Maximising Gift Aid using online tools

Maximising Gift Aid using online tools Presented at ‘Effective and Innovative Gift Aid’ 5 May 2009 Howard Lake Fundraising UK Ltd www.fundraising.co.uk [email_address] 01206 579081

New media is a very high-reach, low-cost medium driven by content. The great advantage for charities is that they have a great story to tell… New media allows people to participate, so they're not passive recipients of advertising. Joe Barrell Head of Communications, Save the Children Collecting by Clicks, by Trina Wallace SocietyGuardian.co.uk 17 May 2007

Online opportunities

Using your own website/email communications

Using third parties’ services

Using social media sites and services

For existing and potential supporters

Why bother? Almost a third of UK adults don't know they can give to charities tax effectively and only one in three could name Gift Aid, unprompted, according to a new report from CAF. UK Fundraising 24 April 2009 www.fundraising.co.uk/node/178212

1. On your site

Do all relevant donation forms feature Gift Aid declaration? Interactive and downloadable forms?

Plan to update them three times from Jan-April 2010.

Explanation of Gift Aid? For higher rate taxpayers? Links to HMRC advice?

Mention of Postal Orders?

Trumpet your Gift Aid income and conversion rate?

Check again

In your email communications

Feature Gift Aid and need for declaration in all email signatures

Occasional email to supporters about Gift Aid

Feature in email newsletters

Triggers for email

Approach of end of financial year

Filling in personal tax forms with donation option

Report back on Gift Aid successes/totals

2010 Gift Aid reclaim period reductions

2. Use third party tools

3. New media, new opportunities

Why? Numbers!

More than 200 million active users

More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute

More than 3 billion photos

Supporters have friends…

Ease and speed of sharing ideas, thoughts, requests…

Twitter – retweet

Email – forward

Facebook – status updates etc

Social networks deliver people Since launch, Facebook has become our second biggest referrer, after Google. And it's getting ever closer to number one. Simon Doggett, Justgiving 22 August 2007 whitewater.biz/journal/archives/2007/08/catching_up.html

Social networks deliver people 4.98% of all traffic to Bmycharity has come through Twitter in the last month Ben Brabyn, Bmycharity.com 27 April 2009 www.facebook.com

First steps on social networks

See which sites other charities are using, and how

Explore, use it yourself

Search for your charity’s name: who is talking about you?

Register an account in your charity’s name, if only to protect yourself e.g.

twitter.com/britishredcross

Humour www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHBXaOHH_2I

Flickr.com Photo: Mmm, Gift Aid… www.flickr.com/photos/justgiving/

Using Flickr.com

Create a photo that shows you what Gift Aid reclaims have let your charity achieve in past year

Encourage supporters to share, forward, embed the picture

Photo: www.flickr.com/photos/bidwiya/

Social networking sites [are] so important for charities… they essentially represent the future of community fundraising – Web 2.0 enabling Community Fundraising 2.0. Bryan Miller www.fundraising.co.uk/blogs/bryanmiller 21 July 2007 Significance of Facebook

Offers audience and its own tools The Children’s Trust announce challenge event on Facebook. 16 August 2007

Using blogs Even the Director, Barbara Stocking March 2007

Micro-blogging

Customer service (public/private) Twitter.com/wateraid 06/02/2009

“ The story continued to unfold at breathtaking speed - live, in real time - and Mara Triangle were answering questions from Twitter users throughout; providing donors and prospective donors with unique insights into the challenges they face and the incredible work they do”. Rachel Beer, www.thecharityplace.co.uk

What are widgets? … small applications that can be incorporated into anyone’s web page… They can help companies sell their wares, effectively creating shop fronts in millions of new locations. Rosie Swash and Paul MacInnes The Guardian 24 March 2007, p.16

Let fundraisers promote you/them

Putting them all together For a lesson in using social media to... connect people and causes, you couldn’t get a much better example than Mara Triangle, who have integrated content on Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo, and are microblogging updates regularly using Twitter Rachel Beer www.thecharityplace.co.uk 7 June 2008

So, what should you do?