I am overhead...

(NOTE - I have broken down posts about the conference, so there are 4 or 5 others prior to this.  This is the last day of conference.)

The final day, and I was sad!  I had really enjoyed the confernce, and had looked forward to every session.  Even though I wasn't sure if I could fit in any more information about fundraising, I could have easily attended a couple more days of sessions.  It really was that good.

In between sessions, I did something which I hadn't had a chance to do on the first day - take photos!  I wanted you guys to see where I had been 'living' for the past 3 days so I went around and took happy snaps...

Where to go and what to do!

The bar / lounge area... always filled with people on laptops

Our internet lounge

IFC online... social media was MASSIVE!  People were tweeting in sessions, about sessions!

We all had our own mailbox, much to Ada's delight!  She checked it everytime we went past :-)

This is an actual painting hanging in the hotel.  I know that the IFC is held at the same hotel every year...but, a painting of the IFC?

First session of the day... The bus from my hotel was running late, and so I had jumped off and raced through breakfast and then raced to my first session, because I didn't want to be late - it was Adrian Sargeant again, and after seeing how popular he was yesterday, I didn't want to miss out!  (Yes, some sessions they shut the door and you just miss out).

I got there 15 mins early, and got almost the last seat in the house.  I kid you not, people were standing OUTSIDE the door, trying to just to glimpse in!  And the session goes for 1.5hrs!  Adrian was a popular man, and this I think was THE session of the conference. 

Philanthropic psychology - using donor identity to grow giving
Adrian Sargeant

I'm not even sure where to start for this session... basically about social information.  Social information - telling people what others like them are doing.  I think that is the easiest way to explain it.  I had to concentrate 110% to kep up, but it was worth it.  Hopefully this will make sense to you, as I am still grappling with it 12 hours later.

Firstly, providing social information works on new donors, and current donors.  Adrian talked through some experiments he had done to explain it, so I will attempt to do the same.  He did a test on a fundraising drive of a public radio station in the US.  When people rang in to donate, they were place in either the control group, were not asked for a specific amount to donate, and the test group.  The test group was asked to donate a specific amount, but it was HOW they were asked, that was interesting. 

The test group were prompted to donate an amount and were provided with social information at the point of being asked. 

Donors were segmented by identity (in this case it was gender).  When they rang up to donate, they were given social information relevant to them around that donation by the receiver - eg. A woman just rang in and gave $xx.  The caller identifies with being a woman, and hence donates the same amount.

1**  Remind donors of their identity and why it is good to be that identity (eg in direct mail, something as simple as a Male/Female tick box).

2** Remind them of others in that identity (the 'another woman' part)

3** Provide the social information eg. another women just gave $xx

Can we lift this gift amount?  Yes...

4**  Ask if they have more or less than x people who use/benefit from the service (eg. listen to public radio).  In the test, they used '2' people, because most people who rang in knew more than 2 people who listened to public radio, and hence further identified with the service.

Can we continue to increase what they give?  Being in Moral Identity...

People have an actual and ideal moral identity.  Actual - waht you are vs Ideal - where you want to be.  Women have a bigger moral gap.

5**  Use moral words (kind, compassionate, generous, loyal, helpful, honest etc) to prime (and then thank) donors.  They feel like they are getting closer to their ideal self.  We are making donors feel good about their donation.  ("Your compassion in donating $xx will help us to ...)

Point to note - social information MUST be given at the point just before donation - put it on the response mech, or just before you ask for the donation. 

1) Remind donors of their identity and why it is good to be that identity
2) Rmind them of others in that identity
3) Ask if they know more or less than x people who also use/benefit from the service
4) Prime with moral words (and then use moral words to thank the donor after - using these words after gives a value add baack to the donor, and closes the circle of giving)
5) Provide this social information at a point JUST BEFORE you ask for the donation

Ok, I'm not sure if all of this makes sense...I think I need some more time to get my head around it...

That session was our final workshop, and now it was time for the closing plenary.

Closing Plenary - Dan Pollota

Dan is from the US and has been in fundraising for ...a long time (I can't remember the figure!).  Dan set up a number of fundraising initiatives in the States, from cross country bike rides to 3 day walks.  His presentation was around the discrepancies and discrimination between the charity world and the rest of the world.  He described it as 2 rule books - one for charities, and one for everyone else.  He wants to change the public's perception about how they view charities, and try to make it more comparable with how the corporate sector works.  Dan's thoughts below...

Discrimination 1 - Salaries
Dan talked about (and didn't agree with) why people think that executives in charities should receive a low salary, while they are quite comfortable with executives of large corporations having a massive salary.  He gave the example of a corporate CEO on $400k, vs a charity CEO on $80k.  If we don't pay people the same as the corporate sector, why will highly educated people come to the sector.  The $400k CEO could argue he does more good GIVING the charity $100k per year as opposed to being the CEO.  We need to become comparible with the corporate sector to attract and retain people.

Discrimination 2 - Advertising and Marketing
Why is it that corporates can spend millions on advertising (to just make more money) but charities can't be seen to be spending money on advertising to either further a cause, or raise more money for that cause?  We are ok with Mars spending millions to sell chocolate, but not on a hunger charity trying to advertise to STOP hunger?

Discrimination 3 - Risk taking for getting new donors
Why is it ok for corporates to take risks,a nd have them fail and that be ok, yet charities are scrutinised over every failure?  Warner Brothers can spend million on a movie that flops, and that is ok with everyone, but a charity can't spend dollars on acquiring new donors with a new initiative?

Discrimination 4 - Time horizon
Success for a charity campaign seems to have to occur within 12 months.  Many charities don't get to build capacity over a long period, because the success needs to be 'instant'.  New initiatives take time.

Discrimination 5 - Using profit to attract risk capital
Why can't we as a sector reinvest fundraising dollars?

He talked about how the public sees 'dollars spent on administration' and why the public shouldn't use this as a measure of a good charity.  Why not say 'how effective is the charity?'  Wouldn't it be better to have a charity spending a little more and providing a better service, than to not spend money and provide a service that isn't effective and could actually be inadequate? 

He also spoke about how charities report their costs, and why charities shouldn't be afraid of listing their 'overhead' costs - after all, how would they function without them!  He talked about staff being an overhead cost, and that that is ok.  He is working with others in the US to set up a Charity Defence Council which will be an anti-defamation face for charities who are accused of doing 'the wrong thing' with their costs.  The marketing materials (posters) developed have photos of actual staff of charities complete with their title, and the words "I am overhead" on it. It was actually a great speech, and I know that I haven't presented it nearly as well as he did, so I am going to try to find the link to the video when it goes up online, so that you can all see it.  When we walked out of the plenary on a high, we were given sign to wear...

:-)

All up, a great wonderful fabulous conference, that I would encourage anyone to go to.  Obviously I can't convey everything that I've learnt through this blog, but hopefully you have gotten a little taste.

Finally, we were given a card in our opening plenary, and asked to write on it what generousity meant to us, and it was displayed in the foyer.  The responses made me love my industry and profession even more.  Here are some of the responses...

Gangsters, and the International Cancer League...

After the session finished on Wednesday night, our brains were FULL.  But, I realised halfway through the last session that we had a gathering with other cancer charities from around the world to still attend...and I had to present!  It was put on by the Dutch Cancer Society, and was great session, where we met people from all over the world, and then got to hear a little about what everyone did.

I got up to speak and the computer didn't like my USB....NO!!!!!!!!  So, I did what I do best, talked off the top of my head, and while I was speaking, a lovely man from Cypress fixed it and I got my presentation back.  Phew!  By then I had already covered off most of what was in there, but at least they got to see my pretty pictures and hear about my FANTASTIC team :-)

See them trying to fix the computer while I distract everyone with Dougal bears!  :-)

It was interesting to hear what everyone else was doing.  We were asked to present on our fundraising successes and disappointments, which some people did, and some didn't.  We only had 10mins, and for me, most of that was taken up with me talking without a presentation!

Some interesting observations from around the world:
* Holland conducts a hugely succesful televised telethon
* The Cypress Cancer Society still has people who run into traffic when it is stopped at red lights, to tap on windows and ask for donations
* In Hungary, people can donate 1% of their taxible income to a charity or church at tax time (this is a big campaign, missed some of the details) so the Hungarian League against Cancer is competing every year for as many people to donate to them as possible
* The Norweigan Cancer Society ran a campaign for Pink Ribbon this year, where they asked people for space on their website, instead of a donation.  Organisations, bloggers and individuals put up a web banner which then went through to the Pink Ribbon page.  Very successful.
* In Luxembourg they have English expats hold a fundraising football game for them.

There were also societies from Finland, Denmark and Belgium present.  A really interesting evening.

Following our catchup with the other cancer charities, Ada and I raced off to get dressed for the 1920's gala dinner.  We had hired dresses, so we frocked up and headed out.  The theme was Gangsters and Prohibition, and lots of people dressed up.  We sat with some great people from Belgium and the UK and had a good night.  Unfortunately everything was catching up with us, so we ended up heading to bed around 10pm.  We were exhausted, and Ada was on a flight at 9am.  I had to say goodbye!!  We had done so much together, and I will always be grateful to have shared the experience with her - our very own global volunteer of the year!

Classic fundraising... Thursday afternoon....

After the excitement of 'new' styles of fundraising in the morning, it was time to go back to basics...time for regular giving and bequests.

Finding and keeping monthly donors
Harvey McKinnon
http://www.harveymckinnon.com/
@harveymckinnon

Another packed session.  Harvey has been involved with regular giving for forever, and has written several books on the subject.  It was a really interesting session, very interactive and lots of questions.  There was one lady down the front who asked far too many questions for Ada and I's liking... I felt like standing up and telling her to shut up and let him get on with it!  The guy beside her then decided to chime in with his opinion (not even a question!) every 10mins or so.  Hey Mr - you aren't the speaker!!!

Again, stolen from a website :-)

Some random thoughts and takeouts from Harvey's session:

* An Amnesty international survey has found the No. #1 reason people become Regular Givers.... convenience!
* Is there a way we can identify early potential drop offs (donors) and call them to invite them to donate less in order to keep them on longer?
* There was debate about contacting regular givers acquired through F2F and thanking them - could it be dangerous, as they may have forgotten about the money being taken out of their account via direct debit every month
* Using language like 'Please accept our special invitation to join our monthly giving program'
* The UK is currently experiencing higher cancellation rates from regular givers at present due to the GFC.
* In some places around the world, door-to-door fundraising is doing better than F2F.  (I later spoke with the owner of fundraising agency in Belgium who agreed).
* Why not do an RG ask at gala dinner events, straight after an emotional story or video
* Some charities are slicing their dollar handles down further than just $/month, to cents/day
* When giving donors montly amount options on a reply mech, give a maximum of 3 choices.  Don't give donors too much choice.
* Talk around doing an RG ask from a petition - as long as the people signing the petition are already primed or at least aware there will be a follow through ask.
* Converting e-newsletter subscribers.  Can we do this?  What about people who write back to enewsletters or provide 'feedback'.  They are obviously more connected/engaged than the regular subscriber.
* 3 ways to make even more money from regular givers 1) upgrade 2) ask for single gifts (incorporate into appeals) and 3) bequests
* Test your RG database to see how many appeals we can send them.
* Upgrade RG donors after they have been on board for 10 months.
* There was talk of aiming for around 15% of your database to be regular givers.

Pretty full on!  After the session I queued up (as did half the class) and asked him about converting eventers to regular givers.  He said that usually they don't convert well, but to test it!

Legacy Fundraising: Lessons from 20 years of research
Adrian Sargeant
www.studyfundraising.info
asargean@iupui.edu

Ok, wow.  This guy was amazing!  He was actually a recommendation from one of the Australians, and I'm so glad I went along.  Again, another packed room, possibly the most packed so far, and I understood why.  Adrian is a Professor of Fundraising.  A Professor!  He has been involved in the study of fundraising for around 20 years, and has been testing fundraising the whole time.  Wow!

The first thing for me in this session was to adjust to the word 'legacy'.  Seems everyone in Europe uses legacy and not bequest.  Legacy sounds old school to me!  :-)

Ok, some of my takeouts from this session:

* A US study found 8% of people of people named charities in their will, and 30-40% were willing to.  OPPORTUNITY!
* The ambiant message of bequests needs to always be there
* People are always talking about large bequests & how they make a difference, hence people think that their bequest is too small.  We need to change that message and starting talking about how ALL bequests make a difference.
* Increasing age = decreasing self esteem.  Making a will is like giving away part of yourself, hence it impacts on self esteem.  A factor to remember when dealing with people who are making bequests, or to remember as to why people may put off making a bequest.
* Studies show no correlation between income/wealth and the liklihood of leaving a bequest.  Chance increases with level of education.
* Great research from Russell James 3rd - I need to look him up when I get back!
* Potential bequesters pay a lot of attention to communications received from a charity.  They want quality.  They are more concerned about the quality of the communication than the rest of the database.  Why?  It is a big decision and they are looking for reassurance of their decision.  They are educated people who pay particular attention, hence we should stop using words like 'A simple guide to leaving a bequest'.  They are smart people!
* Survey - 76% of people feel asking for a bequest is ok, only 3% think it is NOT ok.  Only 42% say they would notify the charity and 31% would want recognition.

Less talk, more study Ada Banks!  :-)

* There is a trend emerging where charities have stopped continually asking donors to notify them about whether or not they have left a bequest.  Why?  It's not like they will know when the donor will pass on!
* Talk to potential bequesters through the channel which you are already talking to them (or have acquired them).
* Major trigger for leaving a bequest - because they were asked!  They actually received something from the charity.
* Potential bequesters are interested in performance data of the organisation.
* When communicating with donors about their gift, make it tangible - eg. it will keep our doors open, it will look after XX endangered species when you are gone.
* Best practice - Language used should be future focused:
- Abstract (the values of the organisation)
- Superordinate (what will your gift deliver.  Outcomes)
- Decontextual (what will the organisation deliver to society)
- Structured (rationale)
* Best practice - talk to donor about what we have done over the donors lifetime (key milestones) and what we will do/need in the future.   Don't use dates, use '10 years time', '20 years time'
* Language - emotions discount faster than logic
* Language - negative emotions discount faster than positive outcomes
* Donors identify with an organisation through:
1) Community (the people) eg. City, state, campus, school, specific staff, other vols etc
2) The organisation itself - this is values based, and is the fit between personal values and organisational values.

He then gave his 'Top 10 suggestions'...

Then he gave an 11th....conduct research!  Test!

Then, he left us with this slide, which I think is hilarious!

Let's try and cram as much as we can into your brain...Thursday morning...

Day 2 at IFC.  I think by the end of the day, my brain was full! 

Ada and I met for breakfast, and we were still on a high from Ada winning the award the night before.  And she was a celebrity!  People were stopping us on the way to session, to say congratulations!  It was so nice to see.

Collaboration and face-to-face

Our first session of the day was a case study in collaboration between 2 charities on Face-to-Face fundraising (F2F).  The 2 guys who ran the session (CEO's of Amnesty and WWF in Austria) talked about how they collaborated for success, and started off by saying collaboration was like a marriage...and then did a little skit to demonstrate!!

Basically, the only F2F agency in Austria up and left Austria, and so Amnesty and WWF were left high and dry.  The interesting thing was that if both charities didn't do F2F, they couldn't survive.  70% of their donors were being recruited through F2F - approx 18,000 donors per year!

They talked about the process they went through to collaborate, and form as separate legal entity, which was an in-house fundraising agency for BOTH charities.  They set up everything from the ground up, with an investment of 1.3m Euros between them.  The agency had left F2F with a bad reputation in Austria, so WWF and Amnesty had to work extremely hard to ensure its success - which they have done well.

They don't mix the brands, so each month the street recruiters alternate who they are recruiting for, which works well for the charities and the staff, as the staff have variety and are more inclined to stay with the organisation.  Through their efforts they have raised the profile of F2F in Australia, and have 2800 applications per year to WORK as a street fundraiser, and at present they are getting 4000 new donors per year (per charity).  All in all, a perfect marriage...

Unfundraising - letting others ask

AJ Leon

http://www.misfit-inc.com/ / http://www.ajleon.me/

@ajleon

Wow, what a session. Ada and I had learnt after our experience of sitting on the floor yesterday, to get to sessions early, and I'm glad we did. AJ's session was packed out.  AJ has a creative agency in New York, and dedicates 20% of his time pro-bono to working with charities.  Straight off the bat I could see he was super passionate and enthusiastic, and LOVED what he does.  What does he do?  He basically works with not-for-profits in helping them to use social media to fundraise.  Social media is his life - he is a self proclaimed nerd.  He looks nothing like a nerd, he wore jeans, a jacked, converse sneakers and had his hair pulled back in a ponytail.  Very cool!  He apologised upfront in case he swore, blaming it on his New York background!

I didn't take this...stole it off his website!  He didn't stand still long enough for me to get a photo!!

He basically used a case study of his to talk us through how we could use social media to fundraise.  Some of my takeouts from his session.

The Macro Story - this is your organisation's story (What you do)

The Micro Story - a project (what you are doing)

Use social media to tell the micro story, the project that you are doing, not the bigger picture.  People want to see how their money is making a real difference.

He talked about telling the story.  His case study was a village in Africa, and how they needed to raise money to get fresh water to the village.  They needed to $72,000 to do this, with a budget of only $250.

He talked about the 6 elements to a telling a good story online:

* a storyteller

* have compelling content

* use visual media (pictures and video)

* make it in real time

* soluble and sharable

* use a low risk platform

He built a simple blog on a free blogsite (a low risk platform), and got a local guy from the village to take photos & video on a smart phone, upload them to the blog and say a few lines about the photo.  Great, so we have a story teller, compelling content (great story!), visual media, that was updated in realtime.  Note - the blog site had NO fundraising ask, but did tease people about how they could be involved soon...

How did they share the story and get people involved?  He tweeted about it, and then looked at people who retweeted, or replied to him.  He did a bit of investigating into these people (as they are obviously engaged with the project - otherwise you would just read the tweets and do nothing.  Retweeting or replying shows you are interested) and found a lady who ran her own blog and had 45,000 followers.  It was a mummy blog, but that was ok.  It was a market that AJ couldn't normally get to, and this woman was obviously an 'influencer' if she had so many followers.  If she could influence even a fraction of her followers to be interested in the Africa project, that would be success.

SIDETRACK...

How do we find influencers? 

1) Start looking in our own backyard and make a list

* who is retweeting our stuff?

* who is commenting on FB?

* who is commenting on our blog?

2) Establish a connection with these people. Take the time to look at them - their FB, blog etc

3) Go deep, not wide.  It's better to have a small group of great people who are engaged with us, than to have thousands of people who aren't.  Say hi to these people, retweet their stuff, comment on their blogs.  Establish that connection.

AJ established a connection with this lady, and then invited her to come to the village.  She did, and then blogged about it.  He then put a fundraising ask on the website, saying there was only 100 spots available for the exclusive club - he created scarcity.  People then wanted to be in this group who then got exclusive content about the project and the village.  This club was a montly donor club, and he only needed 100 people at $12/month.  The influencer was engaged with the project (the mummy blogger), she shared her experience in the village with her followers, and getting 100 monthly donors took....3 hours.  3 hours!!  Insane!

The forumula:

1) the project ------2) the influencer ----- 3) experiential philanthropy (getting suporters to interact and engage with us)

All up, a fabulous session that got me thinking about whether we can replicate it back home.  Choose a project (our micro story) and trial it.  Very cool.

Lunchtime....

1000 fundraisers in the one place...

Well, it is early morning here, and I am up to try and get everything down on blog, to keep you up to date with  the IFC Gala Awards dinner last night, where I had the privilege of watching our very own volunteer Ada Banks receive the award for Outstanding Volunteer in the Global Awards for Fundraising.  It was a nerve wracking event, but I am so so proud of her, and wish you all could have been there to see her!  She now has a wonderful trophy to show off, and is already planning on using it to try and get bumped to first class on her flight home!!

Today was the first day of IFC, and to say we were a little excited would be an understatment.  We met early in the morning to sit down and plan out our day.  Everyone at the Resource Alliance (who run the conference) was extremely helpful, and so we sat and worked out the best sessions to go to.

Imagine 1000 fundraisers in the one place – how amazing!  Ada and I started the day by attending the first-timers session, where we played the obligatory 'get to know you' games in order to meet some other newbies.  I actually met a lovely lady from Macmillan Cancer Support in the UK, who actually knows Grant Chapman!  Some of you might remember Grant from Macmillan from when he volunteered with us at the end of 2010.  What a small world it is!  After that, we headed to lunch with the other Australians who were attending for another meet & greet session. 



So, after all that meeting and greeting, it was time to get down to the business of learning.  1000 fundraisers from across the globe gathered in the conference hall, and the atmosphere was electric.  The opening plenary session included a talk from Karen Osborne on Women in Philanthropy.  She showcased women from across the world, and what philanthropy meant to them.  It was a great way to open the conference.

Heading into the plenary...

Our first official workshop was ‘Digital Fundraising – less magic, more hard work’ and was put on by a lady from the Norwegian Cancer Society (@Beatre_Sorum -her twitter name).  She wore pink tights and had a great down to earth presentation – I loved it!  She talked about online fundraising, and gave a heap of examples, many of which were relevant to CCQ as a cancer charity.  She encouraged us to tweet and blog about her session throughout, which was a great was to see her theory put into action. 

Some learnings from the session included:

·         People are more likely to ‘share’ a page on FB after they have completed an activity (eg. After they have done a Relay they will share the page.  We could use this to our advantage and get people to ‘check in’ to a Relay or Daff/Pink site, as we know they are already engaged with us.  Or do an online thank you video for them post event, and get them to share the link.

·         Digital consumers are vey high maintenance!  That means that we as CCQ can’t be anything less!  In a perfect world, if they post a FB comment at 3am, they want a response ASAP, even if we aren’t around.  They are used to the instantaneous world.

·         Crowdfunding – people are jumping online and doing it for themselves (eg. A community FR activity).  They aren’t waiting around for the charity to come up with the idea.

·         That we need to apply Direct Mail principles to internet marketing, and not just put up crap online because we aren’t limited by space!

1)       The ask – make sure we have an ask in our online marketing, be it for $$, volunteering etc

2)       Frequency – make sure we ask often, even if it means putting an emotional video online to share, but make sure to include an ask at the end.

3)       Target demographics – target our online customers by who they are, and identify commonalities between them.  Talk to them how they want to be spoken to.  Do we really know these people??

4)       Emotions – make the ask or the online presence emotional.  Honest and emotive stories from donors aren’t that hard to do, and it doesn’t have to be expensieve.

5)       Being the solution to a defined problem – don’t be scared of defining success.  What is it that this online marketing piece is trying to achieve?  Funding for a specific project?  Make it achievable.

·         Digital marketing allows us to:

o    Give proof of who we are, the value of our charity, and show that we are trustworthy, all in real time

o    It gives us a lingering presence with donors.  Being ‘Facebook friends’ means we get to be a part of a donors daily life

o    Do marketing in an inexpensive way

o    Have a 2 way communication with our donors/supporters

·         Facebook, what works?

o    Lighten up – even if our cause is serious, our tone on Facebook should be light.  Studies show that online sales can correlate to your facebook activity, and it is even better when your tone is whimsical or funny, and not a serious ask.

o    Be interactive – ask your FB friends questions, and get them to engage with us, encourage comments

·         Twitter, what works?

o    Microdonations – asking for a small amount, and hence have microgoals

o    Great for advocacy (good also to ask key players for help – eg. A retweet)

o    It’s good for short intensive drives

o    Must have a good landing page and good #hashtag

o    It’s great for tapping into weird and unusual demographics (using the same #hashtag gives a sense of belonging)

·         Bloggers, what works?

o    Make sure you do your research!  If you want to align with a blogger, pick a good one.  Aligning with the wrong blogger or using the wrong approach means a PR nightmare.

o    Provide the blogger exclusive content.  If they are blogging for us, can we give them exclusive video to share on our behalf?

·         About websites

o    We should be making it easy for people to give to us (derr!) but that means we need to make our donation and registration pages as easy and simple as possible.  We can always go back and ask for more information.

o    We should look to ecommerce website for good website usability – they are good at it!  Colours, tone, language etc.

Beate’s top 10 tips

1)       Make sure your website has a good landing page

2)       Invest in conversion rates (eg. Converting visitors to donors)

3)       Measure social media traffic

4)       Have a good social presence – do what we say we are going to do

5)       Good, effective and relevant sharing

6)       Be specific – dare to define success

7)       Do your research

8)       Communicate visually – can it be done better through a diagram, or video?

9)       Lighten up!  Don’t be too serious.

10)   Say please and thank you

After our workshop and a short coffee break (all I seem to do is eat!!) we headed off to ‘World overview of the best Fundraising ideas’.  The session was jam packed and so we ended up sitting on the floor.  You can’t book in for sessions, it is a ‘just turn up and first in best dressed’ set up.  The workshop was put on by 2 consultants – 1 from America, and 1 from France (who Ada found distractingly handsome!) and ended up being pretty much about ensuring all your fundraising campaigns were multi-channel and integrated. 

Some things I took away from the session:

·         Audiences are becoming increasingly multi-channel (email, phone, mail etc), especially the younger market.

·         Flanker brands – these are brands that are almost sub-brands, but support the master brand – eg. www.cancerqld.org.au would be our master brand, and we could create a flanker brand www.letscurecancer.com.  Sometimes people will align more with the flaker brand if it is done properly.  We can get the same message across, but in a different way.

·         We went through several case studies of multi-channel campaigns, where organisations had one message to get across (e.g. Amnesty did a campaign to stop a woman getting stoned to death in Nigera), and they used DM pieces to try to influence opinion leaders (really clever letters, that came complete with an actual stone!), emailed uni students to start petitions and used mass media to create awareness.

·         They also profiled another case study of animal abandonment where they:

1)       Started a teaser website entitled ‘What is the crime?’ and encouraged people to comment and enter competitions about what the crime was.

2)       They worked with influential bloggers to get people talking about the teaser campaign online.

3)       They used social media to promote it.

4)       Used SEM (search engine maximisation) and google.

Then they did the reveal…

5)       Firstly through mass billboards at transport hubs

6)       Then direct mail, press and PR

7)       And finally the reveal happened on the teaser website and then the charity website.

A true integrated multi-channel campaign.  A symphony of channels.

The other thing they spoke about was embedding unique URL’s into emails, tweets and facebook posts, so that you can measure exactly where your traffic is coming from, and hence track the success of a campaign.

So that is Day 1.  A lot of learning in short bursts, so I am frantically taking in as much as I can, so I can share it with you all ASAP.  Hopefully my brain dump isn’t too random, and you actually understand what I am going on about!