28/07/11
Macmillan Cancer Support has won the ‘Best Use of Face-to-Face Fundraising’ award in the Institute of Fundraising’s annual national awards.
Presented at the IoF’s national convention on July 4, Macmillan beat Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Myton Hospice to the accolade, which is sponsored each year by the PFRA.
Macmillan began its campaign in 2008 with a test by PFRA agency member Home Fundraising, recruiting 1,832 monthly donors through doorstep F2F. Training for fundraisers included meeting a service provider, nurse or medical professional.
The test campaign returned first year attrition of 36 per cent, compared to the sector average for that year of 42 per cent, as reported in the PFRA’s Donor Attrition and Retention Survey (DARS).
The trial proved so successful that the charity decided to roll out the campaign nationwide, working in 12 major cities in England and Scotland throughout the whole of 2010. The initial target for the campaign was 10,000. However, the campaign took off and targets were revised – first to 15,000, then to 18,000. By the end of the campaign, 18,692 new donors were recruited at an average year 1 gift of £100 (or £8.33 a month) and a four-year project return on investment of 2.9 to 1.
Macmillan is continuing the campaign throughout 2011 and has set a target of 40,000 new donors.
“It’s gone through the roof,” said Macmillan’s direct marketing officer Chloe Waite. “It’s going so well this year it looks like we going to go past this target. The sky’s the limit for us.
“As well as raising vital funds for people affected by cancer, our fundraisers are also perfectly positioned to help people access our services – that’s why door-to-door fundraising works particularly well for Macmillan.”
The judges described Macmillan’s campaign as a “textbook example of using a test and then scaling up nationwide. Interactive, ongoing training with one of their nurses at the heart of the campaign worked very well and the campaign successfully delivered an ambitious fundraising plan with all targets achieved.”
As a result of the campaign, Macmillan also produced a booklet specifically intended to co-ordinate F2F with the charity’s community fundraisers and local programme managers. Chloe Waite says: “Face-to-face can generate complaints and sometimes these go to our local branches. This booklet explains why and how we use face-to-face fundraisers so that our community staff can deal with any issues about them.”
Photo shows (l-r): Michael Naidu – acting chair, PFRA; Eleanor Hedges – direct marketing assistant, Macmillan Cancer Support; Chloe Waite – direct marketing officer, Macmillan Cancer Support; Melissa Richards – account manager, Home Fundraising; Paul Jackson-Clark (who presented the award), director of fundraising, Parkinson's UK. Photo by KMPhotos
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