I had a very worthwhile trip down to Exeter on Friday for the second Like Minds events. It was a social media conference and they had some excellent speakers lined up.  Tickets for the afternoon were a bargain compared to London based events and the whole format of the day was excellent.

I'll write up some general notes and how they relate to fundraising in the next few days, but one of the big ideas I took away from the day was how can we use computer games and augmented reality in fundraising.

Games in Fundraising

There are quite a lot of viral games that charities use to promote an event or campaign (see these from Comic Relief), but these are usually pretty superficial.  The only game I'd seen by a charity that was massively linked to it's work was 'Darfur is Dying'.

In it you have to do a series of tasks with refugees in a camp, such as gathering water from the well and avoiding the militia.  As well as demostrating the problems faced by refugees through the game, it also has an impressive call to action section as well.  I'd guess it would be hard to ignore this once you'd played the game and it directly connected the game, the cause and what you can do about it.

Launched in 2006 the game was a first and has attracted academic attention and a write up from the mainstream media, including the Washington Post.

A quick search on google also turned up Games for Change and the Serious Games Initiative.

These sites try to use games to bring about change in a variety of areas and to improve management and leadership.  It's really interesting stuff and although you might think it's not going to help you raise any money any time soon, I wouldn't completely write it off.

The cost of producing such games is coming down and if you can come up with a compelling concept that is tied closely to your mission and engages your audience then it will naturally lead them to want to do more for you and give support.

I quickly jotted down a few ideas that you could possibly turn into games that could help you fundraise:

• An environmental activist game where you have to keep the developers away from a number of protected sites (think Swampy!)
• A strategy game (such as theme park) where you have to manage the resources of a charity that shows the difference fundraing makes to statutory care.
• A wildlife charity where you have to protect the animals from poachers or keep the whales safe (actually I've just found out that Greenpeace already do this).
• A series of lab based tasks to show the importance of research for a medical research charity.

Unsurprisingly, there are also a series of interesting articles over at Beth Kanter's blog on games and non-profits.

Augmented Reality, Geo-Tagging & Fundraising

'Augmented what?' I hear you cry!

Don't worry, I was the same and you can find a full explanation at How Stuff Works and a good list of it working in practice at the Guardian.

It means using applications to add additional information when viewing normal objects through smart phones or webcams.

Now it's probably going to be 3-5 years before this stuff becomes really mainstream, but the barriers to entry are low and there are probably a few 'toe in the water' things you can be doing with this sort of thing:

• Make sure your locations (head office, projects, retail shops etc) are marked on Google Maps/Earth and have your contact details on them.  If you're being really fancy, you could ask your IT team to develop some simple scripts to update the tags with a key message or promotion on rotation.
• Adding information for participants at an event to enhance their experience.
• Giving a 3-D virtual tour of a project when it's impractical to visit.

The presentation these ideas came from

One of the great ideas from the conference was to get each of the speakers to host lunch at a local restaurant and to talk about a specific topic.  I chose Joanne Jacobs' lunch where we discussed the use of games.

She was then one of the keynote speakers for the afternoon and went into more detail about augmented reality, geotagging etc.  You can watch her presentation (it starts 5 minutes in) or read a review over at the Guardian.  It was certainly thought provoking stuff.

Attended the excellent Like Minds event in Exeter yesterday and got some interesting notes to write up.  Whilst I do that, here are several links to great articles that I've read over the last few weeks.

Kimberely has been on fire recently with a series of great posts, here are my two favs: Donor-Centred is just jargon and Stop complaining about your board of trustees and help them.

Jeff has been equally excellent and here are my favourite two of his recent posts:

Why making your fundraising easy to read matters and how to make fact trump opinions in meetings

Are you doing enough research? Based on the emotional power of soup!

Aline's Friday quiz I've missed the first two, but long may it continue. Good luck to Villa tomorrow...

How to creat buzz via social media: do's and don'ts

A sadly familiar story from a non-profit mystery shopping test

John Baguley on the art of storytelling

The six types of wealthy donors

At the nonprofit blog carnival top nonprofit gurus share their highs and lows of their careers.

Excellent commentary from Kev Baughen on uproar from Blackpool Hospice spending £50,000 on art.

I found the comments to this post about feeling guilty about giving to a donkey sanctuary on holiday really interesting.

Eaon's seven rules to foster collaboration with customers.

What you can learn about customer loyalty from Lady Gaga.

Will social media be the death of DM? HT to @gcohen85

Scott Berkun says good beats innovative every time.

My article on the joy of giving on Monday seems to have struck a chord with people, judging by the number of re-tweets and high number of visitors to the site in the last few days.
 
However, I’m very conscious that commenting and pointing out where someone is wrong is very easy, but what is harder is coming up with a counter proposal or solution.

So here is my blue ocean strategy for revolutionising fundraising and promoting the joy of giving.  Feel free to shoot me down, constructively criticise or tell me what a god-like genius I am!

Is fundraising broken?

Fundraising at its best is inspiring and makes the world a better place.  Just look at the massive amount of money that people gave after the recent Haiti earthquake.

However, I believe strongly that a number of traditional fundraising techniques are over used and the market is becoming saturated with appeals/requests aimed at an increasingly disillusioned market.

But, as Jeff Brooks rightly points out, the problem isn’t the medium, it’s the misuse and bad execution of it that so turns people off.

Depending on what you read overall philanthropic giving in the UK is either in decline or at best static.

We need to do something to reverse the trend because the fundraising profession is approaching a crossroads and advances in print and computer technology provide a wonderful opportunity to improve how we go about raising funds.

A powerful force for change

There are two main spheres of influence that I believe combine to make a powerful force for change in fundraising.

Books such as Trust Agents, Wikinomics, Free and the World is Flat combine to make a compelling case of the opportunities that social media and the internet offer.

Secondly, business writers such as Seth Godin and Steve Yastrow and fundraisers of the calibre of Ken Burnett and Kay Sprinkel Grace argue that permission, great customer experience and feedback based on the individual's own needs are required to be competitive today.

The beginnings of a revolution…

The combination of both of these drivers has seen revolutions in the book selling, travel agency and newspaper industries (amongst others) over the last ten years and the time for revolution in the fundraising sector is nearly upon us.

Mark Phillip’s talks about some of the charities that have started to do this and names (amongst others) Kiva, Donors Choose, Charity:Water, but these still represent only a small percentage of philanthropic giving and are predominantly overseas development charities and niche (although extremely worthwhile) causes.

So if I was to start a fundraising revolution what would it look like?

A New Fundraising Model

First of all there are a number of fundamental principles:

• Individuals should be made to feel proud to give and inspired by the difference that their generosity makes.
• Complete transparency on where the gift goes.
• Feedback on the impact of the gift.
• Control of the frequency and type of communications.

In return I would ask two things of donors:

• To commit to give a minimum of 1% of their annual income.
• Increase this giving based on rises in their own income.  Perhaps using a mechanism like ‘Give More Tomorrow’.

I would achieve this in the following way.

First of all I would establish a foundation that would promote the principles of the 1% club.  People could choose to give direct to their own chosen charities or pay the money into the foundation and decide which causes and charities  they want to distribute their money to (much like CAF accounts work).

In return for giving to the foundation or pledging to give a minimum amount to charity every year, I would develop a suite of materials that made people proud of their philanthropy. 

This would include inspiring quotes, posters, stickers, badges etc that made people feel good about giving.  These materials would also encourage people to let others know that they are part of the club (hopefully without being too preachy or sanctimonious), so instead of feeling guilty when someone stops them on the street or they receive an unsolicited piece of direct mail they can respond by saying ‘I’m part of the 1% club and proud to give through them’.

The power of the masses & the importance of impact

For those who decide to give through the club I would try and harness the power of mass collaboration (a la Wikipedia) to channel their giving to those charities who have the biggest impact.  Check out this great article at Tactical Philanthropy on defining impact or this recent New Philanthropy Capital booklet.

Using a team of volunteers/paid staff I would get them to visit projects, report on the work that is being done and produce photos/video/newsletters that shows the donor where their money is going and the difference they are helping to make.

This would shift the fundraiser’s role in organisations who decide to sign up to the club.  They would be responsible (amongst other things) for providing feedback to donors, collating information on the impact of their work, putting on donor recognition events, engaging them in new projects and giving supporters the tools to become true fans/ambassadors of their charity, who will go off and recruit other donors.

If sufficient people sign up, then the fund could be a real driving force for change and good.  It would reduce the money spent on traditional advertising and fundraising and hopefully increase the overall amount of philanthropic giving.
 
I would not abandon direct mail, the telephone or other more traditional methods, as I still think they have a lot to offer.  However, I would insist that any use of these was permission based, interesting, relevant and inspiring.

So, what are the issues?

Critics might argue that creating such a foundation would be inefficient, as it risks duplicating work and having high administration costs.  However, by harnessing the power of volunteers and their networks (much of the recruitment of new donors would be word of mouth and peer to peer) then you would only need a small, core team to run the foundation and the sector as a whole would save money as it would reduce acquisition and marketing costs.

Another valid questions is ‘Why give to a foundation, when you can give direct?’.  That’s true for some people who are passionate and engaged with a particular cause or charity.  The problem is that many people don’t know the best places to channel their giving and are put off by current approaches to charitable giving.  A recent article by Beth Breeze from Kent University points out that many donors struggle to distinguish between charities and use a number of fall back strategies to decide where to give. The 1% Club would help overcome some of these problems.

Anyone want to join me?

Celina Ribero at Civil Society wrote about a similar idea today and also pointed out the marvellous example of Dr Toby Ord, so there’s three people on board – anyone else care to join us?

The Institute of Fundraising announced in January that they are thinking of launching a campaign to promote a fundraisers right to ask the public for donations. 

It has promoted an interesting reaction with people coming out for and against the idea.

Personally, I much prefer their other suggested title 'proud to ask', but ultimately in it's current proposed state the campaign is doomed to failure.  It will be controversial (not necessarily a bad thing), counter productive, divisive and many people will claim an equal right to say no.

People have been arguing about rights and corresponding responsibilities and duties for centuries and the campaign could quickly get bogged down by philosophical and linguistic arguments. 

I'd much prefer that they concentrated on promoting the proven joy of giving and trying to grow the overall amount given to charity.

The benefits of such a campaign are two fold:

1. It is scientifically proven that giving is good for you and is a pleasurable act, so it makes it hard to argue against.
2. As a positive campaign it thanks the people who already give (and so doesn't turn them off giving again), uses positive deviance to encourage others to give and will benefit the whole charitable community by getting more people to donate.

At the same time that I was promoting the joy of giving, I'd also be promoting the impact that giving has and how those people who do give help to change the world. 

Over simplistic?  Possibly, but I'd guarantee that the positive campaign would have a much greater long term impact than taking a rights based approach to the problem.

My first link round-up of 2010!  It's been a whirlwind start to the year and I've only just got on top of my Google Reader.  Hope you enjoy the selection of stories I've picked out this week...

Jeff Brooks says listening to donors will only take you so far.

Jonathan Grapsas urges us to make the most of the honeymoon period with your new donors.

A review of the new Heath Brothers book, 'Switch'.  It's on my must read list!

Words that describe philanthropy

Mark Phillips asks 'What really satisfies a donor?'

The Agitator on 'The Value of Now!'

Dan Pallotto over at the Harvard Business Review on why Haiti is a marketing lesson.  Don't agree with all that Dan writes, but it makes for an interesting debate. Look forward to hearing him speak at the IoF conference this year.

Seth on the power of a gift.  Closely linked to his new book 'Linchpin'.

Sean Platt on 14 lessons from one of the best paid direct mail copywriters.

100 Good Advertising Headlines via the 'Who really gives a toss?' blog.

Various links on behavioural economics at the Nudge blog.