Margaret Martin, Presentation to the Fundraising Ireland seminar ‘Major Gifts in a Major
Recession’, Four Seasons Hotel, Tuesday 20th October 2009.
Background to Women’s Aid
Women's Aid is a national voluntary organisation which has been working to address the issue of do-
mestic violence in Ireland for more than 30 years. We provide direct services to women experiencing
domestic violence through our National Freephone Helpline 1800 341 900 and our court accompani-
ment and one to one support service.
Our income is in the region of €1.5 - 2m and we have a staff of about 35, the majority of whom are
part-time
Women’s Aid Experience of Direct Mail & Major Gifts
I’ve been asked here today to speak honestly about the experience of Women’s Aid and to share
what we’ve learned about Major Gifts in the current climate. Before I talk about major gifts I want to
tell you a little about our direct mail campaign as we planned to use it to prepare the ground for a
major gift campaign. A database of supporters is the primary source material for major gifts, some
whom may become a major benefactor of WOMEN’S AID in the future. Direct mail is a key tool in
helping to identify supporters and warm people up for a future approach.
We began a direct mail campaign in 1997 to build a strong income stream for WOMEN’S AID. How-
ever, due to financial crisis we discontinued it 18 months later. In retrospect this was a major mis-
take. When we began again, 6 years later in 2002 a lot more charities had become involved in direct
mail and we had lost any lead we had.
Looking back to 2002 I realise just how we optimistic we were. Our 300K target pyramid, ranged
from 10 major donations of €5K at the top; down to monthly direct debits of €5 per month. We were
aiming to build a donor base of 4000 people but at that time, what we had was a raw list of 800 peo-
ple the majority of whom were lapsed donors and from whom we had only received a total of 43 do-
nations in 2002.
However, we stuck with it and over the next 7 years we did an annual Christmas appeal a sample of
which we can see here. Our direct debit ask moved from €5 per month in 2002 to €21 per month in
2007. These appeals tended to centre on a woman’s experience of domestic violence and how
Women’s Aid helped her. They were directed at both warm and cold donors as we were trying to
build our donor base. We had learned from our original direct mail campaign that in relation to cold
lists that the highest response rates came from young professional women in Dublin and this helped
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Women’s Aid, Everton House, 47 Old Cabra Road, Dublin 7. T: (01) 8684721, F: (01) 8684722, E: info@womensaid.ie W: www.womensaid.ie

in identifying appropriate cold lists. We have been working with Damian and his team at Ask Direct
since 2006 and find them very helpful with a good understanding of the issue of domestic violence
and of the challenges we face.
However, we have yet to break that 300K ceiling. We consistently underperformed all our targets –
our income has never reached the 100K mark even now 7 years later. And; this was all through the
boom time years of the Celtic Tiger.
So lesson one is: don’t be overly optimistic, be as realistic as you can and bear in mind you may need
a long lead in time. Domestic violence is a slow burner, it’s hidden and often shrouded in secrecy and
so it takes time for people to move from cold to warm. Also it doesn’t have an obvious catchment
group like a school or a hospital. BUT despite this we have made progress - we have grown our do-
nor base from the raw list of 800 in 2002 to strong list of 1650 who we recently found are a loyal and
committed group. We believe that our direct mail strategy is worth the investment.
Lesson two is never shy away from maximizing what you DO have. For example, earlier this year
Women’s Aid faced a serious financial crisis and turned to our warm donors for an urgent appeal.
This was the first time we ever did an emergency appeal. Our target income was €65K– not a huge
amount of money but money that would make a huge difference to us. To our very great surprise
the results surpassed our expectations and we reached a staggering 96% of our target figure. For
this appeal we only contacted our warm donors with a direct ask of 200 euro. We also sent a special
direct appeal to those donors who could make a more significant contribution. As we were communi-
cating directly with our warm donors there was less need to build understanding of the issues and we
focused more on the necessity of funding for the Helpline.
As a result of this appeal, we found a top group of 7 that between them donated just over 20K – one
of these donated 10K and I’ll talk about her in a moment. We also received one donation of 5K and
the other 5 donors give in and around 1K each – these 5 are an interesting group as only one had
given us anything as large as this before. And while the majority of donors gave from €5-50 there
was still an overall rise in the average donation. And its interesting that it took the recession and a
financial crisis to reach a major gift of €10K.
This donation came from Marian Keyes. Marian, as well as being a famous Irish author, is a generous
woman who supports a range of charities and from our point of view, most importantly she has also
shown a particular interest in domestic violence.
Marian’s Book ‘This Charming Man’ was published in 2008 and in writing this book Marian spoke to
many women who had experienced abuse and also came across to meet us in Women’s Aid. There is
considerable overlap between what Marian and ourselves want which is to build greater understand-
ing and support for women who experience DV. Our relationship began in May 2006 when she was
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Women’s Aid, Everton House, 47 Old Cabra Road, Dublin 7. T: (01) 8684721, F: (01) 8684722, E: info@womensaid.ie W: www.womensaid.ie

invited to write an editorial for a book of short stories from Irish women writers published by Poolbeg
who were donating the royalties to Women’s Aid.
So I have to confess that while we’re still finding our feet in relation to major gifts, with 10K being a
rare and wonderful gift, our pool of donors has grown and has demonstrated a commitment to our
work.
Before finishing I want to emphasis the strong links between communications and donor recruitment.
Women’s Aid has a strong focus on keeping domestic violence on the agenda and apropos of some
research on what is happening in other countries, our excellent communications officer, Christina
Sherlock, came across media coverage in the US on the Avon ‘Speak Out against Domestic Violence’
campaign which has Reese Witherspoon as their global ambassador. Last summer Christina sent an
e-mail via the Avon website to find if they would be interested in doing something in Ireland and 6
months later they contacted us. This has proved a fruitful connection.
In March of this year we launched our partnership with Avon an Irish ‘Speak out against Domestic
Violence’ campaign which aimed to raise funds for Women’s Aid through the sale of the Avon Empow-
erment Necklace to Avon’s 1.5 million Irish customers, who importantly, are mostly women. We also
had a special showing of ‘Legally Blonde’ featuring Reese in the Light House Cinema. The fundraising
element of the Avon and Women’s Aid Campaign led to a donation of around €11.5K this year and we
hope to make the campaign even bigger and better in 2010 and beyond. Another benefit of our rela-
tionship is that we can get our message and our helpline number out to such a large group of Irish
women, who either need our support or know someone who does.
So to conclude, Women’s Aid will continue with our direct mail strategy in the hope that one day we
will reap significant rewards. We will continue to seek out new opportunities that could potentially
lead to major gifts and donations and continue to make the most of our loyal and supportive donors.
Only yesterday we received an anonymous gift from a trust for €5K. You just never know until you
ask!!!
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Women’s Aid, Everton House, 47 Old Cabra Road, Dublin 7. T: (01) 8684721, F: (01) 8684722, E: info@womensaid.ie W: www.womensaid.ie