Charities and Recession on Radio National

Following a rather excellent 'Background Briefing' about charities in Australia, ABC Radio National hosted a pretty interesting show last night. I thought it was great, but am biased.

Some interesting thoughts from the public, and a host who started off pretty negative about face to face (direct dialogue) ended with a positive angle on it.

Check out the program here.

And last weeks Background Briefing here.

Innovation in times of stress

FBI used to be my favourite radio station when I lived in Sydney. They are a community radio station and I used to be a donor.

They are in trouble, financially, and have gone out with a great idea 'Ask Richard'. Basically asking people to suggest an idea on how to get $1m from Richard Branson.

Good luck to them! Check it out here.

You can follow @askrichard on twitter - if you are not twitter savvy, this is a good excuse to get into it. Much of it is rubbish like 'Just got up, my bed is so hard. Why am I so tired...!?' but it is easy to get away from that stuff.

There is tons of good information, such as one passed on from Mark Philips (bluefrog) about a 'secret meeting' of top philanthropists; you can read about this meeting here.

Sean

Turn media prices on their heads

Just a thought.

Charity A runs a new program to recruit new donors.
Spend is $30k on development fees and $200k on media (print, online, newspaper ads - whatever).

They recruit 1,000 new donors giving an average of $100 ie $100,000 income.

So they raise a net of -$130,000. In the results report a line will appear that the net cost of the donors was $130 each ie cost per acquisition (CPA) = $130. The projected rollout cost, which has no fees would be $100 per donor.

Now this particular charity knows that with its donor development program it needs to actually recruit donors at $50 per donor to make the exercise worthwhile. So, in this case the job is deemed to have missed target (it failed) and it is back to the drawing board.

But let's not start again.

There is a global financial crisis - media sellers are meant to be struggling. Surely a win-win here is to go back to the media seller and say "We will buy your media again - and we will buy four times as much, but at half the price." They get twice the income, and Charity A's cost per acquisition is now acceptable.

I know it seems naive, but if we all take this approach we can take real advantage of what should be a buyers market. There is no need to screw them - just get the price that works for you.

Anyone succeed at this please let me know. And if you try and fail, let me know too.

Sean

American charities can get stimulus funds...

For USA charities:

The wonderful people at The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University are giving out a bulletin for free to help charities put their applications together.

With an incredibly snappy title, check out "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: Act Appropriations Beneficial to the Nonprofit Sector and Key Resources for Organizations to Approach and Access Funding Sources."

If you have someone in your organisation who can actually finish reading the title in full, get the bulletin to them and get them applying.

Thanks Daryl Upsall for bringing this to my attention. Get the bulletin here.

Fundraising Institute of Australia survey on coping with downturn

I know, there are a ton of surveys out there - this one is from the FIA. They say it is the only one in Australia that will that will 'capture how charities and nonprofit organisations are coping with the economic downturn.'

It is pretty thorough and will make interesting reading as it asks for what you have experienced as well as what you are anticipating.

Australian charities, complete the survey here.

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The Blurb from the FIA:

Managing the Downturn

FIA would like to invite you to participate in a survey FIA is running in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Centre for Social Impact to assess the effect of the economic downturn on Australian charities and nonprofit organisations. It is the only comprehensive research in Australia that will capture how charities and nonprofit organisations are coping with the economic downturn.

A similar survey was run in the UK in November 2008 and this has been useful in informing the decisions policy makers and charities must make to ensure their organisation and nonprofit sector is buffered from the economic downturn if income streams dry up and the demand for services rises. In Australia, early indications are that charities are anticipating a drop in their donations and have begun to reduce the number of services offered.

The survey will close on Monday 4 May 2009. Click here for the survey.

Who should complete this survey?
This survey should be completed if your charity or nonprofit organisation provides services to the community (arts, human rights, advocacy, welfare, health, family etc) and is predominantly funded by donations, grants or government funding.

This survey should be completed by a senior member of staff who is overseeing and managing all fundraising projects or the CEO. To ensure the results from this survey are accurate, please ensure this survey is only completed once by your organisation by forwarding this link to the most appropriate person in your organisation.

Please feel free to distribute this survey to your colleagues or other interested parties.

What do I need to complete this survey?
Managing the Downturn survey will be assessing the projected increases and decreases in fundraising and other income streams. You may find it useful to have your most recent annual report on hand.

How long will the survey take to complete?
This survey should take approximately 20 minutes to complete. As a participant, your organisation will receive a copy of the report.

When will the report be released?
The report will be released in mid-June 2009.

Please contact Marianne Ramsay, Policy Assistant at mramsay@fia.org.au for more information.

Retaining donors through tough economic times

We are all worried about keeping our donors in tough economic times. Whatever the recession brings us, fundraising will keep going on.

Here we have yet more useful slides worth nicking for board reports. This presentation was one I presented at workshops in Sydney and Melbourne over the last two weeks.

Whatever happens, talking about the work your charity does in an appropriate way is essential. Telling your story. This presentation starting with stats about fundraising in a recession, but quickly moved on to good donor care and ensuring you are telling good stories.

Absent from the presentation, because it is video and workshop based, is a great exercise on making stories 'sticky'. A link to the Made to Stick blog with step by step instructions on how to run this exercise is below the presentation. Take time to get your team to do the exercise - it is truly mind expanding.

Retaining Donors Through Tough Economic Times

View more presentations from Sean Triner.

Click here for the Girl Effect / Made to Stick exercise.

Sean

Good British website & podcasts

ACEVO, the organisation for charity bosses in the UK, set up a cool website last month which is worth checking out. They call it Recession Support.

Although it is aimed at CEOs, it is pretty useful and goes beyond fundraising. For example, it includes an article on employee benefits during tough times. Even though the news is UK focused the advice is appropriate world-wide.

Check it out here ...