Sessions from #BeMoreDigital Fundraising Day 2020:

 

 

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Working backwards to move forwards: User-centric fundraising design

 

Simone Hume, Non-profit Lead at Amazon Web Services (headline sponsor)

 

UK charities face a shortfall of more than £12bn* this year because of coronavirus and the national lockdown. With a complete freeze on in-person fundraising, organisations are re-thinking their engagement and delivery models to operate virtually. Finding ways to diversify income using data and digital experiences has become an imperative, demanding more focus on the donor.

 

While there’s no one size fits all fix for this, adopting a process that works backwards from your supporters helps you better understand their challenges, and keeps you focused and obsessed about their needs. In this session, experts from AWS join us to walk through the “working backwards” process and how other charities are adapting to digital fundraising design models that make better use of their data assets and sustain their missions.

 

*Source; National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the Institute of Fundraising and the Charity Finance Group.

 

 

 

Who did you last donate to?

 

Session sponsored by Enthuse

Tom DeFraine, Manager, Customer Success Team at Enthuse, Rachael Marshal, Fundraising & Communications Manager at Dig Deep and Angela Richmond, Founder at RedFox Research

 

More than a third (37%) of donors cannot remember the name of the charity they most recently gave to online. This shoots up to 56% among Gen Z. Charities with similar names and causes are often confused with one another. In fact, the average person can only remember the name of 9 charities.

 

While digital fundraising is accelerating, giving online can feel intangible and we are entering an era of ‘Give and Forget’. If donors can’t remember your brand, they are highly unlikely to convert to repeat givers, major donors or lifelong champions. Your brand becomes even more fragmented when it’s applied to community or corporate fundraising.

 

Using insights from their recent Donor Pulse study, Enthuse in this session will provide you with an action plan for making your cause memorable and distinct online.

 

 

How Text Giving is bringing us closer to donors in a socially distanced world

 

Bradley French, Fundraising & innovation Manager at Donr, Samantha Lade, Project Manager at Donr, Julie Platt, Fundraising Manager at Chester Zoo and Beth Codling, Relationship Manager at Newcastle Dog & Cat Shelter

 

 

Whilst the coronavirus pandemic has cast a dark cloud over the charity sector, one silver lining has been the innovative and exciting fundraising campaigns that charities have developed. The sector has seen some incredible fundraising campaigns over the past few months; West End performances broadcast to people’s homes, Premier League legends doing keepy-ups for hospice care and text giving becoming a cash alternative in a socially distanced world.

More than 2,000 charities used Donr’s text giving platform to run incredible campaigns during the coronavirus lockdown. As a result, donations between March and July were 653% higher than at the same stage of last year, with charities breaking the £2 Million barrier.

In this session, Donr will be joined by some fantastic charities to celebrate some of the best text donation success stories of the last 6 months, providing valuable information and inspiration to carry into your own digital fundraising strategy.

 

 

 

Securing the future of your fundraising

 

Session sponsored by Phoenix

Poppy Angell, Campaign Manager at Phoenix, Aaron Woods Cybersecurity Business Manager at Phoenix and Jon Hope, Senior Sales Engineer at Sophos

 

In these ever changing times, it is more important than ever for UK charities to respond quickly to new opportunities and threats. Billions of pounds in income has already been lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic, driving a critical need for change.

 

Ensuring that the vulnerable are protected and rethinking approaches to fundraising, while adapting to new remote ways of working, will rely heavily on the ability to adapt and change for the future. So, in these times of a hybrid approach to fundraising staff at home, in the office and back in city centres, how can protect the work they do, your volunteers, your donors and all their data no matter their location, device or role?

 

Join Phoenix Software and Sophos as they look at what it takes to secure your fundraising staff and the critical work they are doing to support both local and national communities through these difficult times. They will look at how a new approach to security can help consolidate resource, reduce costs and deliver more time back to your charity to focus on fundraising and delivering vital services.

 

 

 

(Digital) Fundraising favours the bold

 

Davinia Batley, Director of Fundraising & Engagement at Become

 

As a small organisation, the sudden lockdown had a big impact on fundraising plans at Become. They were left with three choices. Give up, do nothing or do something. They chose to do something. They evaluated internal processes, adapted to a digital way of thinking and, and within weeks of lockdown, rolled out #BecomePlayers.

 

Their digital fundraising product asked audience members to utilise their time at home to dive into the world of gaming and raise money while they do it. Gamers could choose to raise funds over different marathon lengths (6, 12 and 24 hours) and had specific fundraising targets to hit depending on their choice. Once selected, marathoners would set their page up on JustGiving and tap into Become resources to engage their own communities and networks using #BecomePlayers.

 

In this session you’ll be joined by Director of Fundraising & Engagement at Become, Davinia Batley to explore the team culture and approaches that helped them to quickly adapt and launch a brand new fundraising initiative, what they achieved and learned through the process, and how a new digital mentality will shape their fundraising going forward.

 

 

 

Meeting fundraising uncertainty with digital agility

 

Emma Delin, Community Fundraising Officer at Sarcoma UK and Enda Guinan, Digital Communications Manager at Sarcoma UK

 

Charities take comfort from the reliable income of big events on the challenge calendar. They put incredible amounts of energy into developing new ways to recruit, to support and to promote to the fundraisers who sign up through these events in their thousands; honing practices and improving workflows as they go. COVID-19 has pulled the carpet out from underneath many fundraisers and comms experts, forcing them to think (and act) on the spot.

At Sarcoma UK, they have emphasised the "digital" part of their fundraising and making it the focus of different teams to carve a path through uncertainty. By encouraging openness and creativity, and taking advantage of the tools of remote working, they found new paths to connect with supporters and colleagues.

In this session, Emma and Enda join us to present some case studies from embracing the unexpected potential of a community of embroidery artists on Instagram to leading a national fundraising campaign involving 20 smaller charities.

 

 

 

How Orchard Trust turned their annual Summer Fair into an online success

 

Louise Cobb, Community Fundraiser at Orchard Trust

 

When COVID-19 restrictions cancelled Orchard Trust’s annual Summer Fair in June they decided to move the event online. With little experience of digital fundraising, only 4 weeks to go, a tiny team and limited budget they began planning a Virtual Summer Fair.

 

With small expectations, they set themselves a realistic target, but they had completely underestimated how much of a success it would be. The event was hosted via our Facebook page and consisted of a Virtual Pet Show, Brazilain dance workshop, raffle, Cake Baking competition, Juggling sessions, How to Make a Face Covering workshop, ‘Behind the Scenes’ videos of our work, Vintage Vehicle Show and much more.

 

Thanks to careful planning and a great community engagement plan, Orchard Trust were able to match successes of physical events while keeping great interaction with their audience, generating fantastic evergreen content, added new users to their mailing lists and above all, had fun with their community. Join Orchard Trust’s Louise Cobb to find out how the team quickly up-skilled themselves, brought in an audience and, most importantly, ‘had a go’.

 

 

 

Building a digital community: People-first fundraising

 

Dean Gillespie, Digital and Data Manager at All We Can

 

People are integral to embedding digital into your organisation, its processes and its operations. To build an effective digital strategy you must be people-driven. And this goes for your fundraising strategy also. Community fundraising has seen an exponential rise as a result of the lockdown, with charities tapping into their pool of people who are ready and willing to help your charity in more ways than just donating.

 

Lockdown showed us that the most creative and powerful tool in a charity’s arsenal is their community, and the key to unlocking that potential was digital communication. This seminar will unpack how All We Can, the international development and emergency relief NGO, embedded a digital fundraising strategy focused on people and how embracing a digital culture enabled the charity to develop new digital fundraising opportunities and record levels of online income during lockdown.

 

 

 

Is Community Fundraising the future of fundraising?

 

Vicky Urquhart, Senior Community Fundraising Officer at Mind

 

Community fundraising isn’t the obvious choice for the next vanguard of income generation. It might bring to mind fundraising groups and societies or expensive product offerings that don’t fit with a socially distanced future.

But ignoring our community fundraisers at this time risks not only missing out on income now, but on the loyalty and ongoing support to future proof your cause.

Community fundraising practices may need to flex to meet the changing restrictions on our time, but the principles that underwrite good community fundraising couldn’t be more relevant or necessary for our time.

In this session, we’ll explore how community fundraising can respond to the needs of our supporters during this time; to give but in a way that suits their uncertain means and to feel helpful in a time of helplessness. Then using examples from Mind’s multi-million pound community fundraising team, this session will share how charities might use community to secure support now and in the future.

 

 

How your charity can prepare for future grant funding

 

Ngozi Lyn Cole, Coach & Mangement Consulstand and Co-Founder at GLT Partners LTD

 

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many charities were faced with uncertainty. 83% of charities said that access to emergency grant funding would be the most important thing for their future stability*.

 

Even prior to the March lockdown, many charities have relied on grant funding as a vital fundraising avenue. But with so many working practices changing over the past few months, what does this fundraising route now look like and what are the main changes we’ve seen? This type of fundraising will remain a crucial revenue driver for charities, but the criteria, availability and nature of grant funding has been directly impacted by the rapid changes caused by COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

 

In this session, we’re joined by Ngozi Lyn Cole, Coach & Management Consultant and Co-Founder at GLT Partners LTD, to look at the future of grant funding for charities and how your organisation can be prepared going forwards. Learn about the new changes to be aware of when it comes to applying for grants and gain key tips for successfully seeking grant funding.

 

*Survey conducted by The Institute of Fundraising in March 2020

 

 

 

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