5 tools for success: How to turbo-charge your pledge based fundraising events

5 tools for success
How to turbo-charge your pledge based fundraising events

TP2010
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@hjcnewmedia
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Your presenters...
Heather.McLean@hjcnewmedia.com
Fundraising and Innovation Consultant, HJC
Kim_Daley@newyork.msf.org
Doctors Without Borders USA

Why a virtual event?
Lower cost, still meet fundraising goals
Higher net return
Chance to create a narrative
Opportunity to try out online tools and social media fundraising
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proprietary and confidential
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Quick Wins: personal pages for events…

Quick Wins

Average raised per committee member: $17,129.83
Top 3 committee fundraisers raised $189,252
Proprietary and Confidential
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What made it work?
Social network competition between committee members
High touch help for committee members e.g. meet personally with them; make their online pages; input their email addresses; steward them along the way with visits and calls
Worked so well, they are alternating virtual event every other year
hjc
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Proprietary & Confidential

The ‘Virtual’ Event
Teams of fundraisers learn how closely their efforts affect emergency interventions by:
Getting an insider’s view of what it’s like to be on an emergency team through field blogs and situation reports from MSF staff
Understanding how readily available funds enables MSF to react quickly in emergencies
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Goals
To acquire new donors/participants
Raise $125,000 for Emergency Relief Fund
Explore personal page fundraising viability for brand
Set MSF apart in the market with an innovative campaign
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Tool #1
Focus on mission and communicate a clear case for support

Importance of mission
Be clear in your communications that:
the event generates revenue through fundraising
the higher the fundraising goal the more mission impact
Create an event that is relevant to your mission
Don’t run just to run! What does the run symbolize?
Virtual events work if tied to mission
Be There 1st
Walk in Their Shoes
Great Whale Trail
Event quality and customer service matter
Brand promise
Enthusiasm
Increased retention and satisfaction
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Three steps
Identify the Need: “MSF tries to predict where emergencies may erupt, but is often called upon to respond at a moment’s notice.”
Identify the Work: “MSF relies on donations in order to act quickly and independently when a crisis arises.”
Identify your Vision: “To educate donors about our emergency medical response in the field and how donating to our Emergency Relief Fund is critical to our work.”
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Identify key messaging – What’s the offer?
Be There 1st key messages:
MSF tries to predict where emergencies may erupt, but is often called upon to respond at a moment’s notice.
On September 16th you can join the team and fundraise with MSF so that they can be there first when the next emergency happens.
Not only will you benefit a great cause, but you and your own team of friends, family, coworkers, and classmates will get “insider” experience of what it like to be there reacting to a crisis.
Your support means that MSF can continue to act independently and quickly in medical crises.
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Permeate this messaging across all communications
External marketing
Internal emails
Participant emails to donors
Encouragement emails
Thank you emails and calls!
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TOOL #2
Monitor your key predictors of success closely

Key predictors of success
More participants correlate with higher revenue
But, it is important to recruit participants who FUNDRAISE – quality and quantity
Recruit participants early
Time as a participant means more donors
Focus on teams
Team participation correlates positively with increased fundraising and overall satisfaction
Teams participate year over year
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More predictors
Watch fundraising goal increases & decreases
Those who increase their fundraising goal mean they have an affinity for fundraising and should be stewarded more intensely
Can you track how many emails each participant sends?
More emails means more donors! You get what you ask for!
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Use the registration form to capture key info
Team captains
How many team members do you expect?
Do they increase the team fundraising goal?
More personalized service, immediate telephone call (more on this later)
Team members
Do they increase their personal fundraising goal?
Are they the top fundraiser on their team?
Individuals
Consider a ‘singles’ board
Upgrade to a team
Corporate team
Matching gift option?
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Encourage self-sponsorship at registration
19/20 top fundraisers for Be There 1st donated to themselves
25% of all donations (not-general) were self-donations
In many cases, participants made multiple donations to themselves.
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Be There 1st: Address Book Stats
The total number of addresses in all address books is 5,314.
Of that total, 2,062 were not sent anything (at least not through the Email Centre tool).
Only 38% of contacts uploaded were solicited for the campaign.
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Email Center Features
View campaign updates (emailing hints auto-populate to field with correct email addresses and appropriate message)
Send one of four varieties of template messages to your contacts (join, support (donate), follow-up, thank you). Users can edit these messages and preview before sending.
Easily see which of your address book contacts have been sent each message, corresponding date, and whether or not they have donated to you or your team.
hjc
Proprietary & Confidential
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Be There 1st: Email Center Stats
Support e-mail (please donate) sent to 2,724 recipients
Follow-up e-mail sent to 502 recipients
Thank you e-mail sent to 313 recipients
Invitation e-mail (please join) sent to 843 recipients
200 of the support email recipients are marked as having donated, though some may have found their way to the form manually instead of clicking through the e-mail
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TOOL #3
Talk to your fundraisers often by email AND THE PHONE

Sit-reps & Emails
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Sit Reps v. Revenue v. Logins
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What did we learn?
Create more incentive for people to login (and fundraise) after reading sit-reps – Is there a final clue in the Fundraiser Center?
Keep sit-reps shorter, use bullets, read more online (many people reading on BlackBerry)
Incorporate fundraising tips in the emails rather than inside login area
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Quote from MSF post-campaign survey
“MSF contact was perfect. I received one call that was meant to answer any of my questions and assist me in fundraising. It was great.”
Participant Survey Respondent
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MSF Calling: Difficult to determine results
Interns handled the participant calling for the most part.
There was communication from other staff to some participants that was not recorded.
MG donors and staff were put on the DO NOT CALL list.
Because of lack of resources, the top 10 fundraisers were called a second time. Self-fulfilling prophecy?
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Results are positive
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Calling works!
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Why do we want to call people?
27.32% of overall revenue raised over the 6 days after calling…

When to Call?

What to say?
Thank you for registering
Can I help at all?
You’re doing a great job! Is the technology working for you? Any questions at all?
One week ‘til race day!
You’ve reached your fundraising goal! Let’s raise it.

Don’t forget them after the event!
Get them enrolled for next year as soon as it is finished
A participant survey shows you care about their experience and making it better
Update throughout the year on improvements or exciting updates
Target past participants first!
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TOOL #4
Make using social media simple for your fundraisers

Viral campaigns
Don’t fall into the trap of wanting to go viral without preparation
Your social media supporters will see through the ask
Build up your supporters well in advance of a campaign
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Widgets
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Recommendations
Build your presence before your event
Designate someone to manage social media full-time. TWEET your successes and thank you’s!
Create opportunities for fundraisers to recruit team members and donors through Facebook.
Fundraising widgets with high usability
Show your network!
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Identify champions to blog!
Do you have true event champion with lots of fundraising success and a story to share?
Would they be willing to blog throughout the campaign about their successes, tips for fundraising, etc?
A great resource and motivation for other team captains
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Tool #5
Use incentives appropriately

Appropriate use of incentives
Know your donors
Early bird!
Should be nominal or entries/credits
Recognize teams/groups
Reward team recruitment
Recognition and public acknowledgement is an incentive!
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Any questions?
Fire them at us!
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5 tools for success: How to turbo-charge your pledge based fundraising events

by hjc on Apr 16, 2010

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5 tools for success: How to turbo-charge your pledge based fundraising events — Presentation Transcript