Episode Notes
Settling on a specific day or week to proactively reach out to appreciate donors can be very powerful. And it’s especially valuable during tough economic times.
In this episode, Rob talks to Alice Barley of Chance for Childhood about the positive results that have flowed (for supporters, fundraising and culture) from their recent thankathons. And she shares practical tips to help you do the same.
If you want to share this episode with others you think it would help, thank you! Alice and Rob would love to hear what you think. We are both on Linked In and on twitter Rob is @woods_rob; or you can follow Bright Spot on Instagram at @brightspotfundraising.
Further Resources
Episode 76 Thanking – how to go the extra mile, with Laura Croudace.
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Quote
On successful thankathons…‘I think you really have to get buy in from someone on the leadership team. I’m on the leadership team, but the fact that my CEO said ‘yes, do it’, really then got the buy-in of everyone else.’
Alice Barley
Transcript for Episode 103
Rob:
Hey there folks. This is Rob Woods, and welcome to Episode 103 of the Fundraising Bright Spots Podcast. This is the show for anyone who works in fundraising and wants some ideas, and maybe a little dose of inspiration to help you raise more money and really enjoy your job.
If you are looking for things that your charity can do at a time when our supporters are having to be extremely careful about what they do with their money, and you’re concerned therefore about a reduction in individual giving, in events and other income streams, then I hope you’re going to find today’s story really helpful. We’re going to talk about a tactic that I think almost every charity could take advantage of. My guest this week is Alice Barley, who’s a director of fundraising at a relatively small international charity, named Chance for Childhood. Alice has been attending our Breakfast Club for fundraising leaders for several years now. In this episode she tells the story of what happened when she took a deceptively simple idea she heard at one Breakfast Club that we ran in January 2020 from our guest speakers, Louise Wells and Sarah Tavener of the Mines Advisory Group Charity. I hope you find Alice’s story as encouraging as I did.
Rob:
Alice Barley, how are you?
Alice:
I’m very well. Thanks, Rob.
Rob:
Welcome to this interview for the Fundraising Bright Spots Podcast. I really appreciate the fact you reached out and you got in touch to talk about a couple of the really interesting things you and your colleagues have been doing over the last couple of years. Just so that the listeners can tune in, what’s the name of your charity, and what’s your role?
Alice:
So I work for an organization called Chance for Childhood. We are an INGO working in five countries across Africa, specifically supporting children. I am the Head of Fundraising Communications.
Rob:
And am I right to assume it’s a fairly small organization? How many fundraisers are in the team, may I ask?
Alice:
The fundraising team is four, and our income is under a million.
Rob:
Great. And I think you mentioned when you and I spoke the other day that you’ve been coming to these Breakfast Clubs that I do, Breakfast Club for Fundraising Leaders. I’ve been running them for, I think at least seven years, certainly before the pandemic. They were always live in person events, and then over the last couple of years, inevitably, I’ve been delivering them over Zoom. They’re for anyone who’s a senior fundraiser, a team leader, a director of fundraising, or a chief executive of a charity that’s got a serious interest in fundraising. I’ve always done these sessions four times a year, and you mentioned that you’d found them helpful just anyway, just coming along to connect with people and just get a couple of new ideas and so on. But you were kind enough to mention that one of these events in particular had some really helpful knock on effects. Do you want to pick up the story from there?
Alice:
Yeah. So I’ve been coming to them for a few years, and I’m a naturally quite quiet and introverted person so I tend to be a person who sits towards the back and just thinks about what’s being said. But in November 2019 I started my current role. I was brand new to it, and that January, as a lot of fundraisers find themselves, we were at the beginning of a new financial year. I was newly in my post, and your fundraising target is massive and you have zero to start from. So I thought, well, I’ll go along to one of these Breakfast Clubs, have a chat, try and get some inspiration, get the juices flowing. It happened to be that that day there were two lovely ladies from MAGS speaking about a Thankathon. I think I’d maybe heard of it before, but hadn’t really considered it. They were saying how they do this every year and they get all their trustees involved and all their staff to have a Thankathon and basically contact their donors. I thought oh, that actually sounds like quite a good idea. I think that might be something I want to do.
To give a bit of context, we have a large group of regular donors at our organization who are very, very valuable because they provide a lot of unrestricted income. But they are also mostly retired and older, and as we often see, those donations drop off as they perhaps pass on or their lifestyle changes. So I was initially thinking of that group because they need a lot of stewarding, and I know it’s something that the organization hadn’t done before. At that point in time, their income from this group of people was slowly declining. We thought that was normal considering their profile, and it wasn’t a big growth area for us. So were pottering along, just thinking oh, we’ll try and look after them and see what happens when this Thankathon idea came up.
Rob:
Yeah. So that context is helpful, and I think probably what you’re saying will resonate with many of our listeners who might have a similar demographic as an important of donor that’s important to their charity. And they might be only too aware of how there just is a fairly steady decline in support from those people and those donor numbers dropping off over time, for fairly obvious reasons. Then you’ve got this idea of being proactive, of trying to harness the energy and enthusiasm and resources in your small organization to do some more proactive stewardship. But rather than say let’s go and get better at stewardship and design a big fancy plan and try and get it through some boring meetings, instead there was something about this concept of the Thankathon, let’s just start with a Thankathon, that somehow caught your imagination. Then I think you said you just went and shared that as an idea with your colleague, or your chief exec.
Alice:
Yeah. So the thing about being a small charity is that obviously you can’t just start brand new actions and activities without a lot of resource. So it was almost like a test and I mentioned it in passing to our chief exec. She was like, “Oh, I love that idea. You should definitely do that.” I thought, okay, that’s it. Sounds like I’m committed to it. That Breakfast Club had been in the January, and then as if everyone knows, we had COVID in the March, and all best plans went out the window. It was a really overwhelming time for everyone in charities and everyone in the organization. We were aware that this group of donors in particular were probably having a tough time because they were older so they were more vulnerable and probably having to isolate a lot more. They might have been lonely if they were living on their own and we spent a lot of time thinking about that, but it was such early days in the lockdown.
I remember just considering can we even ask a mailing house to do a mailing, if it all meant to be isolating at home? What earth do I do to try and reach out to these people? Which is when I thought oh, well, that’s a Thankathon, that’s what we need to do. Everyone across the organization was obviously working flat out, incredibly stressed, but because my chief exec had backed the idea I had the go ahead to say I need everyone to get involved. We honestly, we didn’t spend any money. I just pulled off a list of donors I wanted to speak to, asked the trustees to get involved. We had one day and I just assigned everyone a number of people to call.
It turned out to be this really lovely team bonding exercise, because for one day we weren’t really thinking about how are we raising money or how we’re helping the children we work with. It was really, really lovely phone calls, speaking to donors and just saying, thank you. I sent everyone a little Kit Kat in the post. Then at 2:00 PM I sent them a meeting invite, like let’s have a coffee break. And so we all sat in our Zoom call having our kit cat and just reflecting on the day. There was this really lovely, positive energy because we’d been speaking to our donors and we were reminded how amazing they are and they make our work possible, and so it was this really lovely moment in a horrible time. Now we’re about to hold our third Thankathon, in about four weeks time. It gets bigger every year, and it’s something we’re really invested in.
Rob:
Wow. Just to note, sometimes the details can make all the difference. And just as initially getting the idea and calling it a Thankathon rather than a stewardship initiative, that detail, I think can help. But equally the planning and the idea you had, some people would call it a gimmick. I would say it’s a brilliant mini wow tactic of sending all your colleagues a Kit Kat and saying let’s have a break. I think those little details add up to a bigger difference of this lovely positive energy. In addition to the fundamental truth of thanking, which is that even if now and again you might have a more difficult or less rewarding call, on the whole, calling out to say something nice to someone does tend to make the caller feel better about themselves too, and more proud of their work. So there’s that fundamental truth of it. It releases endorphins in the fundraiser, in the trustee, in the chief exec, in whoever it is making that call. But I also like these smaller details you used with which to make it all most likely to succeed.
I’m just wondering Alice, I mean, they wouldn’t have felt that good had they not had some enjoyable calls. It was a while ago. I wonder if you remember any particular calls that your colleagues told you about that particularly made them feel good?
Alice:
I think we’ve all had calls that we remember, whether it was a 96 year old lady telling us about her day or a slightly more eccentric donor. But we did the Thankathon again last year and what we do now is throughout the year, we keep a list and we add anyone to it that we speak to and think they really need a Thankathon call. This lady had called up, probably in Quarter 1 last year, and I had said, “I’m leaving you a legacy. All I want to do is just check some legal details with you.” And I was like, oh, that’s amazing. Did my whole Head of Fundraising spin, and she was very quiet. She was like, “That’s all I need. I just need details. Nothing else.” And ended the phone call.
A few days later I’d sent her a thank you card and hadn’t heard back and definitely got the feeling that she didn’t really want to be too stewarded. But we popped her on the list anyway and when it came to Thankathon time I assigned her to my CEO. I said this is the situation, because it’s a legacy I really think you need to call her. She called up this lady and ended up having a very, very long, quite emotional conversation in which the lady had explained that she had no children and she was just getting some affairs in order. She wasn’t particularly old or unwell, but had decided to leave her entire estate to us because she saw the children that we supported as an extension of children that she would’ve liked, had the situation been different.
It was just amazing because we would not have had that conversation in any other situation. The fact that it was my CEO, the fact that we weren’t asking for anything, it was just a thank you, clearly just helped to put this donor at ease and feel really comfortable sharing that. And it’s such useful information to have now when we want to contact her and make sure she’s having the right experience.
Rob:
Wow. This is really fabulous stuff, Alice. My impression is that your senior leadership, maybe the senior leadership team, your chief exec, maybe your trustees, I sense that if you’ve done it three times now, or you are coming up to the third one, they must be pretty much behind it. Do you want to say a tiny bit more about… I mean, this can’t be all driven by you, is what I’m really saying. Well, how is the support they’re giving this initiative now?
Alice:
Yeah, so all of our senior leadership team take part every year, and our chair of trustees who took part that first year now makes it a rule for the trustees. You have to take part, and if you’re not taking part you better have a good excuse, and you better tell me about it. Because he has really valued the calls as well and he will always tell the same story about the old doulas he spoke to. So there’s that real value there, which is brilliant, because if it was just me trying to drive it there wouldn’t be that buy-in from other people. So that really helps to get everyone involved, and it’s contributed to this bit of a culture shift in the organization where we’re placing a lot of value on engagement with our donors. So we have a role in the team that we changed the title of, they’re now called Donor Care Assistant. So really putting the emphasis on that care for the donors. That person’s working on a engagement, a stewardship strategy, so we can make sure we’re driving this through.
And the brilliant thing about that as a fundraiser is that there’s been acknowledgement that sometimes we do activities that don’t bring in income straight away, but we do it because it’s the right thing for our donors. Because so often the pressure is your ROI has to come back in the next six months, and that’s not the case here, although we do see positive effects of it. I mentioned at the beginning before that the income has been on a negative decline for a number of years. What we’ve started to see over the past two years is that our cancellation rate has dropped. So that income line is now steady and it’s not going down. So that’s been really brilliant, from a financial point of view.
Rob:
Hi, it’s Rob, and I wanted to jump in quickly to let you know about our two flagship courses designed to help you grow high value fundraising results, that’s the Major Gifts Mastery Programme and the Corporate Partnerships Mastery Programme. Instead of me trying to bring it to life for you I usually find its most helpful if you can hear from people who’ve experienced one of these courses. So in a moment I’m going to share a short clip from Penny Russell of the Trussel Trust, who along with their colleague, Sarah took part in our most recent Corporate Mastery Programme. Sarah has been doing ever so well in the last few months since the programme, and that includes winning several charity of the year partnerships. Here’s what her colleague, Penny, fed back about how the programme helped her.
Penny Russell:
I’m Penny Russell. I work in the corporate partnerships team at the Trussel Trust, as a New Partnerships Manager. I think the course has been so valuable across a whole breadth of tips and the pieces of advice, going from how we talk prospects, but also how we write, how we pitch across the whole new partnerships management. We’ve managed to pick up some really amazing partners from lots of those learnings as well, including a partnership that we hope will be worth around 1.8 million in the first year. So, really amazing impact.
Rob:
The next programmes will start in the Autumn of 2022. At the time of recording this in early August, they are filling up fast. So if you’d like to find out more about either the Corporate Mastery Programme or the Major Gifts Mastery Programme go to brightspotfundraisingfundraising.co.uk/services.
Right now though, let’s get back to Alice’s advice about Thankathons.
Rob:
Alice, I guess one question I’ve got for people who are listening who might not have done this tactic before and they’re just thinking well, actually, maybe we could make that work, but equally they’re well aware that not all of their colleagues and not all of the board or leadership team are necessarily going to love it. Do you have any tips for how they could increase the chances that just the first time it will take place, even if not massive but it’ll just get off to a decent start?
Alice:
It’s interesting because after our first Thankathon we’d put something on LinkedIn about it and then I got a lot of direct messages from other directors of fundraising asking how do I do this? I think you really had to get buy in from someone on the leadership team. I’m on the leadership team, but the fact that my CEO was like, yes, do it, really then got the buy-in of everyone else. I’m also lucky that we had a fundraising trustee and she immediately saw the merit in it. So from the trustee side she was then trying to get everyone involved there. It’s a culture shift so when it comes down from the top then everyone embraces it, and that makes a big difference.
Rob:
That makes absolute sense. Second question. It seems to me that very first time it was already successful, both for the donor and them feeling supported and feeling good, but also I can picture some of your colleagues enjoying it and becoming more interested in helping fundraising succeed and so on. So it’s already winning, but it seems to me, you didn’t stop there. You used that as a catalyst to get the organization in various ways more likely to be donor friendly, and proactive, and strategic, and willing to invest for the medium and long term, and so on. Is there anything you’ve learned for how we could not only do the Thankathon, but then use it to kick on in these other positive ways?
Alice:
I think you have to almost collect these mini examples of donors saying thank you so much for that call, or I really enjoyed how they supported me throughout my fundraising event. And you build that up and that almost becomes your case for support, because it’s that feedback, which is golden to perhaps other people in the organization who are just thinking about top lines and maybe just don’t understand their stewardship campaign. Now as an organization, we apply relationship fundraising not just to our regular givers, but to everything. So from trusts and foundations to corporates, it’s written in our strategy, we are an organization that puts relationships first. So I think the more you can do that, the more you can show the rest of your team that it works, the stronger case you’ll have.
Rob:
That’s brilliant. Just out of interest, is there a particular language you use internally? I mean, there may not be. Just sometimes there’s a phrase that sticks so that if I were to ask one of your colleagues what are we trying to do? What’s your charity’s approach to relationship with donors? What do you call it internally? Is it forever thanking, or we try and make them feel special. Is there a particular way of languaging it that works in your charity?
Alice:
So as a fundraising team we call ourselves relationship fundraisers. So we have that ownership of it. And then we don’t use stewardship too often because it can sound like quite a dry word, so we tend to say engagement and we talk about engagement points and engagement opportunities. That works quite well for us.
Rob:
That makes sense. Just out of interest, are all four of you relationship fundraisers, is that what you are saying? So you’re not just an individual giving person or a corporate person. Relationship fundraiser is in the job title of all of your team.
Alice:
Not in the job title, but it’s in our, I guess our team manifesto, it’s on all our job descriptions. So everyone, even our digital fundraiser, will think about it when they’re putting together their engagement plans and their emails, and things like that.
Rob:
And one other thing I’m wondering, Alice, is presumably you don’t have phone numbers or GDPR permission to call all of your supporters. If and when you don’t have those phone numbers are you also on the occasion of a Thankathon sending out more written thank yous?
Alice:
Yeah, absolutely. Now that when our third year the Thankathon isn’t a day, it’s a week. We have people that we call, we have people who we send thank you postcards to. And that’s really nice that one of our marathon runners received them last year and started tweeting about it, which was really, really lovely to see. We do a big email campaign as well. That goes out and it says it’s the beginning of our Thankathon week and then the donors get excited if they know that we’re calling. It goes across all of our social and digital channels as well. So it’s now a lot more than just picking up the phone, it’s looking at different ways we can say thank you for different audiences.
Rob:
Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing Alice’s tips and examples. If you’re keen to improve your charity’s approach to stewardship and thanking another episode you might find helpful is Episode 76, with the brilliant Laura Croudace. I’ll put a link to that in the episode notes where there is also a full transcript of today’s episode. You can find that in the Podcast section of our website, which is brightspotfundraising.co.uk.
Rob:
I’ll also put a link in there to our Breakfast Club for Fundraising Leaders, which is the event that first inspired Alice to follow through on this idea. These sessions are now virtual, and they’re free so do join us if you can, for the next one. If you’d like to find out more about our flagship courses, the Corporate Mastery Programme or the Major Gifts Mastery Programme, then do check out the information on our website, which is brightspotfundraising.co.uk/ services.
I really hope you found today’s episode helpful. If so, please do take a moment to share it on with your colleagues or on social media. I think especially now in these difficult economic times Alice’s story is so relevant and could just help another fundraiser out there to feel inspired to do something in their charity that helps their supporters feel thanked, with the various positive knock on effects that will have on their charity’s ability to deliver its services in these tough times.
Alice and I would love to hear what you think about today’s episode. We’re both on LinkedIn, or you can tag me on Twitter at @Woods_Rob. If you want to follow Bright Spot on Instagram, we are @brightspotfundraising. Lastly, thank you for listening today. Good luck influencing your colleagues. And if you do try a Thankathon anytime soon, do let us know how you get on.
