The 14 international NGOs, which include Action Against Hunger, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières, have come together with the aim of reimagining the future of fundraising by crowdsourcing innovative ideas and proven concepts in order to ensure sustainable future impact across the world.

To this end, the group has launched Reimagining Fundraising: the first Global Open Innovation Challenge for Fundraising. It is open for submissions until 8 November, and fundraising practitioners, NGOs, start-ups, consultants, agencies, academia and all types of companies are all invited to contribute. Ideas can be based on tested and proven concepts, or new ideas that are innovative, impactful, replicable and feasible for private sector fundraising.

Juan Cruz Mones Cazon, Global Fundraising Innovation at UNICEF, said:

“#ReimaginingFundraising is about recognising that we, as a sector, can do much better on fundraising. We need to update our value proposition and the way we engage with our donors. We are all struggling with the same problems, so why not collaborate and find innovative solutions together?”

“We also acknowledge we can’t do this alone. We need your help! So we invite everyone, individuals, students, start-ups, companies, agencies…we need you all. Come share your innovative solutions and help us improve the way we do fundraising. This is your best opportunity to showcase your great ideas to the right people.”

Submissions are free, and will go through an expert evaluation and community voting in November, and those shortlisted will be invited to participate in a public online pitching session to a panel comprised of representatives from the co-initiators in mid-December this year.

The winners will have the chance to co-develop and test their ideas with one or more of the co-initiators of this challenge. An Innovation Playbook will also be created, featuring the highlights of the initiative and will be shared with the participants in January 2021.

The 14 INGOs behind the initiative are, in full: Action Against Hunger, Amnesty International, Care International, Greenpeace, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Plan International, Save the Children International, SOS Children’s Villages, UNHCR the UN Refugee Agency, UNICEF, World Food Programme, World Vision International, and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). It is also supported by innovation ecosystem management software and services provide HYPE.

More information, and entry submission is available on the Reimagining Fundraising site.

The fundraising world is changing, and in many ways for the better. Donors increasingly want a deeper level of engagement with the philanthropic causes they support, rather than just giving money away. Younger supporters, in particular, are looking at social investment in addition to traditional financial support models. And as people move around the world their philanthropic support is targeted at organisations in their new country, their country of origin and wherever their areas of interest.

For fundraisers this provides both opportunities and challenges. It opens up pathways to reach new supporters and gain visibility. But it can also be an expensive, time-consuming experience, particularly if you don’t know where to look.

How do you not only engage donors in traditional ways but how do you address new ideas and new methods? How do you work with local donors but also reach out to those worldwide?

Analyse why you are looking internationally
If it’s that you’re having trouble finding funds at home, then going further afield is usually not a good idea. If you have donors that have moved abroad, it is of course important that you follow them to the new country but it may or may not give rise to an entire campaign. And if you’re following the lead of other charitable organisations who fundraise in other countries, remember that what may be good for them may not be right for you.

But if you have a unique or sustainable project that will be of real interest to supporters, trusts and foundations elsewhere then that is a good reason to fundraise abroad. Similarly, if you have a potential or known supporter base of individuals or corporates, fundraising internationally can be hugely effective.

Where do you want to look?
Are there specific countries which fit your criteria for fundraising internationally? There has been great interest in the United States for many years and that still continues to be a place which has great resources although not necessarily the most international outlook. The Middle East has vast wealth and also a culture of giving but is very private, as is Asia. China interests many charities and has numbers of students who study abroad. Latin America and Africa are both increasing in wealth with an attendant increase in interest in fundraising from other countries.

Always look to start from the ‘easiest’ countries – those with the greatest numbers of your potential supporters, those with no language issues, those where you have local support and those who have great relationships with you.

Who are your potential supporters?
What is your case for support from the various donor groups? Why should they support you and not something local? Being able to answer this is essential to your campaign.

Individual supporters are sometimes the most difficult to find, but consider those supporter groups with potential connections to the cause. Is there a large expat community in the country? Do you have a large number of alumni, graduates, members or those currently engaged with you? Do you have current supporters living there who will help ease your fundraising path in the country?

Should you be looking at trusts, corporate or statutory funding sources?
Within Europe and North America, trusts and foundations are generally easily identifiable and their giving interests are publicly known. In other regions such as the Middle East and Asia, trusts and foundations are more like charitable bank accounts for donors. For the former it can be worthwhile to research potential funders and make applications. For the latter they should be approached as if individuals.

Corporate giving often starts locally with employers supporting the organisations nearest to them. However companies have always supported organisations in areas where they want to expand and international companies will support organisations who best make the case for benefitting the company as well as the organisation. Giving a company the option to support you from another country can secure an otherwise unavailable donation.

EU funding, USAID and other governmental funding may be appropriate and accessible for organisations outside their countries, but it can be difficult to make appropriate applications and funding can take a long time to receive.

What do you know about the local culture, tax and legal framework?
Underpinning any international fundraising is an understanding of the local culture. Having relationships, whether paid or volunteer, with experienced people on the ground is vital for the most successful of ventures. It is a useful opportunity to engage with supporters to ask their advice and help.

Make sure you understand whether there are tax benefits for donors giving to you and how they can access those benefits. Offering a tax benefit can be a strong incentive for donations, but the systems vary from nation to nation. For example, in the United Kingdom charities can reclaim 25% from the government through the Gift Aid scheme with no extra work. In other countries tax deductions means the donor receives a reduction on his or her tax bill.

Some offer no incentive at all for charitable giving, while others offer generous benefits. However, it’s important to be clear whether those benefits apply on donations that leave the country.

In most cases for the donor to receive a tax benefit the donation must be given to a local charity who can then use the funds abroad. Chapel & York, The King Baudouin Foundation and others have charities around the world who can do this. Transnational Giving throughout Europe can also be used for countries which have membership and for donations which qualify.

Finally…
Fundraising across national boundaries is seeing rapid growth and has become an important part of many charities’ fundraising strategies. It needs to be approached as professionally as you would when fundraising from local sources, but the potential is often far greater. The only certainty is that if you don’t ask you won’t receive anything, so if you believe it’s right for your organisation, reach out and give it a try.

About Nancy Bikson
Nancy is managing director of Chapel & York International, which specialises in providing services to organisations fundraising internationally.  

“In the dark, I heard the bear charge. My life now depended on one single decision: did I cover my head and play dead, or leap up and make myself as huge and scary as possible?”

There are good strong evolutionary reasons your brain lights up and comes to attention and wants to know how that story turns out. All of us, regardless of race or nationality, are hard-wired to pay attention to the stories our fellow humans tell of choices they’ve made, and how well those choices enabled them to overcome an obstacle or an enemy.

Even if we don’t live in a country with bears, there’s a part of our brain that projects ourselves into that story and asks what we would do, because stories play an important role in human society: survival.

The ability to hear a story is an outrageously complex skill. Our brain needs to filter story elements from the mass of incoming signals – who is the hero? What’s the challenge? What values does the protagonist hold and how do they compare to mine?

Stepping into the shoes of the storyteller, we weigh their choices against what we would do. We approve or disapprove of the teller depending on the choices they make. If the teller survives or succeeds, we tuck the story of the choice they made away – in a place we can find it if we ever face circumstances remotely akin (literally or metaphorically) – to those presented in the story.

We’re good at it, because we’ve been selected over millions of years of evolution to BE good at it. It’s precisely what has made us the apex species on planet Earth. Those of us who learned from the experience of others, who “lived to tell the tale” ourselves, lived to tell the tale again. Those who were unable to analyse, store, and extract the lessons from those stories? They got eaten by the bear.

So in a world where the tribal story circle in the forest clearing has been replaced by the digital campfires of the web, email and social media – a borderless world – how do we tell stories that make the brain light up and pay attention? How do we tell stories that model or champion choices that we want our audience to make?

At Dancing Fox, we teach storytelling techniques to communicators, fundraisers, campaigners, and change artists. Among my favourite is a technique that Marshall Ganz and Caesar Chavaz developed as young organisers among the migrant workers of California back in the 60s: Motivational storytelling through three chapters: the story of Self, Story of Us, and Story of Now. For anyone looking to motivate an audience to take action, it’s a powerful formula whether executed as speech or written word. I’ll take you through a few simple pointers on how to apply the formula to borderless storytelling.

Chapter 1: Story of Self.
Find a real person with a deeply personal story that makes the choice you want your audience to make heroic, but human.

Your protagonist may be a victim that has been rescued, a donor who feels deeply thankful for the chance to make a change, a hero who saved a life or a village. They need to be able to tell a story that makes your audience admire them, want to help them, or want to BE them. They need to tell a genuine tale of a choice they faced, and why they chose to act, in a way that makes your audience say “YES, I would do that as well.” It needs to be a human story, told eye to eye to the audience as if it could come from the reader or listener’s brother, mother, or a mate in the pub: anything but a worthy, larger than life, up-on-a-pedestal superhuman. Your storyteller needs to feel what your audience would feel, fear what your audience would fear, love what your audience would love. Emotion — not rationality, not fact — is what’s essential here.

Chapter 2: Story of Us.
Erase the personal boundary. This is when you tap into the values of your audience and invite them to see themselves as part of the storyteller’s tribe.

Once your hero has established their story, they need to bring the audience in to it. You need to know the audience you’re reaching for at this stage. When you’re speaking to a global audience, you need to go deep into the human experience. Whether you use it literally or not, the bridge to the Story of Us can usually be phrased “We all know what it’s like to…”

We all know what it’s like to face a difficult choice. We all know what it’s like to be afraid. We all know what it’s like to know the right thing to do…

Your storyteller needs to invite the audience to recognise the common human bond with the storyteller, so that they slip into their shoes. None of us want schools to be places where our children are bullied — and all of us know what it’s like to be made fun of because we’re too tall, or too short, or too smart… There are dozens of ways to take the most niche and unusual circumstances and plant them squarely in the context of your audiences’ own lives. The “story of us” is the point where you establish community, where the story of your hero becomes the story of everyone listening.

Chapter 3: The story of Now.
Give a sense of urgency and agency to your call to action. Your storyteller made a choice. Now is the time to ask the audience to make their own choice. If you’ve constructed your story well, your audience is ready: they admire the choice the storyteller has made, they feel they would do the same literally or metaphorically, they feel their values have been reinforced, they feel a sense of unity with the storyteller and the listeners: what remains is to show them a choice that matters.

The best calls to action are urgent. They make the audience feel their own action is essential to success and absolutely has to happen NOW – no matter where they are in the world. You’ve created a magical sense of community, of bond not only with the storyteller but with the others they know are hearing this tale. People power is flexing its muscles. The strength of the crowd is rising. What it needs is the fierce urgency of a set task, now, to make the lightning strike.

“I remembered the words of my old scout master about bears: if it’s black, attack, if it’s brown, lie down.” In the pitch dark, a sudden flash of lightning revealed my attacker was a black bear, and I leapt to my feet, threw my arms wide, and screamed at the top of my lungs. The bear did a cartoon skid and turned, terrified, to run back into the forest. And there’s a story to remember about bears.”

About Brian Fitzgerald
Brian is director of Dancing Fox, a creative agency based in Amsterdam that specialises in beautiful mischief and storytelling for change-makers. Together with Tommy Crawford, he founded the agency after 35 years of storytelling and activism with Greenpeace International. Dancing Fox helps NGOs and charities articulate their organisational stories, runs trainings and workshops in story technique and story as theory of change, and helps shape story-based campaign strategies. He tweets, blogs, and speaks on story, activism, art, behavioural economics, persuasion science, and technology.

One in five respondents were from Europe according to the report, which is sponsored by the Public Interest Registry and researched by Nonprofit Tech for Good. The 2018 Global NGO Tech Report questioned 1,021 European NGOs in 41 countries with the majority based in the UK (24%), Spain (14%), Portugal (9%), Switzerland (7%), and Germany (6%).

The top five causes represented in this year’s report were: children and youth (13%), community development (10%), education (10%), international development and relief (10%), and health and safety (9%).

Key European findings

– 97% of NGOs in Europe have a website. Of those, 86% are mobile compatible.

– 59% of NGOs in Europe accept online donations on their website. Of those, 74% accept credit card payments. 59% accept PayPal. 57% accept direct debit payments. 5% accept digital wallet payments. 1% accept Bitcoin.

– 35% utilise an online peer-to-peer fundraising service.

– 26% participate in #GivingTuesday.

Text & email

57% of NGOs in Europe regularly send email updates and fundraising appeals to supporters and donors. Of those, 59% use an email marketing service. 16% send email via their CRM. 8% send email using the Bcc field. 9% send email through another method and 8% don’t know.

11% regularly send text messages to supporters and donors. Of those, 50% also utilise a text-to-give service for SMS fundraising.

Social media

94% of NGOs in Europe have a Facebook Page and 30% have a Facebook Group. 80% have a Twitter Profile. 58% have a LinkedIn Page and 18% have a LinkedIn Group. 45% have an Instagram Profile. Other social media used are: 64% YouTube, 23% Google+, 11% Flickr and Vimeo, 10% Pinterest, 2% Tumblr, 1% Reddit, and 1% Weibo.

17% use messaging apps to communicate with supporters and donors. Of those, 65% use WhatsApp. 57% use Facebook Messenger. 3% use Snapchat, Viber, and WeChat. 2% use LINE and Signal.

Data

39% use CRM software to track donations and manage communications with supporters and donors. Of those, 57% use a cloud-based CRM.

40% use encryption technology to protect data and communications. Of those, 31% to protect organization information. 26% to protect donor information. 23% to protect the privacy of email communications. 11% to protect the privacy of mobile communications.

Global results

In comparison, globally, 63% of NGOS regularly send email updates and fundraising appeals to supporters and donors, and 72% accept donations on their website. 33% use an online peer-to-peer fundraising service with 33% of donors worldwide having donated to a peer-to-peer campaign. 47% participate in #GivingTuesday.

With 99% now having a website, 93% are on Facebook, with 41% having used it to report live from an event or to showcase their work. 77% are on Twitter, and 50% are on Instagram, with 71% agreeing that social media is effective for online fundraising. 18% use messaging apps to communicate with supporters and donors with 64% using WhatsApp and 58% Facebook Messenger.

Ceri Edwards, director of engagement and external affairs at the Institute of Fundraising, says:

“With increased reliance on fundraising for income generation to a broad range of charitable organisations, new technological developments and close scrutiny of charitable activities, the international fundraising market is rapidly changing. It has never been more important that the sector comes together to share information and learn from one another, raising the bar in fundraising practice internationally.”

Last year’s Summit, hosted in San Francisco, saw representation from Brazil to Australia, France to Kenya and China to Spain – a diverse fundraising community with a renewed commitment to collaborate, strengthen and develop the profession.

This year’s event will be hosted by the UK Institute of Fundraising at the end of its annual Fundraising Convention in London, on 5 July 2018.

AmazonSmile has the same products, prices, and shopping features as Amazon.com. However, when shoppers use AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation donates 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to a charity chosen by the customer. These products are marked “Eligible for AmazonSmile donation” on their product detail pages.

The German Fundraising Association has raised concerns that Amazon is including organisations in the platform without asking for their prior consent.

“Here a company uses the ‘good cause’ and the good name of organisations – but without their consent,” said Arne Peper, Managing Director of the German Fundraising Association.

This is an issue, Peper says, because receiving donations from Amazon is likely to contradict the donation codes of non-profit organisations that wish to remain independent of corporate support in general, or from specific types of business.

A further concern is that consumers who support a charity through AmazonSmile might be less likely to then support it in another way.

In June, Foodwatch asked Amazon to remove it from the platform, stating in a press release that it had not been asked if it wished to participate in the AmazonSmile platform and that it would not accept donations from Amazon because it does not accept donations from companies with any form of relationship with the food industry for reasons of independence.

In a letter to Amazon Germany’s CEO Ralf Kleber, Foodwatch CEO Martin Rücker demanded an overhaul of the Smile programme as well as clarification for customers about how it works. Foodwatch stated that AmazonSmile customers who selected the organisation for a donation would see the message:”Supports: foodwatch eV” displayed prominently on the top of the AmazonSmile page and that this would give the impression that the work of Foodwatch was being promoted through a purchase.

The German Fundraising Association has strongly recommended that all donation platforms enter into intensive dialogue with organisations before using any of their details including their names and logos.