Data. It’s on every fundraiser’s radar. But in the face of ever more data being generated, what do fundraisers actually need? Celina Ribeiro reflects on yesterday’s Fundraising First Thing debate about data in fundraising


Data is the bread and butter of fundraising. It’s the foundation. The skeleton. Without data, fundraising is more guesswork, less secure and far less professional.

So the deluge of data we now find ourselves in from social media and elsewhere must be great for fundraisers – right? Hmmm. If only the sector could figure out whether, how and when it should capture it.

Yesterday saw the debut of a new series of events, Fundraising First Thing, where Fundraising Magazine draws on its main feature for the month – in March, it’s all about CRM and data – to bring together top speakers and a small group of fundraisers to thresh out some of the biggest issues of the day. RNLI’s Lee Gisbourne and Ciara Bosworth from the British Heart Foundation shared their experiences and thoughts before turning it over to the floor which itself was heaving with experience and opinion.

It was a sell-out event (if you don’t want to miss participating in our next debate on The Future of Mass Participation on 15 May, get your tickets quick smart), so here’s a round up of some of the big themes from the debate.

1.    ‘It’s not just about CRM anymore’

Should social data be captured and transferred to your charity’s CRM? For RNLI, social data is one of the lowest priorities for its new CRM project – however, is that a bad thing? Bosworth pointed out that having a database entry which is limited to a Twitter handle which has retweeted one of your charity’s tweets is near enough to worthless. ‘It’s not just about CRM anymore,” said the woman who heads data at the British Heart Foundation. CRM is still worth it’s weight in gold, she said, but unless you see a genuine impact from a social media follower then it’s not worth clogging up your database. Use free and premium analytics to record this activity – and use it as a base to judge against future campaigns – but fundraisers need to come to terms with the fact that a lot of social data simple isn’t ‘capturable’. And, as a result, fundraisers need to communicate with these audiences in a new, different way.

2.    Supporters – even those who don’t use social – want you to be social

RNLI has an older donorbase, many of which are not on social media at all. However, said Gisbourne, that doesn’t mean that those very same supporters don’t expect your charity to be on social media. RNLI found that its supporters were so passionate that they were determined the charity get onto social networks so it can engage with new generations of supporters.

Which brings me neatly to the next theme: even incredibly ‘successful’ campaigns like RNLI’s #SaveWave struggled to raise funds. And it’s not enough to claim that ‘it’s raising awareness’ anymore, most people agreed. Bosworth said organisations need to be clear about what it wants to drive towards, and from there figure out what its data needs to do. Voices from the floor agreed; Twitter itself leads to spikes, but social media engagement needs to be viewed as part of a long term strategy – and as such, monitoring, evaluation and recording is critical.

3.    People want to hear from people

One of the delegates, Eleanor Harrison from Globalgiving, drew many nods when she said people want to hear from people on social media. They don’t want to hear from brands. Indeed the Zoological Society of London has found a huge spike in engagement since they made their social media and digital engagements more personal – emails to event sign-ups come from a named person in the fundraising team, YouTube videos are posted by zookeepers behind the scenes – this is the kind of social engagement which is working.

An RNIB fundraiser piped up: supporters don’t care about whether your message is fundraising, services or campaigning. Those are all internal divisions. While social is global, people still care about their own geographic areas. RNLI’s Gisbourne agreed – one phenomenally successful local RNLI branch has nearly two-thirds the amount of Twitter followers as the official, national RNLI account – and it’s all based on being candid, local and responsive.

And by the way, social media isn’t about communicating with young people. It’s about how you communicate with people – full stop. Charities haven’t come close to catching up with how genuinely young people are using the internet.

Fundraisers have a tough job fraught with contradictions in terms – measuring the immeasurable, engaging the masses in personal communications. The Fundraising First Thing probably threw up as many questions and as it provided answers – but then, that’s how we progress as a sector.

 

Our next Fundraising First Thing sessions are on:

The Future of Mass Participation  - 15 May

Leadership and Influence in Fundraising - 17 July

Don't miss out on £30 early bird tickets!