Charity Marketing
by Mark Robinson, Qbase, 4/12/2006
CHARITY MARKETING
Charities require help and generosity to operate and traditionally, a large majority of their funding comes from legacies. Although it is reported that only 40% of legacies received each year originate from people who are already contained within a charity’s database, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the other 60% are from random givers who the charity have never been in contact with before.
Data management bureau, Qbase, provides data collection strategies and offers solutions to help charities plan and implement pro-active marketing campaigns. Commercial Director, Mark Robinson finds that there are a number of issues to consider in order to help overcome any lack of knowledge about a legacy.
It is likely that a small portion of the unidentified legacies are completely unknown to the charity, although the majority of people will have some kind of emotional connection to that charity. An example of this could be via a member of their family with whom the charity has helped in the past. This emotional link can often be a stronger connection (in terms of providing legacies) than that of someone who regularly gives money. In order to help communicate with those people and any other person who expresses an interest in its work, it is essential for charities to develop a data capture strategy that covers all supporter touchpoints, from the first point of contact with someone.
Many charities rarely know about those emotional connections and it is poor data collection at the touchpoints which contributes to this. Charities should be communicating with pledgers before the legacy arrives (when the person has simply made a pledge to leave money) not only to help more of the pledges become legacies, but also to say thank you and acknowledge the fact that the person is considering leaving money to the charity.
One simple area for improvement is data collection via websites for example. A person may browse a charity website for information and support because of circumstance and by providing a means of registering that person’s information to capture their data, this would allow the charity to begin communicating with the potential legator about its work. Similar improvements could be made when a person requests information. Capturing their data at that point and following up with continued communication will prove beneficial, however, it is important to note, that any data collection strategy must of course, comply with the Data Protection Act.
To find out more about the individuals and how they may wish to contribute, relevant captured information could then be supplied to companies like Qbase, to create propensity models where the data can be matched with external demographics such as age, income, financial worth and if they are a charity supporter etc. This allows the charity to learn and predict the likelihood of a person becoming a legator so that they can tailor their marketing communications accordingly. Therefore, in the years to follow as people leave legacies, the charity will have a communication history with the person resulting in fewer legators being completely unknown at the time the contribution arrives.
Such profiling models are sometimes used to try and identify legators of the future without any other information, knowledge or previous contact with those people. Although regularly practiced, this usually provides minimal uplift, but if the charity has previous data on those people and knows that there is already some link present, the uplift will be more significant. Simple data facts such as areas of the website viewed by an individual, number of visits to the website, factsheets downloaded, etc can help to identify the level of interest that a person has in the charity. This kind of information, when combined with demographic data can result in more predictive models being built.
Finally, another point to consider is that people move around and someone who makes a pledge to a charity at the point of a will being written for example, might change addresses several times before the legacy arrives. In this case, there is no means of communicating with the person to say thank you and keep them informed of their work.
One solution used by Qbase is to combine a range of data sets, such as Electoral Roll, Census, PAF, NCOA, etc to enable individuals to be located at their new address. This kind of service is invaluable in maintaining contact with supporters who are likely to be high value in the future and is similar to the kind of “tracing” systems used by the debt collection industry to locate individuals.
Essentially, charities need to work towards improving data capture functions throughout supporter touchpoints and develop better strategies to obtain that information. Predominantly, of the 60% of unknown legacies, the majority will have had some link to the charity before but to combat this lack of knowledge, improved data capture strategies at all touchpoints between a person and the charity will help with understanding past, present and future behaviour. By working harder and being more pro-active with data rather than re-active, charities will be able to improve communication channels with its current and future legators which are crucial for a charity’s survival.
