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.