Transformation is why I’m in the business of fundraising, writes Angharad McKenzie.

Over the years the world has seen the power of transformation in action many times over. From putting a man on the moon to the birth of the world-wide web, through to the introduction of smartphones – transformational thinking has been behind some of the major shifts in history.

Sometimes unforeseen transformations force a change in thinking and action. Take the ice-bucket challenge, which, love it or loathe it, has required the ALS Association to think radically about how it can transform the way in which it serves ALS sufferers, thanks to the more than $100m raised over the last few months.

Fundraising is my way of playing a very real part in changing lives. The transformations we each aspire to deliver may differ in scale and in outcomes. Yet, we’re all looking to alter reality in a tangible and practical way.

At the Resource Alliance's International Fundraising Congress, the team from WaterAid felt inspired by the stories shared and the people who shared them. You listen, you learn, you scribble pages of notes - big circles and stars denote the important actions you're going to take when you get back to the office. You're determined, full of energy, excitement and ideas. And then you go back to work and wait. Why are we waiting? 

We saw an opportunity for something transformative at WaterAid. We decided to grasp this chance while we had it, and use what we had learned. The result was the launch of an entirely new campaign called the Big Dig, developed in partnership between WaterAid, Misfit inc and Strategy Refresh.

A target-smashing campaign 

The Big Dig was a target-smashing campaign, but from its inception it was about more than this. It offered us the perfect opportunity to achieve a strategic shift through an operational success. 

It meant transforming the way we worked as an organisation, bringing together teams to work to common goals, drive efficiency and create a model that could be rolled out for long-term impact. 

We needed stories that we could share with supporters and potential donors - authentic, in real time, behind the scenes moments captured, and uploaded quickly and easily to a blog that acted as the hub of the whole campaign. 

Transformation was at the heart of our thinking when we envisioned this matched-funded, story-telling campaign - captured and shared via more than 300 instagram-fed blog posts, direct from Malawi over the course of one summer.

We needed an integrated approach that merged direct and digital channels to keep it at the forefront of people’s minds for the three months it would run. And we needed resources to secure one of the central elements of the campaign - a matching gift from the UK government. It was a team effort. And it couldn’t have been done any other way.

A key element in our success was that The Big Dig gave us the opportunity to let supporters truly see for themselves how they were changing the world. Armed with smart phones, our local Malawian field officers, Michael and Nathan documented everyday life of two villages, Bokola and Kaniche in rural Malawi, as they went from living without a clean source of water and safe toilets to use, to the implementation of boreholes to the installation of toilets for each and every household. Every pictured uploaded immediately to Instagram; every caption they wrote was added to our Instagram based blog. It brought a whole new meaning to the often bandied around idea of ‘authentic’ story-telling.

Changing the way in which we worked inspired more support. We smashed through our £1.2m target, reaching a then WaterAid record of £2.7m - meaning even more lives could be transformed.

It’s an approach we have continued to use, and today WaterAid produces some of the most authentic and timely communications direct from the projects it delivers on the ground.

Organisation-wide campaigns are now the norm, not the exception. For proof, just visit the latest To be a Girl campaign, which looks set to deliver close to £4m in the same three month period.

Finding cures for disease; bringing water to people; protecting lives in war-torn countries; delete and replace with your cause, are all pretty big and urgent tasks and not what a good fundraiser wants to leave to chance. Throw in the fact that the world around us is transforming all the time - putting our tried and tested fundraising to the test - and let me ask you this: if transformation is not on your agenda, what is?

Angharad McKenzie was previously head of supporter development at WaterAid. She now operates as an independent fundraising consultant.