Innovate or Die

Tribe Chief Marcello Inniara is obsessed with innovation. And he is good at it, having led Greenpeace Argentina's now famous campaign to save crucial forest a few years back - all from an online approach.

And not surprisingly, he wants us all to innovate in times of stress.

Being with him for half an hour is inspiring - and makes you start to push your own boundaries. I am really chuffed that he is coming to Australia to the F&P run Australasian Fundraising Forum this winter (August for us) to inspire Aussies.

One of my clients (I'll call him Al) is also obsessed - but this obsession is recruiting regular givers, cheap. Really cheap. Al currently pays about $280 per donor (giving about $25 a month) from Australian face to face providers.

He also knows than non face to face regular donors giving about $15 a month actually give more on average, over three years than face to face - mainly due to attrition. (I will put up another blog about this tomorrow).

So this means, in theory, he should be willing to pay more than $280 per donor for these but Al is not satisfied. He wants to get donors cheaper, because there is a way - we just need to find it, and online is our mutually preferred 'best bet'.

We told him he has unreasonable expectations - 'massive charities aren't achieving it' we said. At first frustrating, the Pareto team then went to the pub - and felt inspired.

All of us felt lifted by the challenge. His doggedness and determination is coming through, and we want to be part of it. He will force innovation.

I still need to remind him that there will be failures on the way, but we are really up for it. But maybe the recession has forced you to innovate? Any ridiculous ideas to share - that have worked or failed? I love the Ask Richard idea below, but other recession busting tricks welcome.

Marcelo's blog is well worth checking out, short and sweet ideas worth adding to your feed.

Sean

Innovate? How about stealing ideas?

SOFII is a charity that exists just to help fundraisers world-wide, for free. Ken Burnett sent me this email...

Sean Triner

"Hi Sean

Congratulations on your recession-watch blog. Very timely, useful and much needed.

Tough times, of course, can also produce the best ideas. Many currently established methods of donor acquisition can be seen to have arisen as innovations when the need was greatest. See ActionAid’s insert story on SOFII, and Greenpeace’s development of face-to-face.

Plus an array of legacy marketing and other initiatives that arose directly out of fundraising uncertainty.

The whole idea of SOFII itself becomes even more appropriate in tough times. Why trouble to think of your own great idea if you can borrow someone else’s? Why take a risk testing the unknown when you can see how well or otherwise similar initiatives fared, when used by others?

To quote (very reluctantly) Donald Rumsfeld, fundraisers suffer from too many ‘unknown unknowns’, particularly in hard times.

So I hope you’ll direct your followers to SOFII, where as many of the ‘known knowns’ as we can uncover are being gathered and displayed to help fundraisers to shed light on the best ways of doing things, however hard times get. And all for free, too.

Keep thinking

Ken Burnett, SOFII– The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration
ken@sofii.org, http://www.sofii.org"

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