As fundraisers we need to juggle, juggle so many relationships and responsibilities in copious contexts – feeling like we are being judged in all of them.

Consider too those working in smaller organisations, those who in addition to juggling the responsibilities of solo-fundraising, also have the liabilities of service delivery, leadership, communications, volunteer management and more tossed into the mix.

However, let’s not compare the struggles of others to our own, it is hard for all of us, isn’t it? No wonder burnout too often rears its head and the balls fall to the floor, cascading our issues to those who have to pick them up.

Funny way to start a blog you might think. But maybe not if this is why you haven’t yet taken up the opportunity to try out coaching with the funded session that comes as part of your membership with Fundraising Everywhere. 

You may also be telling yourself that…

⏰ I don’t have time. 

🎯 I have no big challenge to bring to my session.

😞 I am worried I might get upset. 

❓ I don’t know what to expect.

💸 I am going to save my session for something important!

However, they say prevention is better than cure, in fact it is a fundamental principle of modern health care. It’s better to stop something before it happens, instead of having to deal with its consequences after the problem has already happened or the damage already done. And by the way your coach will share with you information about what to expect, and answer any questions you may have.

So, are you ready to talk. Ready to plan for the unexpected?

Not quite yet. 

Ok. 

Maybe I have made you a little curious about coaching, and how it may be of benefit to you.

Julie, Head of Fundraising was curious and so she booked her funded coaching session with me recently and this is what she said:

“I have always been interested in exploring the benefits of coaching, but I wasn’t quite sure what it would entail. The initial session was the perfect introduction to understanding coaching and gave me a full insight into how it could work for me. I would highly recommend!”

Highly recommended, praise indeed.

I have always really enjoyed collaborating with others, be it the many bands I started as a teenager, group research projects at university, co-op gaming online in the evenings or building a career in face to face fundraising – give me people, and I am happy. Having the confidence to try something new isn’t always easy, but the best punt I ever took was knocking on a stranger’s door, aged 21, and saying “Hello, have you got a moment to talk?”

I immediately fell in love with fundraising; the incredible causes I was able to represent, the inspiring impact of each conversation I had, the soft skills I was rapidly developing without even noticing. All this immeasurably built my confidence both professionally and personally. Of course, more than anything, I stuck with fundraising for the incredible people who gave me these opportunities and put their all into doing a very difficult yet vital job every day.

Collaboration and Confidence

Fast forward 5 years, I’m at a major fundraising agency managing sites and I saw a few key problems that needed urgent attention. One was sustainability of access, as we often saw the plug pulled on charity bookings after a single piece of negative feedback from a customer or staff member. Sometimes the complaints were fair, often they were not, but either way the site management usually saw no option but to ban all charities until further notice – they did not have any monitoring or quality control processes in place, and did not seek to implement them.

The second problem was a lack of accountability for the quality of private sites and rates being charged. When I discussed private sites with peers in the sector we often found we had all been sold the same unworkable site one after another, all being told how popular it was. We also found that rates were being inflated at the most in demand sites as we were played off against each other for bids to secure them. All in all, we were navigating quite choppy waters.

We set up Green Light Sites with two goals in mind; to build collaboration and inspire confidence. We shared anecdotal feedback on sites between our clients, and developed an in depth team auditing process (Unicef told us this led to a team achieving their highest sign up rate in 4 weeks). We gained access to new and exciting sites such as Westfield shopping centres, while pushing rates down in other key locations UK wide. Overall we offered huge value to both sides by creating much more sustainable and mutually beneficial booking agreements.

Eight thousand hours later…

When lockdown hit we had the opportunity to reflect, and the necessity to innovate. Returning to face to face was going to be a challenge and we were determined to support the sector that gave us so much on this journey. In part we were well prepped for the new ways of working as we all already worked completely flexible hours from home. This is when our auditing became what it is today. By developing brand new processes we were able to offer our unique auditing product for street, telephone and even door to door teams. We added modules on team management, individual work rate, COVID safety and environmental impact to ensure these reports inspired as much confidence for the fundraisers as it did the venues.

It’s now 4 years later and we have gathered what we believe is the most in depth set of performance and compliance data face to face has yet seen. Overall we’ve observed over 8000 hours of fundraising since then (3300 of those last year) and the incredible ambition, professionalism and determination of fundraisers in the UK is plain to see. For example, last year our clients generated a third of the number of complaints per donor compared to the industry average. We can’t wait to share and celebrate all this and more with you all at Fundraising Everywhere’s Face to Face and Telephone conference on April 17th. If you’d like a copy of our 2023 benchmarking report please get in touch too.

I’ve always known F2F fundraisers are some of the most amazing people on the planet, and now I’m delighted to say we have the stats to prove it

Stress Awareness Day falls this week, and we will likely see content about stress, and coping strategies. 

Most of us are all too aware of stress, which the HSE defines as ‘the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them’. 

Fundraisers are part of a charity ecosystem that has never had a greater need to innovate, adapt, and deliver. We need to ‘do more, with less’. We need to be ‘resilient’. Many fundraisers need to be and do that with little support and development, within existing, or dwindling resources, whilst facing structural discrimination, inequality, or harassment, and in the context of difficult workplace relationships. 

To solve the challenges that we face, we want to be at our best. 

We should be able to look up and out with confidence to see opportunities on the horizon, and able to support those we lead with directness and empathy.

Awareness days and ‘moments’ can be helpful in drawing attention to a topic, but when it comes to promoting good mental health and preventing psychological injury at work, there needs to be sustainable action year-round.

This is a different blog to many you might read. 

Yes, there are some tips for things you might do to build your resilience where you can, but it’s more about what organisations can and should be doing to change the nature of work to make our profession sustainable and successful. 

The things we can do ourselves. 

Social feeds always seem to be full of things we can do to change our world or live our best life. If we are powerless to change our circumstances, it can seem like this kind of content mocks our challenges or leans into a privilege we don’t have.  

That said, most of us can find small steps to take, both as acts of self-care in challenging times and as part of more sustainable habits to bring to our work and lives.

Getting the basics in place can make a big difference especially when things are hard. Could your sleep be better? How’s your diet? Are you drinking enough water? What about getting outside in the light, or getting some exercise? 

Recently the Mental Health Foundation published a new set of evidence-based tips for looking after your mental health and whilst some may seem obvious, it’s amazing how often we forget them. 

It can be hard to find time, or money to do the things we’d like, so where employers can support and incentivise these activities with employee benefits, it can be a big help. We also need to understand that not everybody can adopt these strategies without help and support.

Of course, when we are in it, and up against it, stress, burnout and overwhelm are awful things to experience and it can be hard to imagine how we can change things for ourselves. When our mental health is challenged our minds often take us away from things that might help but seem counter intuitive – like exercise. We can also judge ourselves very harshly, so working on self-compassion skills in better times can really help. The Overwhelm First Aid Kit is a good resource to have on hand if you often find that you don’t know what the next step could be.

You may find that your employer offers an employee assistance programme which can be helpful in accessing counselling, or that you have access to benefits like this through a spouse’s employer, insurance or health plan. Samaritans is open 24/7, every day of the year, and you can call for free on 116 123.

What do leaders and organisations need to consider?

Managers, leaders, and boards need to be aware of their duties under the law, and the wider implications for performance, staff engagement, recruitment, and retention of talent in not acting. 

As a sector, we often build out around the mission without the policies, systems and structures that enable organisations to function effectively when they grow. Passion and commitment often drive us forward and can help us cope with challenges – but dedication can also lead to our people going beyond or being pushed beyond their boundaries and into stress or burnout. 

Burnout itself is often seen as a personal issue, but it has been categorised by the World Health Organisation as a “syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” Because so many of the factors that lead to workplace stress can’t be changed by individuals alone, or mitigated by simple solutions, burnout is very definitely an organisational challenge requiring organisational efforts to prevent. 

So where to start?

All strategy starts with a clear definition of where you want to get to – which for most charities will be sustainable delivery of the charitable objects and mission. 

Sustainability has often been about funding, and more recently also about environmental impact – but sustainability also includes supporting the major asset of most charities – the people who deliver the work.

Psychological safety is a term coined by Professor Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School and it is key for fundraisers to succeed. Psychologically safe cultures create a space where people feel safe to speak up, take risks and learn from mistakes. 

If you think about it, that’s where the gold lies in terms of high performance – Edmondson calls this the learning zone – where we are pushed by high standards and accountability but balanced by the safety and security to speak up, be heard, and grow. 

Getting there is far from simple, but the reward can be huge.

A good place to start is with the fundamentals of good management. Line management relationships are crucial to workplace wellbeing, and it is crucial that people managers have the training and support they need to do that alongside the ‘delivery’ components that are asked of them.

As a supervisor, managing for good mental health might include ensuring that your team know what is expected of them, can see their efforts paying off, and sees you consistently applying the policies and processes in your organisation. It means receiving and acting on concerns and having difficult conversations directly but with kindness. It means building your self-awareness, setting boundaries, and committing to people management as a privilege and not a chore. 

As a senior manager, it could mean committing to assess and manage stress risk by using the HSE stress risk assessment framework, putting a wellbeing metric on your board dashboard, or ensuring that your policies and procedures are inclusive, applied, and create minimal drag or dependencies. It could mean introducing a coaching programme, or employee benefits.

Leadership is more about values – showing integrity, and inspiring trust. Leadership isn’t always about job titles that loads of amazing movements for change and improved wellbeing – like #showthesalary, #charitysowhite and #charitysostraight have come out of collaborations at all levels. 

As leaders, we need to understand our values, and how they blend with those of the organisation. If we commit to leading by example asking people to push themselves to new heights, then we must be prepared to grow and change and we must deliver what we say we will. We must also model the behaviour we want to see. We may even need to reimagine the way charities operate to truly meet the challenges people face – and therefore deliver sustainable impact to beneficiaries.

Wherever we are personally or organisationally, there’s a lot of good information, and good work happening in this field, and there are huge opportunities for peer networks and sharing of ideas.

Fundraising Everywhere also has an amazing new leadership programme for existing and aspiring leaders, which includes access to great content and free coaching taster sessions. Check it out.

The world (and the sector) is on fire.

Then there is also the cost of living crisis. It’s hitting society, and our sector hard. Charities (especially smaller ones) are on their knees, and many are closing. The sector is doing what it can, but it’s within the systems and structures we’ve built around ourselves. 

It isn’t joined up enough. We’re all trying to put out our individual fires whilst a volcano is erupting around us.

To solve systemic issues we need to work collaboratively, but we’re not. Not enough, anyway. Good people are shouldering this burden, burning out and leaving the sector forever. Who can blame them when the scale of the issues is so huge?

Why isn’t there more focus on that? #ProudFundraiser doesn’t really cut it, does it?

Why do we ask donors to do things we are not doing ourselves?

We constantly ask donors to mobilise. To come together and become more than the sum of their parts. To be a collective lightning rod for change. But what about the sector itself? How can we ask people to be collaborative when we as charities, funders, agencies and consultants don’t collaborate enough?

Most of the change we need to see in the world is system change. There isn’t a single charity on the planet that can change deeply rooted, structural systems on their own. We have to put cause before organisation. We have to work together.

Look at the hate, bile and division the Tories are pumping out now. Look at how they view the role of charities. How they want us to be either toothless and appreciative, or to just f*** off under a rock somewhere. Do you think this is going to get better?

Hate, that was once hinted at and alluded to, is now public. It’s platformed, celebrated and central to policy. We need to be as calculated and single minded as they are. We need to fight back.

This fight is beyond our roles, our remits and our salary bands. That’s why it needs all of us.

The sector needs to mobilise.

Working for a charity doesn’t necessarily make you a good person. But my God we need good people right now. Good people who are pulling together across the sector. Good people who can collectively push for change. Good people that see beyond the boundaries of their charity and want to tackle the root causes collectively. Not for brand, or ego, or a bullet point on your CV, but for society. For humanity.

It should start at the top, but we can’t wait that long.

Ideally, this would start with leaders. Senior charity people coming together and setting a mandate for change, for a new way of tackling system change. But we can’t wait that long. Some brilliant collaboration is happening, but it does need dialing up significantly, and it needs to be the default.

We all need to set the precedent for collaborative working. We just need to get on with it. At every level. In every organisation.

So what can we do?

We can start by celebrating cross sector collaboration. We can intentionally seek it out. We can learn from it. We can start it ourselves. We can get involved in as much of it as we can. We can have a collaborative mindset. We can take it seriously.

We can approach every single issue by asking ourselves “How do we solve this collaboratively?” We can make sure that every strategy we produce has partnership at its core. We can shift power to every example of it we see. We can amplify it. We can build it into how we all work.

The more we do, and the more learnings and success we have, the more others will get involved. We need to light the spark. This is how we push back.

Let’s practise what we preach.

We’ve spent years fine tuning our skills at mobilising the public at scale. Now we need to mobilise ourselves. 

Cross sector collaboration isn’t a ‘nice to have’ any more. It’s how we win.

Fundraising in the post cookie world

Third party cookies have been used in fundraising for as long as charities have been running digital campaigns. They track individuals by leaving a tag on a web browser. This way someone can be identified in one place (an ad), remembered and then observed taking an action in another place (leaving a donation on a website).

Cookies can measure this over long periods of time, if one person uses multiple devices and even if they view things but don’t click them. Cookies have been used to build retargeting audiences and power modelling for targeting new audiences. They’ve had lots of uses. And they’re about to disappear. 

This is a good thing. The move toward a privacy and transparency-centric web is behind this. It began with regulation in 2018, was followed by moves from tech companies like Apple’s iOS14.5 update and it’s looking like it will end with Google Chrome discontinuing cookies next year.

They are going – but what does this mean for charities? Well, some change and short term pain, but longer term opportunities for ethical and sustainable fundraising.

So what do you need to do to prepare?

Get ready for GA4

Google Analytics uses cookies. Google Analytics 4 has been built as a solution, which uses a combination of first party cookies in conjunction with AI which fills in gaps in the data. 

Google has provided all users of the old GA with GA4 accounts, and now is the time to check all is working ok. Old accounts won’t receive data at the end of June, so it’s important to see if your new account can report on the same information the old one did. You might need a developer or a Google Tag Manager user if you have a complicated setup. You should also download the data from your old GA, as that won’t move across.

New social tracking

Social media companies offer cookieless solutions for measurement and optimisations of ad campaigns. This has previously been done by pixels – code which uses third party identifiers like cookies. The major social networks now offer conversion APIs to do something similar, which use server to server connections rather than cookies. These will need setup work.

First party focus

First party data collected with appropriate consent will be a legitimate way to target individuals in the future and nurturing these databases will be a hugely important digital strategy for the cookieless future. First party data might include email address, phone number or postal address, all of which can be used online to target. As GA4 data is first party it can be used to segment digital audiences too.

Understanding the implications of the change 

We’ll need to accept that even with the best preparation things won’t be the same in the post-cookie world. The biggest change will be to the measurement of digital advertising campaigns. Fewer conversions will be counted by tracking tools, and the ad algorithms will receive fewer conversion signals, which may in turn lead to poorer optimisation. 

This will affect some channels more than others. Display relies a lot on cookies to track response as those ads aren’t very clicky, and often a conversion happens a long time after ad interaction. You may find that very few conversions are counted from display in the future, but other channels like PPC which are much more click based are still counted.

It will affect some campaigns more than others, too. Getting someone to sign up to a marathon involves a long decision making process which might take the runner 2 weeks to decide on. This will be harder to track than something like a petition sign ask, which can be responded to quickly.

It’s important to understand that not tracking a result may not mean a campaign isn’t performing. To analyse performance you might look at other metrics like viewability, clicks and quality of site traffic. We may even see more offline styles of measurement being reapplied online, like sending traffic to different pages, offer codes or A/B testing of locations. The offline world hasn’t ever used cookies but it gets by. 

Some methods of targeting will need to change, but not all of them. Remarketing won’t be possible in the same way in the future, as this has relied on third party cookies to build audiences. In terms of prospecting, programmatic display uses cookies to build audiences. In the post-cookie world we might see a rise in display using contextual targeting methods, like placing a challenge event ad in a sports article.

Social ad platforms will have less targeting data if it has been collected from the pixel outside of the social apps, but any interest data collected from people using apps like Instagram is considered first party to Meta and will still be available for use. This means that the tech giants like Meta and Google will continue to be leaders in personalised targeting.

Innovation and Integration

Strategies need to be future proof. It’s going to be harder to measure the responses from a big ask on a digital ad in the future. This might give the sector the opportunity to question whether this strategy was good in the first place. Should the majority of cold communications involve asking for money, a legacy or other large commitments? There is evidence to show this is damaging to charity brands in the long term.

Focusing on what can be measured effectively – for instance lower commitment actions like email subscriptions, campaigning actions and pledges will be both possible in the future and a better entry point into the supporter journey.

There will be other untapped engagement opportunities in digital and innovation here will be crucial. There will be value wherever we capture first party data for conversion at a later stage. This means that integration between charity silos will become more important than ever. It may not be people’s first interaction with us that drives the value – but gathering that first party data will be essential for growth.

There should be more emphasis on the quality of creative, consistency of message and supporter journey to ensure longer lasting and ethical relationships with donors in the post-cookie world.

She has discovered that Alice, the woman she’s been dating, has used Mabel’s life as inspiration for a piece of art. Seeing her painful personal history played out by actors, Mabel feels like she’s been catapulted back in time. In reality, she’s moved on – but the artwork has frozen her in the past. Stripped of its context, filtered through Alice’s own experience, the story paints a portrait of Mabel that she doesn’t recognise.

Being trapped in time

When charities share the stories of those they support, this is sometimes what we do, too. Through words, film or pictures, we capture people in a particular set of circumstances: circumstances that, given the nature of our work, we hope will quickly change for the better. We reduce them to the challenge they are facing. We trap them in time.

As a sector, I think we are starting to acknowledge the damage we do when we treat people’s stories as our property. In recent years, there’s been a real shift in the way charities are approaching fundraising storytelling, particularly when it comes to the way we represent the people we serve. Organisations working internationally – the sub-sector I’m most familiar with – are coming to terms with the harm they’ve caused through decades of reductive storytelling that centres the charity rather than the contributor.

How do we change course?

There is broad consensus as to the direction we all need to move in: one that puts people – their rights, preferences, agency, and wellbeing – first. But from what I’ve seen, there’s less certainty when it comes to how to change course. So how do we begin to shift the balance? Here are some ideas.

1. It sounds trite – but as an individual, all you can do is start where you are. Think about the decision-making processes you are part of or have access to. Is there anyone in your orbit you can influence, whether upwards, downwards, or horizontally?
   
   
2. Examine your content production processes through the lens of power. Who has a say – and when? How can editorial control be shared so that the people telling their stories feel a sense of control over both process and product?

3. Review your approach to consent. When people are giving you permission to share their stories, are they giving it freely and fully? Is that consent informed, and does it have an end-point? Do people know how to get in touch with you if they change their minds?

4. When it comes to building consensus within your organisation, you might find it helpful to start with something concrete, like auditing your image library or reviewing your language guidance. A tangible task can serve as a springboard for broader conversations and more fundamental change.

5. Alternatively, you might prefer to begin at a more abstract level. Why not start a book club, or organise a screening of a film that deals with some of the themes you’re thinking about?

6. Rethink risk: As a sector, we can be very risk-averse. And yes, we must be conscious of financial and reputational risk in everything we do – but ultimately, the biggest risk we run is damaging our relationships with the people we support. Once lost, that trust is hard to get back.

7. Set aside the assumption that stories told ethically won’t be as compelling. When we let contributors control the way they’re depicted, we can discover new creative possibilities: stories, and ways of telling them, that would never have occurred to us.

8. Get people on board by framing storytelling as an extension of service-delivery: ideally, the way we talk about our work should be consistent with the way we approach that work. The two should be governed by the same values, and our beneficiaries should be able to hold us to account when we get things wrong.

9. Start small. A/B test new messaging, maybe just on one channel. Measure the results, scale up what works – and share your findings.

10. Ask! See this as an opportunity for engagement. Seek feedback on your storytelling from contributors, as well as from your supporters: they, too, are ready for change.

Final thoughts

There’s a strong argument to be made that to be truly meaningful – and sustainable – changes to our storytelling need to happen in parallel to, and as part of, broader and more fundamental shifts in the role charities occupy. I think that’s true. But I am also convinced that, when it comes to moving away from deeply embedded, decades-old ways of doing things, even small changes are worth pursuing – and we all have a part to play.

Rachel Erskine is a fundraising and communications consultant working primarily for Nairobi-based public health NGO Amref Health Africa. You can find her at @erskinerachel.