The (infamous) 8.55am cattle bell rung in the final day of the annual F&P conference. Here are just a few of the day’s highlights.
Bequests
- Only 1 in 9 bequestors will actually tell you they’re leaving a gift in their Will to your charity. (Leah Eustace)
- The single most important indicator that someone will leave a gift in their Will? Childlessness. (Leah Eustace)
- Include a tick box for bequests on appeal donation forms – for Guide Dogs SA/NT it generates about 100 bequest leads per year, about half that of a supporter survey. (Andrew Sabatino)
- Australian charities aren’t investing enough in bequests – for every $1 spent, $15 is generated. (Martin Paul)
Digital
- Recruit a digital fundraiser to your team, one who can develop and design.
- Test rigorously and continuously (for digital fundraising). Médecins Sans Frontières has done this and discovered that:
- Tuesday is a much better day to email than Thursday.
- One word subject lines get much better open rates and response rates than two or more words.
- Direct mail tactics do translate to digital. For example, a ‘hard ask’ will generate a lot more income than a ‘soft ask’.
- Using a green ‘donate’ button generated significantly more income than a red donate button.
- Video (especially a good video) will get more hits, and more engagement
- Quiz in email generated much higher revenue than an email without the quiz, particularly among less engaged supporters.
- Display ad tests generated almost 4 x as much income (over $400K) using website retargeting than prospecting in a 50/50 split test.
- Pop-up web ads increase income, especially when you have a tangible deadline e.g. tax.
Bonus: Charities aren’t ‘not for profits’. They’re ‘profit for purpose’ – Martin Paul.