On behalf of FundraisingForce, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to our customers, prospective customers, and the clients, students, members, and others those non-profit and charitable organisations serve.
We wish you the best this holiday season and we thank you for letting us be part of your year.
Australia – by nature of where we are located across the international date line, we are first in the world for the New Year; first in the world for the super moon; and, first in the world for other matters. So, why is it that we are not first in the world for #GivingTuesday™? The campaign does not seem to have taken off with the traction I would expect given our robust non-profit sector.
It is #GivingTuesday™ today – a simple concept. #GivingTuesday™ is a movement to create a national day of giving to kick off the giving season. This is the fourth annual GivingTuesday™. In the same way that retail stores take part in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, charitable organisations want the giving community to come together for #GivingTuesday™. Partners create and commit to a project for/on #GivingTuesday and then help spread the word to their networks.
I am making a personal contribution today to any charity who asks me for a donation on #GivingTuesday™ in hopes that one day we can be first in the world in this worldwide campaign. I hope you will join me in doing something for charitable organisations today.
While attending Sculpture By the Sea in Bondi Beach this last Friday, I was pleased to see the organisation asking for donations. The annual event, free to the public, is a showcase of artistic talent. When I have attended the event in past years, I have often wondered why people are not asked to donate to support the non-profit organisation which coordinates the event. The organisation has information tents along the walk and sells various merchandise, including commemorative books and water bottles. Yet, there has never been an ask for donation…until now.
I was pleased to see a donation station (Tap n Go Donation) set up in the main tent where various sculptures are on display and for sale. The organisation did not draw attention to the donation station and there was only one on the entire grounds. However, at least one station was available for those of us inclined to support this terrific event. Sculptures by the Sea called their campaign 20for20, which symbolised the encouragement of donors to give $20 in honour of the event’s 20th anniversary.
The technology is produced by Square, a US-based technology company.
This type of technology is perfect for hospitals, medical research centres, universities, museums, and other organisations where there is a public location with foot traffic. It is easy to use. I simply selected the dollar value I wanted to donate, I touched my credit card to make the donation, and I entered a few details, including my email address and mobile number. I was pleased the organisation collected my details and not simply my credit card number.
While conducting a little research to write this blog post, I noticed the Melanoma Institute Australia has implemented a test of some similar technology using JCDecaux public advertising spaces. Likewise Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia has deployed a similar campaign.
I am inspired by this technology over gold coin donations. Why? The charitable organisation captures contact details rather than simply the cash and, thus, is allowed to re-solicit these same people in upcoming campaigns and engage the audience in a regular donation. With gold coin donations, you simply reap the cash on the spot.
Did you catch 60 Minutes on Sunday evening?
The news magazine featured a very inspiring story about Gemma Sisia, an Australian woman who had the foresight and motivation to invest in the people of Tanzania. Gemma started The School of St Jude in Arusha Tanzania.
60 Minutes called Gemma Sisia the Gem of Africa and introduced the story by saying:
When Gemma Sisia used to tell people her dream was to build a school for the poorest of the poor kids of Africa, she’d be told it was a nice idea but that she was mad and it would never happen. However, for the farm girl from Armidale in northern New South Wales, all those doubters were exactly the incentive she needed to start raising money. Gemma still remembers the first donation she ever received – ten dollars from a woman called Agnes – and she hasn’t stopped fundraising since. Fourteen years ago she opened her St Jude’s school in Arusha, which quickly established itself as a showpiece of education in Tanzania. Today, every one of the hundreds of pupils who have studied at St Jude’s has just one person to thank for their success: the priceless Aussie Gem of Africa.
Need a little motivation on this Tuesday? Take 15 minutes and watch this 60 Minutes story about Gemma and be inspired about what $10 can grow. I think you will agree Gemma has made Australia and the world proud.
You can read more about School of St Jude and donate here.
During a recent guest lecture for the QUT Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies, I suggested Australian non-profit organisations do not spend near enough time measuring to outcomes. Program staff and fundraisers are equally guilty of this fact. This might be painting the non-profit community with a broad brush, but I truly believe most organisations do not measure and their analyse programs. I believe most staff go through the motions of program management and/or fundraising, but do not take the time to measure and analyse the outcomes in order to make educated decisions as to whether to:
Instead, staff are making decisions not on data, but on “gut feel’ for programs or for fundraising activity.
Why is there little measurement occurring on the program side of NFPs? The following reasons come to mind:
Isn’t it time we as a sector work together to come up with common metrics? Also, isn’t it time we explore and embrace some tools in the market that actually assist us to measure and analyse our programs? Perhaps then we can cut out activity which is not working; further invest in activity which is outperforming expectations; and develop new areas for programs and/or funding?
Staff of not for profit (NFP) organisations appear to fear complaint calls. No one loves them. But, I believe complaint calls are a good thing. Complaints via telephone calls, letters, Emails, and social media give you something to respond to and to action. Wouldn’t you rather receive a complaint than have someone agitated and no tell you. Those are the types of people who tell ten more people about the situation.
Whenever a NFP receives a complaint, the following five steps ought to be done:
A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald highlighted NSW Fair Trading Complaints Register and how the likes of Groupon, Valuebasket.com.au, Grays Online and NRMA were able to address complaints, reduce them, and no longer appear on the list. Whereas Ray White and Anytime Fitness appeared amongst the most complained about business.
The NFP industry lacks a list similar to the NSW Fair Trading Complaints Register. In some cases we are lucky there is no actual complaint list for NFPs. That said, shouldn’t each NFP have a process in place to address complaints, reduce complaints, so we are ensuring a register does not become necessary?
By definition, a social enterprise is an organisation that applies commercial strategies to maximise improvements in human and environmental well-being – this may include maximising social impact alongside profits for external shareholders. Over the last few weeks, I have encountered a couple of social enterprises I believe are worth introduction and worth you visiting.
The Two Wolves Community Cantina, is located in Glebe NSW. Community-oriented and driven by a strong volunteer culture, The Two Wolves is a place to find good company and creativity, engage in conversations, and support the communities in which The Cardoner Project’s volunteers serve. The Cardoner Project is a Jesuit and Catholic youth volunteering hub that supports global partner organisations, predominantly within the Jesuit network. The cantina serves lunch and dinner weekdays only. The food is tasty, the service is superior, and the prices are right. To date, Two Wolves report raising more than $35,000 for various programs.
Buffed is a network of shoeshine stands based in major cities across Australia. Founded by the Wise Foundation in 2011, Buffed aims to provide business opportunities to individuals seeking asylum, refugees and people whose employment outlook is limited. Buffed has support from our partners who are the Bank of Queensland, University of Queensland Business School and Virgin Australia.
The mission of Buffed is to create a social enterprise business that generates a positive social impact within communities and valued outcomes across Australia. The vision is to secure futures for individuals through small business ownership.
I learned about Buffed when I met a man named Steve working the Buffed stand in the Virgin Lounge in Sydney. Not only did he provide a superior shoeshine, but his personality was contagious.
Two Wolves Cantina and Buffed are two great social enterprises. Support these and others you come across. Not only do you get a good product, but the money you pay for the product does some good.
Why is it people do not respond to telephone calls, email communications, or requests for meetings? Some take weeks to respond and others do not respond at all. It’s a source of frustration across most non-profit organisations – internally and externally – when people make contact with others and there is no response or the response takes days or weeks. The frustration is within our non-profit team members and also between non-profits and suppliers. We hear excuses like “I am flat out”, “I have been really busy”, “My schedule has been nuts”, etc.
Yet, these same people who are non-responsive often times expect others to be responsive to one another. They have a different standard for others than they have for themselves.
There may be legitimate reasons – holidays, meetings, and other tasks. These can be managed via out of office messages or other outbound notifications to set expectations. It’s the radio silence that is aggravating to people. The unknown.
You are my customer and I am your customer. We need to treat one another as customers. We ought to set service level agreements or standards of communication whereby we pledge to ourselves, and others, to be responsive in a certain length of time for online and offline communications. We can’t expect people to adhere to our standards when we do not have them for ourselves.
There is a flurry of self-service portals and other self-service mechanisms facing the consumer (and donor) each day.
When you visit Coles, Woolworths, K-Mart, Target and others, you are encouraged to use the self-service checkouts. These checkouts can be a bit of a pain when you do something not quite correctly and the machine rejects the transaction. You know the kind of transaction where you put something in the bagging area and the register has not ret documented the purchase. “Unauthorised item in the bagging area”. Often an item will not scan. How about the constant reminder to scan your customer loyalty card? It’s all a bit much. I often times ask, “if you want me to use the self-checkout, will you be giving me the employee discount?”.
These retailers are not the only ones using the self-service concept. In the Qantas Lounge, flyers are encouraged to order their coffee on a self-service portal and then are directed to pick up their waiting latte at a counter. In the terminal, Qantas has about 3 employees for all of their airline check in counters helping hundreds of customers, including me, trying to figure out how to use their self-checkin machines and, additionally, their self-checkin luggage machines. For a full-service airline, their personal customer service at the ticket counter is nil compared to Virgin Australia who mostly fully staff their ticket counters.
Retailers are not alone with this self-service concept. Non-profit organisations are adopting self-service to aid donors and alumni to maintain their contact details, re-print a receipt, give a gift and receive a receipt, register for an event, and for a variety of other transactions which were once made on the telephone, Post or in person.
McDonald’s recently took to asking for donations on their “portal”, which is also used to order specialised hamburgers and other food. This replaces the canisters they once had on the counters to encourage gold coin donations.
Today’s time-poor people expect to be able to do things fast. With speed comes a loss of interaction with the company or non-profit. And, I would argue, with the increased speed comes a loss of opportunity to “up-sell” the customer or to seek additional information or an additional gift.
We also lose the ability to engage as human beings. This is not such a loss for the likes of Coles, Woolworths, K-Mart, or Target where it was like pulling teeth to get a checkout clerk to say “hello”, “how are you?”, or even to say a “thank you”. More often than not they were quite robotic (if they even said a word to you during your transaction). But, non-profit organisations and their donors expect to engage with one another. We are in the relationship business. I worry about the impact of the loss of interaction on our overall bottom line when, in fact, we are playing up the convenience, speed, and volume aspects with portals and other tools.
I’ve watched, with anger, the criticism of Australia’s Olympic athletes over the last two weeks. Many in the Australian public and the media have criticised Australia’s premier athletes. The criticism occurred while the athletes were still in Rio and, even more, upon their return to Australian soil. Kitty Chiller, 2016 Chief de Mission, spoke eloquently each and every day from Rio about the pride she had for the athletes, whether they won or lost, and held off the daily criticism of her team. Chiller was a class act at each and every press conference.
Chiller became not just Chief de Mission, but cheerleader in chief. Imagine the job she had to do in front of the athletes each and every day in this age of social media.
The barrage of criticism about Australia coming in tenth in the medal count has been sickening to watch and mind boggling to try to understand.
How many Olympic medals do you have in your home?
Last time I checked, I had zero. I would guess the same is true for every single person reading this blog post. So, who are we to criticise these young people who worked day in and day out to make the Olympic team and to compete on the world stage with the world’s finest athletes? Further, who are we to criticise any of them for coming home with less than Gold or no medal at all.
It is sad to see the conversation occurring in the public forum, including the airport hanger when the Qantas jet arrived from Rio. Imagine how this must have made the athletes feel knowing they were under such scrutiny despite having worked their hardest to make their country proud.
The conversation has been all about the funding of the “elite athletes” and whether Australians received their money’s worth. The discussion became about ROI and a debate about how Australian’s athletes should be funded in the future.
The Australian Olympic Committee is a non-profit organisation. Like any non-profit in our country, the committee should raise money from the private sector. Like the US and other countries, money should be raised from individuals and from corporations to fund training programs, training centres, and sending the athletes to compete in various games. I also believe a lottery must be created for mass participation.
Investing in these athletes, just as we invest in the mission of any non-profit organisation, is a choice we can make to demonstrate our national pride. First, the AOC must invest in talented fundraisers to generate the necessary funding.
