Recruiting new donors for a charity has never been harder, or costlier. We’re seeing charities we work with paying hundreds of pounds per new regular donor and not expecting to get their money back for many years, as many as ten. Many nonprofits simply can’t find enough new donors to replace attrition and are seeing … Continue reading Seven ways to find new donors

  At AAW we seem to be doing ever more international fundraising consulting, as part of our work with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and with other clients. For a long time I've been interested in how fundraising differs across the world. What is the same and what is different from market … Continue reading Where are the best fundraising markets?

It is now over 20 years since face to face fundraising in its modern form was introduced to the UK market. Paid fundraisers had actually been used for many years previously to recruit charity supporters door to door onto some form of regular giving but it was in 1997 that a fundraising agency working for … Continue reading Does Face to Face have a future?

I've been consulting now for just over three years, on my own and now with Astarita Aldrich & Ward,  and I've just finished my fiftieth project. It's been quite a journey, I've worked with non-profits with incomes from £200,000 to £2bn across a dozen or more countries and covering a huge range of issues and … Continue reading A half century

With the recent Oxfam "scandal" (don't get me started - I think the scandal is the media onslaught on one of our best charities) concentrating attention of the UK aid and development sector, it seems like a good time to review how the fundraising of the international development NGOs has been doing recently. As anyone … Continue reading Tough times for the Aid Agencies

One of the mild curiosities of working in the charity sector is the comparative neglect of legacies. Despite their enormous value to charities, the promotion of legacies frequently seems the forgotten area of fundraising. The value is indisputable.  Legacy Foresight’s report, Legacy Giving 2016, shows that charitable legacy giving is worth £2.24bn. Around 20% of … Continue reading 5 Steps to Drive Legacy Giving

It’s been a tumultuous couple of years in fundraising. Just about every aspect of our industry has been put under the microscope and in many cases the results haven’t been pretty. Press outrage and an inadequate or supine response from sector leaders has resulted in a combination of increased donor distrust and additional burdensome regulation. … Continue reading A New Fundraising Year

For a very long time it seems, we have been waiting for major giving in the UK to grow to the levels of the US. Or even Canada. Much ink has been spilt on the subject by sector commentators. A series of reviews, think tanks and roundtables have discussed the subject in all its permutations. … Continue reading How do we engage our board in major giving? Lessons from North America

One of the minor mysteries of the third sector is the vast disparity between the resources and attention devoted to acquiring new supporters compared to those focused on developing existing relationships. As a consequence we see an enormous issue of donor churn. According to the US Association of Fundraising Professionals*, only 26% of donors making … Continue reading The Ten Principles of Donor Engagement

With charities’ fundraising practices under increasing scrutiny there’s more and more  focus on ensuring that campaigns to bring in new supporters don’t bring a charity into disrepute. So we shouldn’t be surprised to find that major charities are increasingly using more positive messaging in activities aimed at recruiting new donors. For example both WaterAid and … Continue reading Does good news sell?