Street recruitment kicking goals in North America...

I have been chatting to James Julien from Public Outreach quite a lot recently to try and get a sense of what's happening on the street in terms of recruitment, specifically recruitment of monthly/regular donors.

This is what James kindly shared with me earlier today....

"In Canada, since September, our results on the street, at the door and in shopping malls have all remained strong, actually improving by about 5% over our summer results for this year. This seems to be true for all our clients; international development, health charities, etc. One possible explanation is that the younger demographics we deal with in face-to-face (average donor age is 30-35 for most of our clients) haven’t been as affected by the economic situation as older donors who may be getting some or all of their income from investment funds.

Results in our US operations have also continued to improve over the course of this fall for both monthly and single donations. More people are using “the economy” as a reason for saying no, but more people on balance are saying yes."

So on the back of our recent post about the research that the Bluefrog guys have done, James comments validate that this is a good time to consider investing in street recruitment.

Numbers are still strong in Canada and the US (and rising) - the health warning here is to ensure that if you invest in recruitment on the street - understand the type of donors you are recruiting and be prepared to treat them as a separate stream of donors, for they do fundamentally behave differently to your 'typical' monthly/regular donors (recruited through direct mail, TV, online, telephone etc)..

Jonathon