Fundraisers days are numbered?

Another day, another “business professional” telling us that the days of “fundraising professionals” are numbered.

This time, it’s Philippe Beaudette, of the Wikimedia Foundation.  Philippe is overseeing Wikipedia’s annual fundraising campaign.

Did you know they have an annual fundraising campaign?

This year’s campaign is being created by a collaboration of 900 people. 900!

Philippe tells us “Group collaboration is the future of fund raising. Organizations are going to have to work harder for donor dollars, and the ones that will be successful will be the ones that do not involve professional fund raisers. Professional fund raisers are sometimes limited by history and afraid to think outside the box. It is going to take new creative ideas, and the best way to get that is to have a huge number of people thinking.”

So there you have it just get a bundle of people together and bash out something you can all agree on and you won’t need me or any of my ilk. 

Or will you?

Let’s look at the evidence.  The Wikipedia fundraising campaign is actually a really strong one.  This year they’re raising funds faster than before – in the first 4 days, it raised close to $2-million, a total that took 29 days to achieve last year.

This suggests they’re doing something right.  But what?

Well, they’re testing.  And due to the nature of Wikipedia, they can test A LOT. And quickly.  You can find details here.  But they’ve been testing since August, every Thursday afternoon for an hour.  And they’ve been tweaking their banner ads to try to come up with the best one.  Genius.

DOH! Why has no fundraiser ever thought of testing before? 

Well, of course we have.

In fact, testing is a crucial part of any cold or warm appeal.  Whether a TV ad, a mailing or an email message, professional fundraisers will almost always test their message when they can.  If it’s an online appeal we’ll test the landing page too – yup, that’s what Wikipedia are doing.

What Wikipedia have though, through their very existence and reason for being is the ability to run one of the biggest and best tests ever done.  They have 400 million monthly readers, people are already on their site to see these banner ads so they can get instant feedback and monitoring – did people click it, did they donate, how much - this is not something that most charities have the luxury of.

Most charities embarking on an appeal will be doing an email or a print one, usually alongside their website.  They’ll have limited funds to set up monitoring, and their volunteers, numbering less than 900, may not have the tech-know to be setting up such testing.

Are they doomed to fail?  No, because from previous tests, from previous fundraising appeals and campaigns, and from research good fundraisers know what works best.  They know what to include, how to lay it out, and the type of pictures to use. 

A picture of a boy vs a picture of a girl?  Include a PS or no PS in your letter? How should you lay out your landing page? Your donation page?

Sure, they should still test, and consider this for the future, tweaking and adjusting the ‘control’, but you need that starting point.

I’m still impressed by the Wikipedia campaign.  It’s working well, but interestingly, it’s the ‘control’ message that’s been working.  So what exactly have those 900 collaborators been creating?

Michael Hodgson
Cause4Effect Ltd

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