MAG plans donor boom to double unrestricted funds

Fundraising | Niki May Young | 20 Dec 2011

Mines Advisory Group (MAG) is aiming to increase its UK donor base by sixfold over the next three to five years in a bid to almost double its unrestricted funds.

It has appointed communications agency Creative Concern to help drive awareness of its work and thus attract 15,000 new donors through what it describes as a “radical new marketing strategy”.

Phil Robertshaw, fundraising business development manager at MAG, told civilsociety.co.uk that the charity is currently undertaking a rigorous profiling of existing audiences in order to target the marketing, which will have a heavy emphasis on social media. "It is likely to play strongly on the emotive stills and video from the ground where we work," he added.

MAG exists to clear the remnants of conflict for the benefit of war-torn communities worldwide. It was the co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines which led to the international agreement to the Mine Ban Treaty (also known as the Ottawa Convention) in the same year.

Robertshaw said that increasing the number of individual donors would allow the organisation more freedom within the countries in which it works:

"The bulk of our money currently comes from government and multi-lateral sources, and is tied to individual projects. Government funding has very finite start and stop dates. We identified a need to grow our unrestricted income to allow us to put the money to the most important place at any one time.

"An example of this is Libya, where we were able to respond quickly to the emergency and carry out crucial work at an early stage thanks to our unrestricted funds."

MAG currently generates £1.1m per year from public donations, a small percentage of its £30m overall income. By increasing the number of donors from 2,500 to 15,000, the charity hopes to generate a further £900,000 per year of unrestricted funds.

The charity hopes its marketing strategy will go live in early spring next year.

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