1. How to grow your appeal
The growth of the Save the Children’s
annual restricted appeal

2. How it all started

3. N.B. not the traditional major donor model for
a capital appeal...
• Individual giving appeals
calendar
Individual giving appeals calendar
• Adding a new proposition
Adding a new proposition
Feasibility study
Goal settingOffering option to restricted finds
• Offering option to give to give to
Demonstrating tangible impact
restricted funds
Creating sense of ownership
Donor identification by constituency
• Demonstrating tangible
Project and campaign calendar
impact
• Creating sense of
ownership

4. Income growth
£800,000.00
£700,000.00
£600,000.00
£500,000.00
£400,000.00
£300,000.00
£200,000.00
£100,000.00
£0.00
2009 2010 2011 2012
Gross income

5. Audience growth throughout the years
2009 2010 2011 2012
Warm supporters Warm supporters Warm supporters Warm supporters
Prospects Prospects
HV donors HV donors
Cold DM Cold DM
Legacy ask Legacy ask
integration (ask in integration
thank you) Cold other
Major donors
Community
PR & Celebrities
Digital

6. Started in 2009
• Best performing appeal in
the programme
• 2010 saw opportunity for
growth – started planning

7. Brand context

8. Testing our way in 2010 – Tanzania Appeal
• Selected a wider range of people from the warm file
to mail
• Testing ask prompts
• Testing high value pack (to middle donors)
• Role of engagement
• First online appeal
• Development of the journey

9. 2010 – Tanzania Appeal

10. 2010 – Tanzania Appeal HV

11. 2011 South Sudan Appeal
• Drive net income, but also look to improve the
responsiveness of those less responsive segments
• Introduction of the high value audience
• Introduction of the legacy ask integration to the
campaign
• Test low value £5 buy a brick tactic to less
responsive segments
• Test in direct mail acquisition
• Introduction of a reminder appeal

12. 2011 South Sudan Appeal
Warm
supporter
appeal

13. 2011 South Sudan Appeal Low Value
Low value &
acquisition
pack

14. 2011 South Sudan Appeal online
Donation
landing pages
Email Appeals

15. Feedback / engagement journey
Clinic built
and lives saved
in Children
Now

16. Email feedback / engagement journey
Email Thank
Email Ask You
Open for
business – first
babies
delivered

17. 2012 Bangladesh Appeal
Marketing Campaigning Trust, Major
partnerships & HV
Corporate PR &
Celebrities
Individual Giving Community
& Legacy (Save the
Digital Hub
Children Week)

18. Virtual Clinic
1) Quick Donate
2) Browse and shop for
items
3) Items over £250 - option
to set up a Just Giving
page

19. Individual Giving
Acquiring Supporters Existing Supporters
Radio
SMS ask across a range of
stations
DRTV
Testing across existing stations Mail appeal and
reminder
Email segments
Outdoor
Testing trains and buses
SMS
Digital
Banners
Press ads and Supporter journeys
Inserts (low for responders
Cold Mail volume testing) online and offline
Including
Baby Nirob, 10 weeks old suffering from
campaigning and
severe diarrhoea and wheezing with every breath
legacy asks
Shopping centres Thank you to cold Roll out of £5 buys
Face to face ask, £5 SMS respondents a brick
to buy a brick Campaigning ask engagement

20. Trusts, Major & High value
Trusts High Value Major Donors

21. community giving
pilots – new audiences Existing Supporters
Curry Life
Magazine targeting restaurant
trade Branch Activity
a) Run a curry night b) Put £1 on Tea Parties, Coffee Mornings,
the bill c) donate tips for a week Frog Races!
Collections and
House to House
Nursery Challenge
Sponsorship for nursery
children to dress up as what
they want to be
Baking –
Cakes!
Retail
AMYA Challenge Raffles, Collections, To
Asian youth group bucket collections
mbola

22. Corporate partners
6 Collections e.g. Communication to
Birmingham Bull Ring supporters, banners on their
website, in match
programme 5th May
Gifts in kind to the clinics
e.g. condoms, cleaning
products
Match funding for blogging
Funding for 1 clinic build! Collections in 3 Stores

23. virtual clinic wall of fame
Can be anonymous too
Corporate donations
Photos link to face
book

25. What have we learnt?

26. What have we learn?
• We can drive an integrated organisational fundraising appeal!
• It really can be used to engage different audiences
• Planning needs to commence earlier – 7 months is not
enough for e.g. corporate to get on board
• Gathering content can be expensive
• Although a staggered launch the campaign felt integrated
across all types of story and engagement
• Digital needs a BIG one day burst to have stand out

27. What have we learnt?
• Country and perceived need can influence
engagement
• Visual and target and deadline are important
• An enemy
• Need led images
• Strong project management is required – to help
build integration cross team. One person/team
owning the project from within the lead fundraising
team

28. Top tips to take away

29. What to consider for an integrated capital
appeal
• Objectives and KPIs agreed at outset
• Structure and process/project management
• Resources
• Budgeting & objective setting – what does success look like?
• Content gathering - before, during and after
• Contingency planning
• The right partners - internal and external
• Test your way in
• Start early - rolling planning

30. How to assess whether it’s right for you?
• Can you restrict funds to a particular project?
• Opportunity cost? Restricted versus unrestricted
• Do you have the ability to emotionally engage
someone with your cause?
• Can you create a supporter experience?
• Do you have the organisation behind your
ambitions?
• Can you demonstrate the impact of the appeal to
your decision makers?

31. 2010 Tanzania Appeal learning
• Drove an increase in income of almost £40k through better
targeting and prompting
• Message engagement helps to drive those usually less
responsive segments to give, those multi givers who wrote a
card gave a higher average gift
• Small proportion of income was from online – but it showed
potential for future growth
• Introduction of the ‘feedback journey’ had a good impact on
email address penetration
• Prioritise how to increase the performance of those less
responsive segments through testing tactics.

32. 2011 South Sudan Appeal Learning
• Campaign raised approximately £844,000 – the best campaign
performance in years
• Reminder appeal had a big impact on the success
• HV donors contributed £46,800 additional income to the
appeal
• Low value prompting did increase the responsiveness, but did
have an impact on the overall income.
• Direct mail acquisition was a huge success achieving a 4.26%
response rate
• Legacy ask in thank you outperformed any of the other legacy
activity throughout the year

33. Crowdfunding

34. Campaign highlights
Volunteer Supporter
trip PR engagement
Blogger
Conference
I made a donation, I
lived in the next
village to where
Nirob lives, so this
I just made a
appeal really
donation after seeing
touched my heart.
the excellent report
from Myleene Klass
on the ITV news.
Supporter
Celebrity PR Feedback
I want to be
Outdoor Est. reach 10,500,000
results
Venue House to house
collections income was up 50%
[owing to] higher
I saw the profile and having a
picture of Nirob specific theme with
on the a pamphlet to give
Radio envelope, I fell out.
Legacy Face to face results in love with
Pledges him.

35. Room for improvement
Campaigning integration
AMYA Challenge
Press ads
DRTV