Small is beautiful

Why I, as Appeals Director of a large charity, often envied small ones.

Doll’s house: “Midtown Parlour”,1875

In the NSPCC the distance between the Director and the common-or-garden donor was vast. For the great majority of donors, ‘The Director’s Christmas message’ was the closest we got. If we had suggested anything else, such as a personalised signed letter, it would have been totally inauthentic and a turn-off for the intelligent donor. (And, please, never underestimate your donors. They’re not stupid. Most are probably more intelligent than we are.) The creative team would work to make it as authentic and personal as they could. But, in practice, the message always came from ‘on high’. From some-one totally competent at ensuring that my gifts were well spent, but not actually knowing anything about me as in individual. If they did, they’d be incompetent. 

A small charity can shorten that gap. It can get the CEO, the Head of Services and the Finance Director in 1:1 discussion with individual donors. Meetings between one of them and the donor / prospect you really want to engage. Sandwich lunches with half-a-dozen donors. At receptions in the hall, or, even better, actually in the office, with guests mingling around the desks and PCs. (You have an open plan office? How many donors could you get into it, at a squeeze? And a squeeze is exactly what you want.) Saturday afternoon gatherings of perhaps 80 donors. (Remember: the 500 donors who were invited, but declined, are as important as the 80 who accepted. And they will spontaneously give far more than it costs to organise the gathering.)

In short, a small charity should be able to offer each and every one of your supporters the opportunity to meet, face-to-face, your CEO every year. (How you handle that event, and its follow-up, is down to you, and is critical. Your CEO is one of your greatest assets, to be used wisely.)

Fundraising that can be done just as well by a small charity as a large one

Let me give you an example. A tiny charity works solely within a county town with a population of just 34,000. Quite well-to-do, as you would expect. Fundraising is done by volunteers, who raise enough money to sustain a project in Africa. Their voluntary income is around £100k p.a., and there is no statutory income. This funds modest salaries for a team of six people administering the programme in Africa, and an office in the local town there.

The volunteers do all the obvious things, and well. Small events in the community; schools; the local newspaper is very supportive. They are good people doing good work, and as keen as mustard, knowing that their project is dependent on their fundraising.

They brought me in to help with major giving. I did exactly what I’d done 500 times before. I helped them organise an event to bring in major donors. Any charity could do something similar.

It was pretty formulaic. We got the local MP to host a small reception at the House of Commons. He needed no persuasion. Then, an invitation list. All trustees and others close to the charity were required to submit names. Them: “Oh, they won’t come.” Me: “Don’t you decide. Let them self-select.” I got them to pay £3,000 for a prospect research agency to identify 250 people from the postcodes the agency knew were wealthiest in the town. (For them, that was a great deal of money.) We invited 500. 50 accepted. 25 attended.

They thought that that response was a huge disappointment. I had to work hard to convince them that it was excellent.

Nice wine, not the usual plonk. (Don’t cut corners. We wanted them to be feeling good and receptive.) 25 minutes (no more) of speeches: a short welcome from the MP; an inspirational and moving talk by the project manager, specially flown in; and finally an inspiring call to action by the Chair, from the heart. Three speeches, then stop. No, “and we need to allow so-and-so to speak. They’ll be expecting it”.

The ‘Home team’ chatted to the guests afterwards, and each was followed up the following day. Then, 1:1 meetings.

The end result? 23 donations; 10 significant; 5 really significant. Income both for the project and to invest in further fundraising, and a core of wealthy individuals from the town who are now stakeholders and will do a lot more in the future. Perfect.

We used the fact that they were a small town with the same MP, and where some of the guests already knew each other, to advantage. The principles were exactly the same as we used at the NSPCC with many royal events at St James’s Palace.

Fundraising spend

“We don’t have the money to spend on fundraising” is a cop-out and incorrect, and SMTs and Trustee Boards should know it. (I’m going off piste, but Trustee Boards who take this view are actually failing in their duty to their beneficiaries.)

In my view, a charity starting out on fundraising should expect its fundraiser to cover their costs in year one.

And a charity with one or more fundraising staff should expect its fundraisers to be making net income for the cause, and income to invest in further fundraising.

The next ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’

It wasn’t what I had expected, but since I became a consultant after 30 years as Appeals Director of the NSPCC, a large part of my work has been with small charities. While some small charities have spent hours (and a lot of money) sitting around a table thinking about their version of the Ice Bucket Challenge, most have looked to the wisdom, experience and insight gained in large charities, and sought to apply it to their own situation.

I’ve had a lot of successes.

The decision making process

In large charities the decision-making process can seem glacial. At one point at the NSPCC, I remember ten people needed to sign off a piece of work. A letter to donors, for example. Quite a few people from Fundraising, people from Comms, people from the relevant Services, some-one from Public Policy and some-one from the Brand team.

Let’s assume for the moment that they’re all aligned around a common purpose, and that none has their own agenda. (Well, pigs may fly?) Even then, the process of getting ten people to agree to a piece of copy must take… How long?

In a small charity, that whole process might take five minutes. And be all the better for being the authentic voice of one person, not a letter written by a committee.

Silos

Fundraising structures within charities are essentially hierarchical.

I have seen ‘matrix management’ tried and always failed. Any variant that has worked has always been, essentially, hierarchical.

So, in a large charity you have to have layers of management. Essentially chains of command.

A small charity still has that, but all fundraisers are working in the same office. They don’t communicate by email or WhatsApp, they just walk a few yards across the room. They bond as a team. A success by anyone will be shared with everyone. And a failure similarly.

Just how powerful is that?

Are you constrained or empowered?

In a large charity, your ambition will be constrained by your decision-making structure.

In a small charity, no-one puts a lid on your ambition.

Efficiency

Almost inevitably, the flexibility and lack of bureaucracy in a small charity will, if effectively managed, enable it to be more efficient than a large charity. 

And this will counter-act economies of scale.

Finally, your constituency of support

Fundraising Directors tell me their charity is niche and doesn’t have a strong base of philanthropic support.

So, they say they need ‘products’. (Presumably to ‘sell’? Isn’t that what you do with ‘products’?) Mass Participation Events. Raffles. Events. And many other ‘products’ to ‘sell’.

I have a different view.

The feel-good factor from the joy of giving is by far and away the greatest ‘product’ any fundraiser has to ‘sell’.

Whatever you do, and wherever you do it, you have a base of people who will be inspired by your cause, however local or niche, and be ready to support you. For me this is really, really, key. You need to believe it. 

Then focus on identifying, inspiring, cultivating and engaging them, rather than thinking about ‘products’ you can ‘sell’ to a broader public.

Your charity exists because your founders identified a need, and joined together to work towards meeting that need, with their own time and money, spent on engaging others. Put yourself in their shoes, and you won’t go far wrong. 

If your founders hadn’t been successful, you wouldn’t be in the role you are now.

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