BANES CVS Group

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BANES CVS Group

• HOW TO RECESSION PROOF YOUR FUNDRAISING
• Angela Emms, Centre Director
• 11th February 2009
• angela_at_rainbowcentre.org.uk 0117 9853354

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• Business will be good when you dont expect it!

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Anticipating and minimising the impact of the
recessionon your organisations net income

• 1  Our donors perspective
• 2  Tactical options
• 3  Strategic options
• 4  Winning organisation-wide support
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Our donors perspective

• Individuals
• Reduced confidence in their financial future
• Less likely to commit / upgrade
• Taking longer to decide
• Tendency to shop around
• Less inclined to splash the cash
• Value of legacies will decline

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Our donors perspective

• Companies
• winners and losers, sector by sector 

• reduced budgets
• bigger bangs for their bucks
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Our donors perspective

• Trusts
• fewer new grants
• tightening criteria

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Tactical options

• Donor recruitment
• Expect a lower ROI
• Reduce investment at the margin to maintain
  overall net income
• Consider digital opportunities
• Make the most of recruitment opportunities across
  all activities

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Tactical options

• Donor retention and development
• Focus on quality of communications
• Lower threshold for more personalised
  communications
• Work hard to retain regular donors
• Upgrades be empathetic and sensitive
• Consider payment holidays
• Dont be afraid to say what impact you are
  feeling

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Tactical options

• Legacy marketing
• Keep investing it will pay dividends later!
• Mention legacies in everything you produce
  leaflets, annual reports etc

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Tactical options

• Community groups and shop volunteers
• Volunteers frontline sales force
• Give them the tools to promote multiple ways to
  support your organisation
•  Events
• Rethink your portfolio
• Glitzy events ???
• Challenge events expect a lower ROI
• Discontinue marginal activities

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Tactical options

• Major Gifts
• Major factor source of wealth
• If active, keep investing
• If not, postpone?
• Extend likely cultivation period
• Corporate sources
• Especially volatile
• Focus on benefits to them eg differentiation,
  image, customers
• Deliver more PR / column inches

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Tactical options

• Trusts and foundations
• Lower hit rate likely
• Focus on the fit with their criteria
• Sharpen definition of
• deliverables
• outcomes
• impact

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Strategic options

• Simplify - focus on higher ROI activities
• Integrate - make the most of synergies between
  activities, eg recruitment
• Diversify - offer other ways to stay involved
• Restructure - to reduce costs
• Raise profile and awareness
• Invest more to maintain net income - albeit with
  a lower ROI

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Winning organisation-wide support

• We are all ambassadors
• Involve the CEO and FD in the challenges
• Avoid knee jerk reactions
• Cut less productive, lower ROI activities
• Ensure realism, including eg
• revise organisational expenditure
• avoid fundraising investment being led by cash
  flow

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In summary

• Concentrate on what you do best
• Do it better!
• Be decisive - be bold
• Hold your nerve believe
• Dont forget the fortune cookie!
• Be your very best!

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