Institute of Fundraising Webinar Campaigners are Donors 22 nd April, 2013
could you use more money for your world changing activism? fundraising and activism research tells us that activists and campaigners are often the most generous donors to charities they support most often, charities use email emails, direct mail, and other multichannel approaches to ask their activists to become donors Greenpeace UK has been experimenting with the Engaging Networks platform to convince new and existing activists to donate while they are taking action the results have been fantastic raising an additional 90,000 for Greenpeace UK over several months in 2012
campaigners make great donors is their evidence? there is a lot of data to support the argument, but one study from 2009 is particularly convincing Professor Andreas Lange from the University of Maryland and a PhD student, Andy Stocking, conducted a study amongst the supporter database of a civil rights organisation in the US including 700,000 email records over time, the supporters that took campaigning actions were seven times more likely to donate than supporters that took no campaigning action (0.07% versus 0.47%)
Jonathan L. Freedman and Scott C. Fraser consistency principle 1966 study by two psychologists from Stanford University In the control group, 17% of residents in a pretty suburb agreed to have an enormous and unsightly "DRIVE SAFELY" sign on their front lawn In the test group, they increased acceptance to 76% by simply getting residents to agree to display a similar, much smaller sign in their window two weeks in advance you're more likely to get donations by asking for a campaign action first
Greenpeace UK has always offered activists an option to donate to support their work
what was happening? things could improve supporters that clicked to make a donation had to re-enter all of their data on the donation page the campaign branding and energy was completely lost between the advocacy action and the donation page an extra click often means a click too far and conversions were relatively low does this mean that supporters did not want to give?
Shell Arctic Campaign: time for integration, innovation and experimentation
what was different with Shell Arctic Campaign? a few critical changes were made critically, the campaign brand was carried into the donation page options for sharing and a big thank you were displayed to everyone taking the action the donation form was embedded directly into the thank you page supporter data was carried over to the donation page so that only credit card information was required
BEFORE the change, what did Greenpeace UK achieve? campaign actions %RR Av gift Total Per Action fish fight: Princes 28,550 0.05% 26.79 795 0.03 fish fight: J West 51,909 0.06% 25.35 1,386 0.03 Cairn Petition 7,715 0.30% 19.78 455 0.06 Barbie 26,967 0.40% 27.45 3,717 0.14 VW Jedi 40,466 0.03% 24.27 375 0.01
can we see the new data? the results of the change were fantastic 28,468 action takers for the Shell Arctic Campaign 1.23% response rate, representing a 3-4 fold increase 16.29 average gift 5,736 total raised 0.20 per action (50% higher)
well, that worked well. let s try it again, again,and again, and...
could it still be working? here are some of the results campaign actions %RR Av gift Total Per Action KFC 14,955 0.56% 16.67 1,401 0.09 icoal 14,041 0.34% 15 720 0.05 Arctic 55,247 1.07% 16.90 9,970 0.18
how can we dig deeper? there is more data to come to what extend is been there, done that having an impact on supporters that gave in a previous campaign? can we isolate new supporters in the data to provide a more equal basis on which to evaluate campaign success? what attributes can we apply to a campaign to make like for like comparison possible? how can these low level new donors be encouraged to donate more regularly and larger amounts over time?
what about trying this on with a Care2 petition? segmenting new supporters petition sites like Care2 suppress against the nonprofit house file so they collect the names of only new supporters after signing the Care2 petition supporters were presented with an embedded Engaging Networks fundraising widget 0.3% of the 18,000 opted-in petition signers made a donation
any more innovation? homepage takeover the Arctic Emergency takes over the Greenpeace UK homepage with a focus on direct fundraising appeals and limited options to take action web traffic is supplemented with email push to existing supporters on the first day, over 1,200 transactions are recorded in Engaging Networks and almost 30,000 raised the takeover is continuing today
social anyone? can you raise money on Facebook? raising money on Facebook has been remarkably hard for nonprofits - the latest NTEN benchmark data maintains the trend of fundraising failure Peta UK decided to test an Engaging Networks campaigning widget on their Facebook page completing the campaigning ask, supporters were connected to a fundraising widget how many campaigners would give money?
a tale of two widgets
did Facebook deliver? success but not as expected 1 supporter made a 20 donation after taking action BUT of 500 action takers, 140 were opted-in new supporters email fundraising asks were sent to these supporters over 3 months these supporters generated a 7.1% conversion rate 30% of the new donors signed up as recurring monthly donors additional conversion has taken place via direct mail (there has not been any telephone solicitation)
so what has been learned? takeaways the moment at which an activist is committing support to a specific issue, is an excellent opportunity to present the fundraising appeal in the context of the same issue campaign branding and a visual connection between the campaign and fundraising asks maintains the engagement make it easy for supporters to donate, or you will leave a lot of money on the table
Find out more by CONTACTING US graham@engagingnetworks.net