Your questions from our state of the sector webinar

The information presented in the webinar (and in the full state of the sector report) has been collated from our InsightHub benchmarking reports. This is composed of raw CRM data from a range of charities across the sector. This data is transformed and standardised to allow us to aggregate fundraising KPIs up to sector level and depict the overall health and status within charities.

Kayleigh Philps, Wood for Trees

Lottery continues to be a very effective way to raise funds for KSS and is a significant part of our income mix, but I’m afraid I don’t know exactly why it has become so prevalent within air ambulance charities. At KSS, we have been investing in it and honing our approach for many years now – which I suspect that is the main reason it works for us. Of course, it may well be that, as a fundraising approach, it resonates particularly well with air ambulance supporters too – and it definitely allows us to reach a wide audience in our area.

James Dallaway, KSS

There exists a range of geodemographics. We only touched on a few in the webinar – Sonar, Experian Mosaic, CACI Acorn etc. The main benefit of using these tools is that they offer another lens to view and understand your supporters beyond that which is directly captured in your CRM. This information can include basics like demographics (life stages/indicators of affluence), right up to media consumption habits (e.g. how people like to consume media and though which channels). This is invaluable for building a richly detailed view of your supporters, and helping to target your messaging accordingly to make sure it has the most impact.

However, these measures should always be used to supplement your CRM data, as they can come with some nuances/caveats. Crucially, these data derive their meaning at a postcode level and assume that where you live can tell us things about you. How similar are you to your neighbours? Chances are you share some characteristics, but not all. Always take geodemographic measures with a pinch of salt; they are not the be-all and end-all.

Kayleigh Philps, Wood for Trees

There’s no doubt tools like Mosaic can offer real value. One of the biggest benefits for us has been getting a deeper understanding of who our donors are. Not just in terms of age or income, but life stage, media habits, even likely response behaviour (e.g.  preference for responding to advertising online, or over the phone).

We’ve used Mosaic in many different ways at the RSPCA. As well as the example given in the webinar, we’ve used it to supporting our targeting strategy on mail campaigns, to understand where we have headroom for growth in the market, and for paid digital advertising targeting.

I think the main drawback is that geodems can’t tell you the emotional ‘why’ behind giving. Data tells you who to target. Emotion tells you how to move them. People give to charity because they feel something. Whether it’s compassion, anger, hope, guilt, pride. If you don’t understand what’s emotionally motivating your audience, it’s harder to craft messages, creative or propositions that truly resonate and drive response.

Owen Martin, RSPCA

We use Salesforce at RSPCA.

Owen Martin, RSPCA

We use Donorflex at KSS.

James Dallaway, KSS

For our purposes, cold recruitment is an umbrella term covering a range of recruitment products, signing up supporters who are new to KSS. The chart I used in the webinar was based on respondents to a single appeal, and cold recruitment indicated that they were new recruits in this appeal, along with the different products that had inspired them to respond. What I found most interesting is that our multi-product approach had led to a mix of respondents and products, some from unexpected areas. Our cold door drop appealed to our lottery, warm cash and regular giving supporters who had mostly received a tailored warm approach as well – and we got a surprisingly high number of recruits in response to our media work (radio, news, press etc.).

James Dallaway, KSS

We target a different part of our supporter audience each year for our Thankathon and this year it was mostly focused on lottery players, specifically those who are new and those at support milestones of 5,10 and 15 years of support. As we cannot thank everyone due to volume, we select a 1 in N group from each cohort, meaning we can compare things like attrition rate with supporters not included in the Thankathon in each group.

It is worth noting that usually we don’t directly monitor the impact of the Thankathon as it is our primary supporter care piece and, as such, a loss-leader. We get a very positive response from our supporter feedback, and it gives the whole organisation, our volunteers and former patients a great opportunity to engage with our supporters.

James Dallaway, KSS

The chart data comes from our CRM. The legacy module on Donorflex allows us to capture legacy enquiries, when a supporter tells us they do intend to leave a legacy, verified legacy pledges and when legacies complete. At the moment, this information is not very joined up and only gives us broad trends – but we are in the process of developing a legacy pipeline, so that we can better track supporters on their journey with us from enquiry onwards and monitor the effectiveness of our legacy program.

James Dallaway, KSS