It’s been a hot topic in 2016, but it’s one thing talking about it and another thing completely to actually do something. We all like to think we’re donor friendly, but there’s always more to do. There is a wonderful list from Ken Burnett and Giles Pegram of ideas and priorities for improving the donor experience, they’ve done the hard work so I’ll leave it with you... http://101fundraising.org/2016/11/changing-fundraising-good/
What are your measures of success? Are they actually helpful? If you ONLY measure income it can make your fundraising very one dimensional – what about measuring things like... number of donor enquiries/contacts, retention rates (do you know them? If not, why not!), second gift rates, how many donors decreased or increased their appeal gifts? What are you going to do about it? It’s not all about numbers either. Think about behaviours – because these are really good indicators to what might happen next. Pick something new to monitor in January 2017 and in December track back and see what happened. Get together with other fundraisers in real life or here on Charity Connect and agree to do the same thing...voila! You now have a benchmark.
No more navel gazing, get out there and read what’s going on! Blogs are great ways to get ideas, think differently, spark thought processes and improve on your learning. There are some great ones out there! Use twitter and linked in – some of my favourites include 101fundraising (http://101fundraising.org), The Agitator (http://www.theagitator.net/), UK Fundraising (http://fundraising.co.uk/category/blog/) and Mark Phillips Queer Ideas (http://www.queerideas.co.uk/my_weblog/) and of course, new kid on the block, Charity Connect!
This is one for the time management police. Meetings. Some are more productive than others... but almost all of them could be more time effective. What else could you achieve if you cut just 10% of the time you spend in meetings – what would that mean financially? How would that work across the whole of the fundraising team? What would that add up to? Do you even need a meeting or could you get the same result by phone or skype? Make every meeting 10% shorter and you’ll save loads in salary alone! This calculator is ace... https://hbr.org/2016/01/estimate-the-cost-of-a-meeting-with-this-calculator set yourself a target and see how much money you can make in saved time and increased fundraising capacity!
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