Charities... is it time to think differently?

Times are tough for charities in 2018 as they are face new and different challenges to generate their much needed funding:

• The positive news is that recent figures show that charities collectively had a gross annual income of ￡75.35bn in 2017, up year on year by more than ￡2.24bn
• However, figures from the Charity Commission released in January also show that there are now 168,237 charities in England and Wales, which is the first time since 31 December 2008 that more than 168,000 charities have been listed. So there are more charities which means increasing levels of competition for funding.
• Large charities with incomes of more than ￡10m a year now account for 62% of the overall income of charities on the register demonstrating a growing divide in the voluntary sector. A small handful of big charities continue to grow and take a bigger share of income, whilst the majority of small and local charities are struggling to survive.

Increased public scrutiny, lack of trust in charities, GDPR, decrease in central funding & grants, continued pressure on individual giving and a reduction in the popularity of charity of the year for both charities and businesses means that organisations need to diversify their income opportunities to remain sustainable and to grow for the future.

Being 'that guy' ...

Throughout my career I have work with some fantastic charities including the NSPCC (SPAR), Cardiac Risk in the Young (McColl's), Movember (The Gym Group) and many more. In all these examples I built successful partnerships which drove sales for the corporate, engaged the customer and raised awareness and fundraising for the charity. (And won some awards! Cheap pop.) Win-Win-Win.

But its not plain sailing. Almost every conversation starts in the same way... a heart string pulling cause related pitch about why the charity deserves our support and funds. (Normally with at least one tear jerking video). I have to be 'that guy' who points out that we are not a charity and as such we are looking for a commercial benefit from the relationship. This is where so many conversation get stuck. 

What many charities know but seemingly forget (or ignore) during these conversations are that there are so many amazing causes with an ever increasing number of deserving charities of differing sizes that are difficult to choose between: Cancer, Alzheimers, Children, Age, Animals, Heart, Poverty, Homelessness, Veterans etc. Sometimes the choice of cause is easy(ish) to narrow down due to the type of company or customer base but even if 'Children' is the selected cause... the choice of charity partner is still enormous - NSPCC, Barnados, Save the Children, KidsOut, Honeypot - the list is nearly endless.

And how long do I choose a partnership for? Originally, it was common to choose a charity of the year but in more recent times I have preferred to focus on specific campaigns. The Gym Group in 2017, for example, changed the charity to which it donated every month and ran one major short-term campaign with Movember in November.

Charities need to think more commercially to develop new, sustainable sources of income, which do not compromise their brand awareness or integrity. To help, we have developed two different approaches to help charities assess their worth to corporates, identify the right opportunities to go for, and develop pitch documents that will give the best chance of achieving valuable partnerships. It's a mix of auditing what you have, training the team to build internal capacity, and producing materials to use going forward.

Pitching to Corporates

For a charity, pitching to become a corporate fundraising partner is a stressful and time-consuming experience. Getting to the right corporates and convincing them of a charity's worth to them can be tough, but without these reliable income streams it's hard to know whether they can remain financially viable for the future.

One of the major challenges, that many charities do not realise (or willingly accept), is that they often don’t truly understand what it is like to be on the other side of the table and thus cannot appreciate the challenges that a corporate is faced with or objectives they are trying to deliver.

More often than not, the decision by the corporate on which charity to partner with is not about the charity’s cause itself. Awaken have the client-side, agency-side, sales and charity partnership experience to improve a charity’s team’s pitches to corporates and remove the pitfalls that often appear.

As such, we have developed a framework for fundraising success which aims to ensure that the effort put into finding and pitching to corporate partners is as successful as possible.

A different approach to income

Virtually all charities have a selection of customer touch points (whether that be a media channel, telephone conversation, email, face to face experience) and an engaged audience - meaning there is an opportunity to evolve the approach to generating income.

Many charities are looking towards corporate partnerships, but moving away from the ‘Charity of the Year’ model, as it enhances pressure for the charity to match the income after that year, and at the same time is becoming less popular for corporates. More current models tend to utilise a charity's key assets to reach an audience which a particular company wants to get in front of, within a relationship that illustrates an appropriate fit between the two partners.

Evolving a charity's approach to achieve more income isn't rocket-science, nor hugely complex but it requires knowledge, experience and vision to pin-point income opportunities and understand what partners will pay for and the value they place upon it.

Awaken offers expert knowledge, advice and support to enable your business to deliver value from its traditional and digital communication channels through the creation of partnership packages at different financial and support levels. 

The following graphic describes the unique process we have developed to help charities evolve their approach and ensure they are positioned to maximise the value of their assets and audience without negative effect on their brand or reputation.

As an introductory we are offering one FREE consultation in July - so if you or any charity you know would benefit from a different approach to pitching or generating income, please do get in touch - [email protected]