IoFFC 2019: Three days of fundraising inspiration, cogitation & connection

Our language is changing

Something else that struck me was how the way we talk about our supporters is changing. Gone are the days of referring to our one main target audience as ‘Dorothy Donor’ instead we are much better at exploring diverse potential audiences and the language reflects that. One of my favourite sessions of the convention was Lesley Pinder and Charlotte Forrest’s session on Supporter Experience. There were many nuggets of wisdom in there, but I particularly liked the way they were switching how they talk internally about donors to ‘people who donate’. This nicely reflects that people who choose to support us do that amongst a myriad of other things, and that we are just a very small part of their lives.

Similarly, a number of people mentioned how they dislike the term beneficiary, as it reflects an ‘us and them’ which isn’t really true of charity supporters and ‘beneficiaries’. I was wondering if we could apply Lesley and Charlotte’s thinking and instead use ‘People who we help’ or perhaps even ‘People who seek our help’?

We’re learning from outside the charity sector

This is not new, but something that came across very strongly for me this year. We are nabbing ideas from User Experience and Customer Experience Design, from the Arts, from the latest tech developments, and all of these influences are widening our horizons.

One of the criticisms I’ve heard in the past is that charities tend to ‘copy the case study’ rather than truly innovate, partly because this seems less risky. I’m sure there is lots of that going on, but many of the sessions I went to reflected people really thinking through how to develop new fundraising streams and what it would take to make it work for them. From the NSPCC’s use of Voice technology through to the brilliantly named ‘Pawsome players’ products for gamers by Cat’s Protection, there are plenty of genuinely exciting new bits of fundraising going on.

Another session I really loved (and left me feeling hugely fired up and motivated!) was the session on Grassroots Movements. This was a great panel session, where it felt like all the panel members had slightly different and well-reasoned views on the topic. Again there were too many fab insights to cover here without writing an essay, but one that struck me was the mix of the old and new: the way we now know and understand  what made grass-roots movements of the past successful and how new technologies are helping us to exploit that knowledge. Panel member Carys Afoko summed it up nicely for me when she said that to create change you need an ecosystem: the grassroots movements and the established charities, let’s hope that we can do that on climate change.