Building a Fundraising Communications Team
Sarah Naismith - Head of Charities
8th February 2017
Who we are
Our lead brand
In house team
Marketing & Communications
Manager
Press OfficerCommunications
OfficerMarketing
Officer
In the beginning…
• £20m three year capital appeal
• Small fundraising team with F/T equivalent of one member of staff dedicated to Comms
• High profile appeal with benefit of widespread regional support and good will
• Media partnerships with local press
How did we persuade the Trust?
• Stretched, reactive, Trust Communications Team versus
• Benefit of pro active, good news, Charity-led comms strategy
• Ability to demonstrate measurable impact of capital appeal comms strategy
The importance of building and managing your brand
• Establishing the brand – getting yourself out there
• Building and maintaining brand awareness
• Identifying your key messages
• Clear brand guidelines
• Tone of voice
• House style
• Implement an approval process and don’t deviate – even when working with fundraisers
Ensuring your budget has impact
• Invest wisely – focus only on those channels and activities that will yield measurable results
• Less is sometimes more
• Learn from past mistakes
• Maximise pro bono support through corporate partners and board connections
Effective use of case studies
• The ‘why’ effect
• Emotive and engaging content
• Connection with audience
• Bring appeals and campaigns to life (humanise/empathise)
• Cross spread of age, gender, ethnicity, geography and condition
• Importance of stewardship
Effective use of celebrities
• Endorsement
• Profile
• Connections/opening doors
• Importance of effective stewardship
The importance of social media
• Not just about likes/follows – engagement is key
• Effective management requires allocation of resource – in house or out sourced
• Importance of content generation
• Establish tone of voice & style guide
• Community management
Working with media partners
• Develop strong working relationships with key journalists
• Regular meetings
• Invite them in!
Internal communications
• Celebrating success internally
• Demonstrating impact
• Trust staff can be the charity’s biggest advocates
• Recruiting from within
• Making connections and sourcing content
Working in Partnership
• Importance of regular communication with Trust Comms team
• Good working relationship can expedite approvals through Trust hierarchy
• Support for each other’s campaigns
• Piggy back on Trust messaging/campaigns
Where are we now
• Retained design agency
• Moving towards project-based retained social media agency
• Website that is integrated with Raiser’s Edge
• Strong relationship with Manchester Evening News
• Established brand
Impact measurement
• Shout about what you do!
• Media monitoring and reporting EAV
• Web traffic analysis
• Social media analysis
• E- newsletter measurement
Pitfalls – what to avoid
• Avoid the scatter gun approach
• Focus on activity that will yield best results
• Avoid competing with yourself
• Prioritise campaigns
Thank you