Taking donors on a journey

Professional Fundraising

September 2007

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WRVS had no history of fundraising when it entered the highly competitive individual giving arena in late 2005. It decided to focus on excellent supporter care, as MICHAEL DENT explains.

WRVS has been in existence for nearly 70 years and today is one of the largest voluntary organisations in Britain with around 60,000 volunteers helping older people to stay independent and active.

In the face of large cuts in its government grant, WRVS entered the highly competitive individual giving market place in early 2005. With research from nfpSynergy showing unprompted and semi-prompted awareness levels at zero in our relevant market segments, we faced a tough challenge. This was exacerbated when you consider that we had no donors and no supporter care infrastructure, and were competing against strong established brands such as Help the Aged, Age Concern and the British Red Cross.

Delivering outstanding supporter care was identified as a clear area for WRVS to seek competitive advantage. We realised we had the opportunity to build a programme that would be fast, flexible and mobile; we could easily adapt things, test new ideas, learn quickly and ultimately keep our donors satisfied with stronger loyalty to the WRVS cause. From the outset, we were passionate about placing donors at the heart of our individual giving programme. All gifts are thanked within 72 hours, with many thanked within 24 hours. When donors write notes on response slips we make a point of mentioning this in the thank you letter – making it more personalised than a standard thank you – and our chief executive calls all higher-level donors on the day their gift is received.

We applied the same thinking to every aspect of our fundraising activities, including our first ever door-step recruitment campaign.

Research showed that first, second and third gifts are key donor attrition points for supporters who signed-up on the door-step so to combat this we send a series of informal postcards at these critical points.

The postcards are simple, quick and easy to engage with. Each card presents a different message in a clear and informal way, which reinforces the value of the gift and highlights the different areas of our work. Digitally printed with the donor’s name they make the communication feel more personal. It paid off, giving us total attrition of 19 per cent after three months.

WRVS also believes that complaints are in one sense, another form of ‘gift’. People who complain really care and any response is better than no response. Consequently, we have a robust complaint handling plan in place and the supporter care team is empowered to solve complaints within a 48 hour period.

This strategy was tested to its limits in November 2006 with the launch of the WRVS Winter Appeal. This was deliberately a high impact communication highlighting the devastating consequences of the cold weather on older people and what WRVS do to prevent it. The powerful message of the creative, with a personalised newspaper headline ‘Pensioner dies of cold in Sample Street’, resulted in 147 complaints. However, we were prepared for this and every one was responded to within 48 hours, with the most serious receiving handwritten cards and in some cases a bunch of flowers. All of this resulted in positive responses and no longterm loss of support. Overall the appeal generated the largest income in our history and a RoI of 4:1.

This strategy has really paid off. In less than three years we have recruited almost 10,000 donors, we regularly achieve warm response rates of 10 per cent and have an individual giving income of nearly £1m.

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