Subject: Direct marketing Charity Talk

The most important think in raising funds for a charity I learned is your passion and commitment to the cause and then your ability to communicate this to your audiance. It is important to be focused on doing what you are good at and just continue doing that.

Mahmood has put his finger on the key issue, people want to be inspired by the charity they support.  But there is another thing, your message has to be clear and consistent and expressed in terms, not of what you do but what you achieve when you do it.

i am a trustee for a hospital charity - any tips on setting up an operation from scratchwith no donor base!

Veryimpressed with Mahmood's methods and amazing results. Not sure I really believe the huge database maintained by one family, but so what - the results show that the concept works

Is your database contact obtaining legal?

Thanks. It was nice to share our work and achievements with you all.

Pidge; Yes, I agree the message has to be clear and consistent. 

christinefogg; I need to know a bit more about your charity before I can give any tips. But first thing would be to identify your target audiance.

dudley; the database is owned by my business. Islamic Aid has full access to the database for the purpose of raising funds.

lucy; Our database collection meets all legal requirements, especially with such a high profile usage one cannot afford to be not within the law.  

Mahmood talked last night about his methods of direct mail. These particular things stood out for me:

• direct mail is the only fundraising method he uses
• he processes donations and thanks donors within three days
• detailed analysis of data and achievements is done
• letters and leaflets are based on a template, stories of people that Islamic Aid have helped change each time
• the time and effort Mahmood gives to these activities is considerable but driven by his passion. 

Could (and do) other organisations follow the same principles?

dudley, re your point - how does Mahmood single handedly keep his database up to date? I spoke with him afterwards and he uses a bureau to provide the data entry/revision capacity - which obviously makes a lot of sense.

It seemed to me that Mahmood is operating in a market which is unique.

- fewer competitors

- very distinct (and untapped) market

So although there are some interesting points from Mahmood's talk that we can take out, others make less sense out of that context.

Mahmood is also dealing with a very generous population who care deeply and passionately about the issues he is addressing.  They know about this stuff, mostly first hand.  And this is their (not widely available) opportunity to do something about it.  So they do.

The general British population knows about the work of the THOUSANDS of UK charities but they've been around for a long time, few of them express themselves with any passion and less attempt to make any connections.  When a charity does these things (Dogs Trust, NSPCC, Royal British Legion, CRUK with their wonderful Race for Life) then they are immensely successful.

A hospital charity Christine, go out there and ask the people who smile as they walk out of the door.  Or better, get the nurses to ask them (second thoughts....perhaps not!)

I hope the following extract will give an idea of the "competition" in the Muslim charity sector.

"Even though the UK is not the only Western country with a sizeable Muslim population, a higher number of Muslim aid organisations seem to be based there than elsewhere: of approximately 1,000 registered Muslim charities, around 50 are working in the field of international relief and development. One factor that helps to explain the appearance of a large number of Muslim NGOs is the UK’s transparent and simple charity legislation and policies as compared to those of other EU countries." 

Faith-based aid, globalisation and the humanitarian frontline: an analysis of Western-based Muslim aid organisations; Bruno De Cordier Conflict Research Group, Ghent University, Belgium

Hi Christine, you asked re starting from scratch for a hospital direct mail fundraising (and this would apply to any local service delivery charity). At one level you have a headstart because a hospital has huge data bases, but you cannot use themfor f/r. So, what about

• identifying geographic areas of you catchment area where people are a bit better off than the average and have a preponderance of middle aged and older people 
• using you fundraising/PR/press person in the hospital (if you have one) to draft with you an appeal letter - using what you learned at the Charity Talk (slides of the talks are linked above) ie idnetify the need(s) and the benefits to the community of meeting the need; and break down the costs of meeting the need into chunks that people can afford eg £5, £10, £20, £50, £200; praps also put in a date and time when people could come to the hospital to meet you and hear more (make it easy to respond, enclose a reply envelope and slip)
• print 500 of these letters and use volunteers to hand deliver them to the houses/flats in the chosen areas - even better if you have a Friends of ... Hospital, and some of the volunteers live in the area
• you will probably only get approx 5-10 responses, but you can ring/contact these to ask them what prompted them to give; you can contact other people in the area whom you know and ask them if they got the letter and what they thought about it and what might have better persuaded them to give
• And then refine the letter and expand across the catchment area!

Hi Ian

Very helpful, thank you - a great starter for ten. One of our challenges is working with the hospital on generating projects to fundraise against, but we are working on this.  Wtih your ideas and the slides, we have got plenty to get us started so thank you.

Thanks, Christine, appreciated. Your question links back to BPB's about what are some of the key points we can learn from Mahmood's presentation. If we can identify these, we can all be more effective at direct marketing. Here's my starter for ten and would appreciate hearing others.

I was blown away by his standards of cutomer care which in my experience are way above  what I see in most charities. I think this is key to his success. For instance banking every donation within 3 days - I gave a donation to the Disasters Relief Find a year or so ago and it took them 3 months to bank it! I haven't given again!

Would be interested in what others think, in particular on what are the things that are critical to the success of direct mail/marketing?