Trustee articles: Will Wilson, pandemic fundraising
Every two weeks, one of the OneRio trustee team will publish an article on our website. We will cover topics relevant to our specific roles, as well as considering the role of NGOs and sport for development more generally.
This week, our grassroots fundraising trustee Will Wilson considers the difficulties and opportunities of fundraising during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Will has decided to meet these challenges head on next month through a world record attempt to raise money for UmRio’s food security programme. To find out more about Will’s attempt, please follow this link: https://www.onerio.co.uk/news/world-record-food-security
UmRio/OneRio and grassroots fundraising during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the grassroots fundraising trustee for OneRio, and a former volunteer myself, my role in supporting UmRio revolves largely around motivating volunteers to go out to Rio de Janeiro, helping them understand fundraising expectations, and suggesting methods by which volunteers can reach their targets. I and my three fellow 2016 volunteers were the first to fundraise before heading out to Morro do Castro, and our GoFundMe page eventually totalled just under £9000. These days, however, Covid-19 presents two major obstacles to the volunteering and fundraising programme.
Firstly, a widespread rejection of unnecessary air travel, especially to virus hotspot areas like Brazil, has drastically reduced our potential pool of willing and able volunteers. Actually going to help with the project on the ground greatly improved my capacity to appeal to potential donors: not only did I seek to understand and communicate UmRio’s key methodology, but I could also demonstrate to donors that I would personally help in furthering young people’s lives in Brazil. It also greatly aided continued fundraising efforts on my return. Anecdotes and photos added tangible weight to what are too often empty claims of ‘life-changing experiences’ or ‘eternal bonds’, and helped me and my friends to continue our campaigning long after we had touched down in the U.K.
Secondly, and perhaps more pertinently, Covid-19 has devastated the economy. Redundancies abound in the developed world, where the overwhelming majority of fundraising (both corporate and personal) occurs, and across the world people’s pursestrings are tightening. The worthiness of a project half a world away does not decrease during economic and health troubles, but people’s capacity, and hence desire, to donate undoubtedly does. Looking after those at home takes priority, a stance that is difficult to argue with in such a sensitive socioeconomic climate. So, my conundrum: how can I continue to motivate donations to a project half a world away?
Much research has been done on this very issue, as every organisation from big businesses to NGOs and charities feels the squeeze. Fundraising is a fluid business, depending greatly on the perceived attachment of the donor to the recipient of the donation. Campaigns such as that by Captain Sir Tom Moore in April, which raised over £32m for the NHS, effectively match up a memorable undertaking that deserves donations, with identification of a widespread sentimental attachment to the organisation he is helping (in this case a veritable national icon). Few institutions, however, have the positive public image, or personal relationships, the NHS commands with the British public. For smaller NGOs, especially ones with an international support base, the picture appears to be quite different. Despite this, however, I firmly believe that many of the basic fundraising tactics remain the same, and will highlight three that I believe are most important to UmRio/OneRio.
The first important element of any successful fundraising programme is understanding the case for giving. Emphasised by Mal Warwick, a professional fundraiser since 1979, in his new book Fundraising During the Coronavirus Pandemic (Jossey-Bass, New York City, 2020), donors need to understand the why behind parting with their money. This is particularly important today, where cash is tight and people cut back on ‘unnecessary’ expenditure. A successful fundraising campaign should not guilt-trip a potential donor: donations tinged with resentment could not only lead to a smaller sum of money, but may also fester a negative relationship and less personal connection between the donor and recipient. Rather, acknowledge possible difficulties in the donors’ lives, and emphasise their kindness and the transformational capacity of their donation, no matter the size. Understanding personal circumstances of donors, in my experience, is key not only in terms of gaining donations themselves, but also widening the network and message of the organisation you are representing.
This personable approach is reflected in a second element: communicating what donations do. As OneRio’s latest fundraising programme (on which I will touch more later) seeks to do, actively telling donors exactly where their money will go incentivises donations, and provides a far greater sense of satisfaction to the donor that they are certain their money will go to a good cause. Personalisation and specificity are intricately linked. Eric Burger, marketing communications manager at Volunteer Hub (an organisation that provides volunteer management solutions for non-profit institutions globally) emphasises this importance: rather than £X being thrown into a nondescript pool, tell the donor what £X will do, who it will support, or what it will provide.
This personal engagement has helped me enormously with the last, and what I consider my most important, fundraising factor: don’t oversell. With a project such as UmRio, and the pressing need for donations in potentially life-threatening situations, the facts should do the emotional talking. My fundraising methodology thus revolves around this core principle: connect personally, present professionally. Unnecessary pleas, repeated and repetitive requests, or continuing to contact someone after a request to be taken off a mailing list or suchlike result extremely rarely in positive results, and are far more likely to sour a relationship that could have developed within that person’s network. A compassionate understanding of a potential donor’s distinctive circumstances, along with an attempt at building a personal relationship, will work far more efficiently than force-feeding twenty reasons why a donation would be extremely important to you as a person.
I have tried to incorporate these tenets into OneRio’s new fundraising programme. UmRio, our partner organisation, has expanded its usual operations into helping its local favela community access food, water and basic sanitation products safely, in an area with few public health amenities to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. However, cuts in government funding to such projects has left UmRio’s food security programme entirely reliant on donations to continue to safeguard the community where the vast majority of our participants live, work and study.
To find out more information about the work UmRio is now doing, or to consider donating if you have the means, please follow this link: https://www.onerio.co.uk/news/food-security-fundraiser
To find out more about Will’s world record attempt, please follow this link: https://www.onerio.co.uk/news/world-record-food-security
