Transcript

[00:00:00] Multiple Voices: Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. , you don’t need to add me in there.

[00:00:31] Jade Cunnah: Welcome to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. Your go-to place for fundraising tips and inspiration. Love what you hear. Get more insights straight to your inbox. Subscribe to our email list for exclusive fundraising resources, early access to training, special discounts, and more. Just head on over to fundraising everwhere.com/podcast to subscribe Now onto today’s episode, enjoy.

[00:00:59] Simon Scriver: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. My name is Simon Rever. I am, uh, one of the co-founders of Fundraising Everywhere and your host today. Um, and this season, uh, around this time of year, we’re always seem to be focused on, uh, individual giving, uh, supporter experience, uh, as we have conferences around those.

[00:01:19] Simon Scriver: Um, but we’ve got a great webinar coming up as well. Or if you’re listening to this in the past, uh, it is available on demand to watch back. Um, but where we’ll be hearing from, uh, the great team of beautiful insights, who you’ve heard from before in our previous events, um, but also one of the fundraisers, uh, across at Starlight, the charity and the work that they’ve been doing together around measuring supporter experience.

[00:01:41] Simon Scriver: And I always find this idea of measuring supporter experience very interesting. You get a lot of, uh, a real spectrum of opinions on this. Uh, and I always think back to one of my. Semi mentors who once said to me that everything can be measured, everything can be measured. Uh, and it was a real mind blowing, uh, uh, thing that stayed with me.

[00:01:59] Simon Scriver: Um, but you do do still, uh, see a lot of, uh, um, flip flopping in the supporter experience space and around individual giving a whole, as a whole about how we measure and how we look at this. So I’m really excited to have my guest today, uh, to talk about how they do this on the ground, hands-on, uh, and what we can learn from that.

[00:02:17] Simon Scriver: And I’ll go round the room a little bit. Um, first of all, we’ve got Joan Middleton, and Joan is the digital fundraising manager for Starlight, a charity we and fundraising everyone know well, and we have a lot of love for, uh, Joan, how are you? Hello? 

[00:02:31] Joan Middleton: Hi, Simon. Hi, everyone. Good, thanks. 

[00:02:34] Simon Scriver: Joan, what, what does a digital fundraising manager do at Starlight?

[00:02:37] Simon Scriver: I’m a bit, I’m curious about your day today. It’s a million 

[00:02:39] Joan Middleton: dollar 

[00:02:40] Simon Scriver: question. I know. It, it’s like, I always think it’s very interesting to picture fundraisers like, ’cause there’s, there’s the pub public persona of how you present your job. But what does your day-to-day look like? Really? 

[00:02:52] Joan Middleton: My day to day involves trying to get people to sign up and, uh, give us some money really, um, online in all ways and shapes and forms and, um, I don’t know, something along those lines.

[00:03:09] Joan Middleton: I don’t really know how to describe what I do. Uh, please. Can you edit that out? Um, 

[00:03:16] Simon Scriver: absolutely, absolutely not because I think, uh, I think the elevator pitch on your own job is hard enough. But tell me a little bit about Starlight, because for people who dunno, Starlight, you’re all about bringing play back into hospitals, hospices for, for kids.

[00:03:29] Simon Scriver: Correct. Tell me about the bit that you’re truly passionate about. 

[00:03:31] Joan Middleton: Yeah, so I, um, I’m very passionate about play and we, we at Starlight bring play into, um, all forms of children’s healthcare is really important for. Primarily for trauma reduction, um, where children experience really unnecessary, um, trauma during their treatments and especially for children who are in long-term, you know, who have long-term conditions, that can be really, um, really traumatizing for them.

[00:03:58] Joan Middleton: Um, in terms of getting cannulas or, or just ongoing treatments and play really helps reduce trauma, mental health issues, um, and really helps aid healing for them. Um, so yeah. So I try and try and get people to understand that because it’s a really complicated message, really, to get across in a digital space.

[00:04:21] Joan Middleton: And so it’s really it, you know, we have a very short space of time in which to do that. And, um. It, it’s much, it’s much easier if you’re having a face-to-face conversation with a, or, you know, sitting on a podcast you can explain the whole story of why play matters for children, why play matters for children in hospital, why play matters for sick children.

[00:04:44] Joan Middleton: Um, but when you’ve got six or seven seconds or you know, an email to do that, it can be really challenging. 

[00:04:50] Simon Scriver: There’s just so much co competition for attention today. And, and I do. Exactly. It’s an amazing charity and I recommend people do check it out. Um, not, not least of all. ’cause you can see how Joan’s done it.

[00:05:01] Simon Scriver: You can test her donation forms. You can test the prescription. That’s what, that’s my favorite thing. That, but speaking of testing these forms that, uh, the, the rest of the, the panel we have here. Other wonderful guys from Beautiful Insights and you know, we do love beautiful insights. We’ve had them on a couple of times, but we’ve got Steven Dodds, the managing director, and Paul Seabrook, the founder of Beautiful Insights.

[00:05:22] Simon Scriver: Good afternoon, gentlemen. How are you? Hello 

[00:05:25] Steven Dodds: there. Very first time, uh, first time podcaster, many time listener, Simon. Oh, nice to see 

[00:05:30] Simon Scriver: you. That’s like you have, you have to say that Steven, don’t you? Um, but you, you got, I mean, one of the reasons I like you guys is ’cause you’re, you are kind of, uh, seem to be a little bit obsessed with this measurement and testing and tweaking and, and whenever I’ve heard you speak or read any of the stuff that you push out on your website.

[00:05:47] Simon Scriver: Um, it’s fascinating. It’s fascinating the kind of micro testing that you do to see, see how this works and how you’re actually trying to measure this thing around support or experience. What, what is, how do you guys describe what you, what you do? Who’s best? To sum it up, we’ll probably say different things that we wouldn’t really, um, this is a good, this is a good test.

[00:06:07] Simon Scriver: Let’s do it. You don’t listen to this. Steven Paul, what’s your answer? 

[00:06:11] Paul Seabrook: Um. We’re sort of passionate and a little bit frustrated in some respects that customers and supporters ’cause we, we don’t just do charity. Work, um, often aren’t listened to enough or are only engaged with when there’s a problem and something needs, you know, kind of a, almost a poll.

[00:06:29] Paul Seabrook: And I guess there’s marketeers at heart, which is what Steven, I sort of background was that. We wanna make sure that, you know, people are being listened to and the supporter, like the customer is front and center. Really, a lot of the time. The, the people making the decisions on behalf of the supporters are not necessarily the target audience.

[00:06:50] Paul Seabrook: I’m sure Joan thinks about the Starlight brand all the time, maybe even dreams about it as well. Um, the sort of the frustrating news though is that the supporters don’t, um. They are incredibly valuable, obviously, but they, but they also can give some amazing insights and sometimes it’s just really calibrating what the relationship is like for a charity.

[00:07:12] Paul Seabrook: And that’s what we try and do is often represent those supporters, um, you know, through our various projects back to. Great people like Joan, trustees, senior leadership team, et cetera. Back to your point, Simon, about, you know, what can be measured massive of anecdotes, always in charities, lots of great passion stories.

[00:07:33] Paul Seabrook: Sometimes it just needs to be balanced with, you know, some hard facts from audiences. Have you learned something about Steven? Is that right? 

[00:07:43] Steven Dodds: I’m writing that down. I’m writing that down. Um, I know, I mean, I, I, I, I, the reason I love. I do and being part of beautiful Insights is, um, I mean, I think, I think I, I consider myself a good listener.

[00:07:54] Steven Dodds: Um, and, uh, and I, and I think, um. We all wanna be heard, don’t we? And, and charities talk about that a lot, you know, about listening to their, their kind of community, you know, their communities, their constituents, and so on. Um, and, and I think that’s the, that’s the joy of kind of research is, is, is really listening and hearing to supporters and make sure their voice are kind, their voices and perspectives are kind of loud and clear ringing across the fundraising departments of, um, of, of the nation kind of thing.

[00:08:20] Steven Dodds: Um. Because, yeah, it, it’s, it’s, it’s all about them, isn’t it really? This, this fundraising lark. Um, and, uh, and so yeah, we’re sort of picking them up essentially, um, in, in, in, in the decision making. 

[00:08:34] Simon Scriver: And you, like, you work with a lot of different orgs, so Steve and I assume you’re talking to different, you know, very different organizations day to day.

[00:08:40] Simon Scriver: How, how do you, could you talk us through how you start to measure this kind of across the board between organizations, how you can start to learn from one place and apply it to another? What’s your approach to that? 

[00:08:53] Steven Dodds: Yeah, I mean, the, the, the supporter experience is kind of, it’s a sort of frustrating concept in some, in some ways it’s not, it’s not easy to measure.

[00:09:01] Steven Dodds: Um, uh, there’s a whole sort of host of reasons, I guess chief of which is because. Supporters don’t know their receiving experience more, more, more often than not, or, or say that they want one. Um, so that, that, that, that, that can be tricky. Um, uh, but ne never, nevertheless, there, you know, there, there is a point to all the kind of supporter comms that, that, that fundraisers are sort of churning out the ones that aren’t necessarily sort of directly asking for money.

[00:09:31] Steven Dodds: Um, and so what, what is the point? What is the point of those of those communications? Um. We see an increasing number of kinda charities appointing. Uh, sort of heads of supporter experience or heads of supporter en engagement. Um, and, and I guess we wanted to bring more accountability to, um, yeah, to those roles, to the budgets that are associated, associated with it.

[00:09:53] Steven Dodds: Um, and, and yeah, and try and bring a common set of metrics around, uh, yeah, around the impact, the effect of of, of the supporter experience. And what is it that supporters are actually kind of noticing. As, as it were. Um, and in and in what way is it kind of, you know, is it moving them towards supporting, supporting the, the, the charity concerns?

[00:10:12] Steven Dodds: So yeah, we feel that there’s, uh, a lot of space there. You know, there are other kind of products available and, and sort of initiatives or initiatives around. But, uh, in the main, I think, um, charity’s got a long way to go in kind of, yeah, putting more attention on the. On the, yeah, on, on the relationship and the impact of the experience.

[00:10:32] Steven Dodds: Um, so we’ve developed a sort of a, a common set of questions that start to help charities. Yeah. See their own experience and the difference it’s making to, to their supporters and to their sort of future income. Um, but also comparing it, um, across. Across charities and helping them understand what, you know, what does good, what does good look like, how much better might I, might I get?

[00:10:54] Steven Dodds: Um, what am I doing right. You know? Um, and, and where are there opportunities for, for, for improvement? I, 

[00:11:00] Simon Scriver: I love, I love what you’re saying there about like, uh, your supporters sometimes dunno, don’t know. They’re on the supporter experience. And I think that fits into this really, um, it, it kind of shows how hard it is for us to measure.

[00:11:13] Simon Scriver: These things when, when, as you say, like that side of it does know engaging, sometimes there’s parts of the journey, parts of the experience that we kind of overlook that is fundamental to what they’re going through. And it, it’s, it can be hard to know where to start. And I think maybe Joan, that’s a good place to turn it with you.

[00:11:29] Simon Scriver: About not only where you started, um, working with beautiful insights to kind of really start to measure stuff, but even before that, what, what, in your, in your career, in your history, what has been the, your experience with measuring these kind of things and moving it forward? 

[00:11:45] Joan Middleton: Well, I came from actually originally a publishing background in magazines and subscriptions, and my entire job was loyalty, loyalty schemes, and getting people to subscribe for longer.

[00:11:58] Joan Middleton: And a lot of those metrics are always around sales and lifetime value and how you can measure that over a period of time, whereas for. And the difference in, in working in the charity sector is there is a lifetime, but, but always people are, there’s, it’s a different, there’s different motivations and there’s different reasons why people donate.

[00:12:22] Joan Middleton: It’s not a product that people are necessarily buying per se. Mm. You know, if somebody’s buying a Star Wars magazine, it’s a very different proposition to why they, you know, it’s a very different motivation as to why they would support a charity and. I think what’s been interesting for me about this particular survey is that it takes those metrics of kind of out of the not there, there’s data around it, but, but it actually takes it out into more of the emotional experience and what people feel about those things.

[00:12:54] Joan Middleton: And that for me is super interesting ’cause that then digs into the motivations and the reasons why they support us. Um, if that makes sense. 

[00:13:02] Simon Scriver: Yeah, I mean, I mean, what were you, I, I’m really interested around the magazine comparison and in terms of that, like what kind of metrics do you lift from that, if anything?

[00:13:12] Simon Scriver: Is there like transferable stuff within that? 

[00:13:15] Joan Middleton: I think, you know, yes, I think there is, in terms of looking at, you know, how long people are likely to support us for average gifts, average lifetime values. So those, those things are kind of the same. But what the prob, the problem with those things is that it’s, it takes a long time and actually you wanna know sooner rather than later that people are not enjoying, they’re not enjoying that experience.

[00:13:42] Joan Middleton: And so if you notice a load of cancellations or if you notice, you know, things like that happening, you know, obviously that’s a problem. But in terms of measuring overall. And, and, and the engagement and the, the, yeah. I think it’s more the motivations and the reasons why people are supporting us. That was, for me, more interesting.

[00:14:01] Joan Middleton: And, and the emotional engagement and the, the, the value that came out of it for us was, was really interesting. Um, yeah, I think interesting kind of insights into, you know, um, why they support us and, and things that, you know. There was a lot that we knew, but also some things that we didn’t. So it’s interesting, 

[00:14:21] Steven Dodds: I think, I think Joan hit the, the nail on the head there.

[00:14:25] Steven Dodds: You know, what is a supporter experience ultimately What, what have we got? And, and it’s a feeling, isn’t it? You know, I mean, it’s, it’s that, that, that is it. That’s all we can play with, you know, feeling how people feel about themselves, you know, how people feel within themselves at certain, at certain, at certain points.

[00:14:40] Steven Dodds: That is, that is all we got to offer really as, as, as, as charities. And so the sport, sport experience has got to be. Influencing and enlarging that. Um, and, and, um, uh, and, and, and that’s, that’s where I guess we’ve tried to put some focus with the safe, with the safe index in a, in a, in a way. Mm-hmm. Is, is kind of what are people noticing about, about the support experience and, and the effect it’s ha having on them.

[00:15:05] Steven Dodds: Uh, 

[00:15:06] Joan Middleton: think ultimately, I think ultimately it’s just, it’s, it is relationship building, right? And, and it is, it’s, it’s how you make people feel. The, the whole, the whole entire relationship with you is, is each touch point of. You know, every supportive piece of comms that they get and what are you doing to make them feel, how are you making them feel?

[00:15:26] Joan Middleton: Trust, you know, building that trust. How are you surprising them? How are you delighting them? How are you engaging with them to make them feel like, oh my word, this is amazing. Or, oh, this is really important, or, oh, I feel really valued. It’s all those things of, and you know, language is really important and design is really important.

[00:15:44] Joan Middleton: All those sort of things as well. 

[00:15:46] Simon Scriver: I, I love like this project and the safe index, um, in particular, which I might ask you to expand on a little, a little bit, but I love how it leaves the room for that almost kind of, um, creative creativity and the feeling and like you said, the surprise and delight while still tying it back to these kind of measurable metrics year after year.

[00:16:06] Simon Scriver: Like it, it seems to have that nice balance. ’cause I think, I think we lose people a lot when we’re trying, you know, when we’re only focusing on one. We lose a lot of insight and actually we lose a lot of, you know, our own teams on the journey because it’s just not, it doesn’t really make sense to how people operate.

[00:16:21] Simon Scriver: Paul, Paul, maybe you are, um, in a position to expand a bit on the Safe Index and what beautiful insights have, have really been trying to achieve by. By rolling this out across your clients and beyond, like what, what, what do you, what do you hope to get from the save index? There 

[00:16:36] Paul Seabrook: was a couple of things we’d noticed really with our charity clients.

[00:16:40] Paul Seabrook: Um, quite often they want to run supporter satisfaction surveys. That’s a good metric. Have in your, your, your KPI dashboard. Um, the other thing we noticed was that often charities would want to ask the NPS question, the net promoter score question. Um, and, and that’s become very strong currency across more in the commercial world.

[00:17:08] Paul Seabrook: I would say across boards it’s a key, it’s a key metric. The the net promoter score. Um, and I’m sure we probably know how it works, but it’s how likely you to recommend this product service company? Zero. Not at all. 10 very likely. And then you, you take away the, um, uh, the promoters from the detractors and you get a score.

[00:17:30] Paul Seabrook: Uh, you, so you can, you can get a negative score. Um, but you, so you want a high positive score. Um, big brands, FMCG brands, they really wanna know how they’re comparing against their. Um, competitors for obvious reasons, and it’s a easy metric to understand. Um, when charities ask us to run it. It’s, it’s a difficult one, I think for the supporter to answer because their view will be, it’s not my business to recommend to my friends and family who they should give money to.

[00:17:55] Paul Seabrook: That’s their business, their decision. Um. I remember asking it once for, um, the RLI and their scores were not particularly exciting. They weren’t negative, they weren’t great, but it was partly because of that people were saying, and they could leave a comment, why did you say that? And said, well, because it’s not my business to tell friends and family who to support.

[00:18:17] Paul Seabrook: And someone said a brilliant comment, which was, well, if they were drowning at sea, that, so I’d strongly recommend that. So it’s a complicated one for people to answer, but we also think that satisfaction is a really important metric. There’s no point in investing in acquisition campaigns if you’ve got the classic leaky bucket syndrome and that.

[00:18:38] Paul Seabrook: For whatever reason, people aren’t gonna be satisfied. It’s a very indifferent experience. They’re just not gonna carry on supporting you. So, um, don’t forget as well. This is one thing I always have to remind ourselves. The great people in charities, they actually have to raise their own budgets, their fundraisers, they have to raise those funds.

[00:18:55] Paul Seabrook: To run the organization. They’re raising their budget. So they’re pretty focused on, you know, return on investment and what it, and what it means. Um, and I think that’s quite different to the commercial world actually, that hasn’t got that, that deeper connection. So satisfaction is really important to measure, but.

[00:19:11] Paul Seabrook: Sort of understanding the link though, between satisfaction and future engagement. That’s what we feel is really important. You know, this is what SAE stands for. Um, if you’ve got super satisfied supporters, then there should be future engagement. And we don’t just talk about future engagement in terms of money, although that is generally a very important metric.

[00:19:31] Paul Seabrook: It’s a, it’s a, it’s a more measurable metric, but there’s time and voice as well. Um, which all are all around the supporter satisfaction. So I think that was the, um, the, the things we noticed where we thought. That’s where Safe Index could help out, you know, the kind of needs that charities have. Mm-hmm.

[00:19:50] Paul Seabrook: And I think the other thing we noticed was they’re quite keen to benchmark themselves against others. So it’s a sort of a, a classic benchmarking tool in that respect. Don’t necessarily name the charities that you’re up against, but we can look against by sector, by size, that sort of thing. Um, we just wanted to sort of.

[00:20:11] Paul Seabrook: The focus at charities sort of make those better and more informed decisions, really see how they’re performing and make it a metric that actually they’re quite, quite confident in communicating to senior leadership team to trustees. And so it’s something that really, you should want to know what your safe index score is, how it compares.

[00:20:32] Paul Seabrook: Um, is it going up? Is it going down? Where are our strengths? Where are our weaknesses? 

[00:20:36] Simon Scriver: Mm. Well, I’m very curious to ask Joan in, in reality kind of what the buy-in is like from that senior, senior leadership team and, and the trustees. Um, but uh, in particular, I think because around. Every, everything you guys are saying it makes sense about measuring that engagement and how it would translate.

[00:20:54] Simon Scriver: But we know the internal pressures sometimes are, are literally about just that bottom line number, and if it doesn’t immediately transfer into return, which is one of the big issues with the sector, if they don’t see that immediate return, they don’t necessarily have the faith in that. Joan, what’s your experience been like that?

[00:21:09] Simon Scriver: Has it been supportive or has there been some pushback on 

[00:21:12] Joan Middleton: No, I think it’s been really supportive. I think what’s really, what’s what’s been really useful and well from, from a senior level is they do wanna see the metrics and they do, it’s actually much more useful to have metrics that are, um, can I say.

[00:21:30] Joan Middleton: Uh, data and evidence led and you know, that we can, that we can actually benchmark, uh, in future years using the same information. I think it’s really important and it’s actually really helpful for us to have to have that. Um, so I do think it’s, you know, I do think we have had buy-in, you know, from that point of view.

[00:21:51] Joan Middleton: Um, to, yeah. 

[00:21:52] Jade Cunnah: Yeah, 

[00:21:53] Joan Middleton: everyone loves the graph. It’s a really good way of, everyone loves a graph and, uh, you know, being, being evidence led and data informed and all the things, but for me, it’s, it’s, it, this goes more than that for, for in, as I was saying before, in terms of emotions and, and. The things that are, are much harder to, you know, usually you get the stats and the graphs and all of that, but, but actually it’s the nebula, it’s the more emotional side of things that I found.

[00:22:22] Joan Middleton: For me, that’s been more useful, the motivations and things. So, 

[00:22:26] Steven Dodds: I mean, it helped, it helped Joan that your, your, your scores were top of the pops, didn’t it? 

[00:22:30] Joan Middleton: I mean, it always helps. It’s easier to 

[00:22:32] Steven Dodds: present, 

[00:22:34] Joan Middleton: but that wasn’t a given. You know, that wasn’t, that was not a given. And 

[00:22:38] Steven Dodds: you write, celebrate it, you should rightly celebrate it as well.

[00:22:39] Steven Dodds: You know, that was, 

[00:22:40] Joan Middleton: that was definitely not a given. And I, you know, we, I don’t think, uh, you know, I wasn’t expecting that to be the case. So, um, so that was, you know, an interesting finding because, you know, I think we, we always think that we are, you know, we should be doing more. You know, of other things that other people are doing that are, you know, everyone’s doing it better than we are.

[00:23:03] Joan Middleton: Mm-hmm. Um, and so it was great to have a Oh, that’s great that we are actually doing something, you know, that we are actually doing something, something. Right. 

[00:23:13] Simon Scriver: Yeah. And, and Steven, in your experience, ’cause I imagine you are, you are presenting this back often with fundraisers. You are trying to get buy-in from the rest of the organization or trying to get support for it.

[00:23:24] Simon Scriver: What, what, what’s the value that you see in it? What’s the hidden values that aren’t always so obvious to these 

[00:23:28] Steven Dodds: people? Yeah, it’s a, it’s a good question. I mean, I guess part of it is around that, you know, um, you know, lap lapsing attrition is an, is an issue, isn’t it? You know, across charities in, in the kind of regular giving space for, for, for example.

[00:23:40] Steven Dodds: And, um, we we’re able to focus, if you like, and create sets metrics and scores for different segments within a, um, you know, within a, um, uh, yeah, with, within a particular charity, so, mm-hmm. Yeah. To be able to. Understand, um, you know, for a fundraiser to be able understand how their regular giving kind of experience, if you like, is performing against other, um, other charities is obviously helpful in trying to, you know, I stem attrition, improve, improve retention, and, and lifetime value.

[00:24:08] Steven Dodds: Another area of value is around the, um, the legacy pipeline. Mm-hmm. Um, and given what we know about, uh, how legacy decisions are made, um, and the kind of, you know, the vote of trust essentially that that leg tour are putting into a charity by, uh, putting them in, in, in their will and, and often not. Not telling the charity about that.

[00:24:29] Steven Dodds: Um, you know, other metrics that are revealing, if you like, how that pipeline’s a bit of a crossword, but how those people that might be making a decision are feeling about the charity. Um, yeah. Is is another kind of way in which legacy marketers could be sure that, you know, that they’re kind of doing the right thing and that, that they, they should expect to see those.

[00:24:48] Steven Dodds: Um. Uh, those legacies coming through kind of into the, into the future. Um, so yeah, so tho those are just a couple and then, and then there’s the kind of more tactical, um, kinda information around channel and touch points and what is mattering to, um, to, to, to supporters. Uh, and that goes beyond the kind of maybe the, the, the channels that the fundraiser is controlling.

[00:25:10] Steven Dodds: To the wider kind of output of a, of a charity. So to what extent is, you know, charity, social media or website kind of, um, you know, important to a supporter. And, and, and we, we, we get all those metrics in the Yeah, in the, in, in, in the index. Um, so, and, and then pointing at particular parts of the, of supporter comms as well.

[00:25:31] Steven Dodds: And what, what is it that people aren’t getting or are getting from, from supporter communications. I mean, we find that. You know, in, in, in, in improving the supporter experience, we’re trying to, the easiest lever that fundraisers can pull is that, you know, is the stuff they’re sending through the post or the, you know, or, or, or, or, or email or whatever it might be.

[00:25:49] Steven Dodds: That’s the quickest thing they can change and, um, and, and, and kind of improve. And so, yeah, helping people understand how supporters are essentially rating those comms and, and, and how they want ’em to improve is another, you know, is probably the quickest win that people can get out of, um, out of, of the safe index.

[00:26:05] Steven Dodds: Yeah. Sorry, go on. No, I was gonna say, we, we, you know, we, we, we, going back to this first point about supporters not even noticing there’s an experience, you know, that, that there’s so much upside to be had, we think in, in that, in that, in that space, you know, um, for, uh, for, for those communications to register sort of more forcefully, basically, to, to be more, be more impactful.

[00:26:29] Steven Dodds: Yeah. So that, yeah, supporters actually know that, that they are actually giving to somebody and, um, you know, uh, and, and that it’s making a difference. 

[00:26:37] Simon Scriver: Yeah. And, and I can see it being particularly helpful as a fundraiser over time, you know, comparison, comparisons over time, but really even just making yourself, um, be very deliberate in, in your actions, you know?

[00:26:48] Simon Scriver: Yeah. In terms your planning almost. Yeah. Being aware that this benchmark is something you’re gonna be held up against, so. I really recommend anyone who, uh, is interested in this, if you go to beautiful insights.com, um, they have more information around Safe, safe Index and the work they do. I highly recommend checking that out.

[00:27:04] Simon Scriver: And then obviously at the webinar, come and join us, um, for the webinar where they’ll be talking more and sharing some of these metrics and diving much deeper into it. Um, that is on the 24th of July. If you’re listening to this, after that, it is available on demand. So just go to fundraising everywhere, uh, dot com and find that.

[00:27:21] Simon Scriver: Um, but I’m curious about the future, I suppose, where, where this goes next. Is it just something that you keep measuring or what, what have you started to identify needs to happen in future years? What’s, uh, what’s the, what’s the future hold? 

[00:27:35] Steven Dodds: Oh, good question. Um, I, I mean, I guess the, uh, the data becomes more powerful the more, the more data points are in it, in terms of, you know, other, other charities.

[00:27:45] Steven Dodds: So, um, that’s, that’s certainly, that’s certainly one thing. We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re looking to is make sure we’ve got as wider kind of representation in there in terms of charity size, sector, uh, and, and, and, and, and everything else. I mean, I think, yeah, the, we’re, we’re building a kind of, we’re building a, a, a bank of, um, expertise really around.

[00:28:05] Steven Dodds: What supporters in the UK are saying they want from, from, from charities, irrespective of any particular, from any individual charity. Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah, so, so kind of leveraging the power of that, um, and, and kind of, yeah, putting more, as much of a spotlight on improving supporter experiences. We can, um, you know, for the, for the sake of the sector as it, as it were, not, not just the individual charities.

[00:28:29] Steven Dodds: Yeah, dunno if you wanna 

[00:28:31] Joan Middleton: Well, I was just gonna say one of the other benefits that we, that we found from the, from the results was that also it identified some gaps for us on, on areas of, you know, areas where we could improve. Um, in terms of direct debit or in terms of, uh, potentially other products, like, for example, raffle where we had, you know, where, where some people actually thought that they were supporting us via raffle.

[00:28:54] Joan Middleton: But, um. But then we also also stated that they would actually support us. So we are now looking at, you know, various different things in, in, you know, various different aspects of, of, um, findings that we ca that came out for us. Yeah. Brilliant. In the survey as well, so there’s also gaps. 

[00:29:14] Simon Scriver: Is there such a thing as too much data?

[00:29:16] Simon Scriver: As a digital fundraising manager, I imagine you’re gonna say No, not much data, 

[00:29:20] Joan Middleton: but never enough. 

[00:29:21] Simon Scriver: Yeah. 

[00:29:21] Joan Middleton: Yeah. 

[00:29:23] Simon Scriver: Paul, what are, what are your thoughts? What would you like, like to see this evolve into? 

[00:29:27] Paul Seabrook: What I’d really love to see is the technology exists that we can start to measure emotions that aren’t just reported emotions.

[00:29:35] Paul Seabrook: Mm-hmm. Um, so most of the work we have to do, the survey work we do, it is getting people to. Report how they feel, how it makes people feel. But there’s some quite well this sort of technology tools emerging that are sort of more in depth about actually how you measure, um, emotions. We’ve been trying some of that haven’t we, Steven, on the um, uh, sort of, uh, wearables that people wear and that kind of starts to measure some other, uh, kind of deeper emotions.

[00:30:04] Paul Seabrook: We we’re not that confident yet on the technology, but it’s getting better all the time. There’s also, um, eye tracking. Inputs that people can have when they’re looking at communications, et cetera. Again, we haven’t seen seen good progress in that.

[00:30:23] Paul Seabrook: You know, we have quite a strong belief that, you know, it’s that it’s that head and heart relationship, and that’s not just what we think. We have to know how supporters react, but supporters know that, but they don’t really know how they react. Sometimes we talk about the head is the one that listens and notices.

[00:30:37] Paul Seabrook: It’s the heart, the response. You’ve gotta get noticed, and that’s where the head comes in. But people are very functional and rational. The thing that makes them respond is that emotional response that, that art trigger. So, um, yeah, I’m not saying we’ve. People in, you know, sort of wearing kind of heart, you know, kind of monitors, et cetera.

[00:30:55] Paul Seabrook: But it’s, that’s I think where, you know, we can start it, it, it’s, we’ve gotta be really quite focused on getting that really emotional connection. Some of that, though, I know the technology will be great to have in place, but. You know, one of the things we’ve used in the past is doing ab tests with sample, where you ask a set of questions to one people, uh, to both groups.

[00:31:17] Paul Seabrook: Sorry, but one group, you’ve shown them one of your adverts first, et cetera. Or just got ’em in a different frame of mind and see how different the results are between them, because that’s showing what that emotional kind of stimulus has done to somebody to answer them. Some, some, you know, kind of rational questions.

[00:31:34] Paul Seabrook: Mm-hmm. Um, I, I think the other thing we’re always. Focused on is making sure, as, as Joan said, there’s lots and lots of data, but it’s making sure, um, it’s actionable. You’re doing something with it. And we, we often really try and focus on the quick wins. One of the things this is telling you that you need to focus on now, or you can start to affect now, but then the longer term.

[00:31:55] Paul Seabrook: Things as well, which might take more budget, more effort, um, or patience. As you’ve said. There’s often a, a, a, a need for spend this now, get that back tomorrow. Um, we, we, we get that, but then if you constantly doing that, then it’s always gonna be very short term. Mm. And actually sort the longer term impact has gotta be.

[00:32:17] Paul Seabrook: Sometimes you’ve gotta have that confidence to take that step and go on that journey. 

[00:32:21] Steven Dodds: Mm. You know? 

[00:32:21] Paul Seabrook: Supportive journey. I think organizational journeys as well, sort of making sure that, you know, we know that what we’re gonna do is gonna have a, a longer term impact mm-hmm. Uh, going forward. So yeah. And we are learning all the time with the data that we have in and we can sort of strengthen the relationships and the clusters between, you know, what people say they’re gonna do, what they actually do.

[00:32:44] Paul Seabrook: Um, because that’s when you start to get the sort of repeat. Process going on, and then you can sort of see what actual behavior is. So, um, yeah, I’m, we’re obviously excited about it. We’re bound to say we are, but I think it’s something that we just know that when we’re reporting it back to clients, there’s often moments of frustration, Dr.

[00:33:05] Paul Seabrook: Manage, defense, or know we’re better than that. But there’s always that sort of moment of realization, I think, which is, yeah, actually that’s, that’s starting just to kind of nicely put. Some of the anecdotes in, in place. 

[00:33:18] Jade Cunnah: Mm-hmm. 

[00:33:18] Paul Seabrook: Uh, help us get a bit more sort of evidence to support, you know, where we want to go 

[00:33:24] Simon Scriver: in 

[00:33:24] Paul Seabrook: future.

[00:33:25] Simon Scriver: Yeah. Well I really, I really appreciate the beautiful insights approach. It always seems to be very, I suppose, um, uh, patient and very realistic in terms of what we can do. ’cause we know fundraisers are under a lot of pressure, so it’s, it’s no use to just come in and paint all these things that are wrong.

[00:33:40] Simon Scriver: Um, I always find you guys have a much more kind of moderate approach in terms of realistic. Uh, step by step fixing this thing and making stuff seem a bit pla plainer and, and more manageable, you know, so I do, I do really appreciate that. Uh, I would say to anyone listening, um, find out more about beautiful insights@beautifulinsights.com, where you can in particular learn more about that safe index, and they will be back with us on the webinar next week.

[00:34:03] Simon Scriver: But in between, or if someone’s listening back to, uh, uh, on demand. Where do people find you? Uh, Steven, where do people keep in touch, uh, with you if they wanna throw more questions at you? 

[00:34:13] Steven Dodds: Uh, we, we are on LinkedIn of course. Uh, do you know what? We’re not on x. Um, but, uh, they can contact us at hello@beautifulinsights.com.

[00:34:22] Steven Dodds: steven@beautifulinsights.com. paul@beautifulinsights.com on our website. We’ll also down you can also download, um, a kind of summary of the insights that we’ve seen so far. Yes. Uh, from the Safe, from the Safe Index and if you, uh, so desire, book an appointment with us to, uh, find out in more detail whether it’s, uh, able to help you.

[00:34:40] Steven Dodds: Um, uh, improve your support experience. 

[00:34:42] Simon Scriver: Amazing. Thank you Steven. And you Paul, where do people find you? Are you big Instagram kind of guy, TikTok? Where are you at? Where’s you mainly at? 

[00:34:49] Paul Seabrook: Um, no, I was gonna try and sort of come up with a very sort of strategic answer, but no, not really. Um. No link. LinkedIn is probably the best place to sort of find this.

[00:34:59] Paul Seabrook: Um, I’m quite active with the Charter Institute of Fundraising special interest, interest group on, uh, data in fundraising. Um, so, uh, yeah, there’s sort of, you can see some of our kind of work there as well. But yeah, um, we have a, uh, an easy kind of way through our website reaching out to us. One of the things we offered to, um, charities is a sort of a, a, a, a kind of feasibility check just to see if you’ve got sort of the data coverage, um, to run a safe index project.

[00:35:32] Paul Seabrook: Uh, and that’s often the first step we, we take with clients. 

[00:35:35] Simon Scriver: Yeah. Excellent. I highly, uh, recommend getting in touch about that. Do book in a meeting, do um, have a chat with the guys. They’re very, very helpful. Uh, and we will link to the website in the description of this episode as well. So you have that there.

[00:35:48] Simon Scriver: And Joan, of course, people are gonna go to Starlight, uh, and, and try and break your forms while they’re donating lots and lots of money. Fabulous. But where else will people find you? Where else can people get? 

[00:35:59] Joan Middleton: Um, I’m kind of on LinkedIn, not very much, but I am on LinkedIn. Um, but if you wanna email me my name, my email is joan.Middleton@starlight.org.uk.

[00:36:09] Joan Middleton: I’ll have a chat. So 

[00:36:11] Simon Scriver: I’m getting, I’m getting a very reluctantly on LinkedIn vibe from all of you. I’m very, 

[00:36:18] Steven Dodds: I’m not, I’m not reluctant about it. I’m not reluctant about it on there. You know, 

[00:36:21] Paul Seabrook: my problem with LinkedIn is I go there to post something and I, I get lost in an amazing kind of story and timelines and it’s just great to see what people have been up to.

[00:36:32] Paul Seabrook: So. It, it’s, I guess that’s the power, isn’t it? I’m just, I’m always, I’m thinking I was gonna be really, really focused here. This literally post onto the post, but I’ve already got distracted and read a really interesting article. 

[00:36:44] Simon Scriver: Forgot. They know, they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re doing.

[00:36:47] Simon Scriver: Oh yeah. Okay. Thank you everyone. It’s been so wonderful to chat to you. And thank you so much for making the time. And thank you all for listening. Um, uh, for listening. My name is Simon Reiber, um, from fundraising Everywhere. Do reach out to us if you have any questions. Otherwise, we hope to see you. At the webinar next week, do check the description for the link to that book Your Place where if you’re listening to this after, you can go back and watch that on demand.

[00:37:09] Simon Scriver: Um, but as always, please feel free to reach out to us@fundraisingeverywhere.com. Uh, if there’s anything you wanna chat about. Thank you so much for listening and take care. Thank you.

[00:37:21] Simon Scriver: We’ll get some good theme music. Yeah. 

[00:37:25] Alex Aggidis: Thank you so much for listening to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. If you’re enjoying this podcast, why not share it with a fundraising friend? And if you would like to give us a little like of Scribe, it really helps more fundraisers let you find us. Thank you so much.

[00:37:39] Alex Aggidis: See you next time.

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