Learning the hard way
At the end of last week Tim asked us what we'd learned from 50/50. Confronted with such a seemingly impossible question, I floundered.
Stepping back a bit, what is it that we were trying to learn? As he puts it:
"We've all been trying to work out how to leverage networks and new models of digital engagement to raise money for famine relief."
When we set out with the goal of doing what we could to relieve the suffering of those affected by the famine we had planned to create a single campaign, something that would raise awareness, and a little cash. However, it become apparent–pretty quickly–that this disaster required a solution far beyond the reach of a creative bake-sale.
We decided that the most powerful thing we could offer was our network of highly creative friends (and their friends... and, so on).
50/50 was borne out of a feeling that we had something to give to charities beyond hard cash, something unique, something they needed. In the past few months teams around the globe have taken part, raising a respectable amount of cash and awareness. Along the way, we believe we've learned a few things too: smaller, personal appeals are the way forward; people prefer action over emotion; big budgets can drive huge donations.
… these seemingly contradictory statements are the source of my floundering.
So instead of burying my head in project data analysis in order to figure out the answer, I headed over to a few fundraising blogs. What I found, surprisingly, was a thread of negativity towards traditional advertising firms that try to "do fundraising" (see this post from Mark Phillips on the D&AD awards blog for a biting summary).
While it's all too easy to assume that the not-for-profit sector has been exposed to a lot of bad "digital" for digital's sake, and that what we're doing is different, experimental, it's equally valid to assume that these discussions highlight a real problem: maybe we're just not doing enough listening to those who have dedicated their careers to causes such as this.
However, it's not all bad news. Reading a bit further I started to notice some familiar sounding theories:
"Things are moving so fast that spending time writing a ten year strategy is worthless."
AJ Leon, Misfit Inc
"The creative process that ignores the needs of donors is a waste of time and money."
Mark Phillips, Bluefrog
"On the Internet we can put up any crap...so we forget to prioritise, we forget to ask and we forget to rigidly monitor and analyse"
Beate Sorum, Norwegian Cancer Society
Sounds a lot like that thing we refer to as “Lean”...
Our thinking is converging. Charities know their donors; we know how easy it is to #buildshit quickly. We could learn a lot from each other. Shall we talk?
p.s. If you want to hear more from the NFP sector, check out @markyphillips notes from the International Fundraising Congress.
4 comments
There’s an apocryphal story I remember from around 1999 about how the team developing PlanetRX, one of the first online pharmacies, took a half day meeting with a group of industry experts from actual pharmacies. When later asked if they needed more info on the business their reply was something like no, they’d gotten enough info and besides the Web was going to change anything.
We’ve gotten way past that time, but we still need to be mindful that we listen respectfully. That said, I agree that #buildshit may be a much better way of getting there.
Oops – the quote above was supposed to read "no, they’d gotten enough info, and besides the Web was going to change everything "
Great post Andrew. Let me first look at this through a cold lean lens.
The first question is what’s the problem you’re trying to solve? Is it an awareness problem? Possibly not. Even though coverage of the crisis has been relatively poor, don’t most people know about it?
Is it a barrier to fundraising problem? Probably not. As anyone can donate through multiple avenues in a 1-2 minutes.
Perhaps it’s an activation problem? People are aware, and people know they can donate, they just need an extra push or reason to. This is possibly most closely aligned with how the 5050.gd ‘solution’ looks from outside – that it gives new and interesting reasons to donate.
However….
What if the over-riding problem is one of apathy? Which might be from a combination of disaster fatigue or distance or scant media coverage or lack of human connection. I don’t know. But if this is the real problem, then 50 new creative ways to donate money might not be the game-changing solution that will truly galvanise everyone you aspire to.
Maybe what’s needed is 50 different ways to bring home the horror that is happening. (And that’s certainly not just a communications or propagation problem, because it goes well beyond awareness.)
Based on my experience in the non-profit sector, and trying to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for one small (but incredibly innovative) online charity, I quickly learnt that until people engage with the problem you’re trying to solve, they won’t commit any money (regardless of how worthy you might be).
When people change the way they understand a social problem, and make a personal connection to it, then they dig deep into their pockets.
This dilemma is really about a second question; one that you also posed. What do your customers want? Your customers in this case being potential donors. I suspect they might say something similar. That they want to know why they should donate before they do. They’re not going to say ‘I want to see more desperation and starving kids’, but equally, maybe the 5050.gd platform is slightly abstract if it shies away from the reality (the video was really, really good, though I note it’s a bit hidden on the site now and not on any of the project pages/sites?? But this is step 1 of the customer journey isn’t it?)
Please note that this is in no way a criticism – more an honest, hopefully constructive view. You know how much I love/have supported/promoted 5050.gd. But the way you and Tim have provocatively phrased your reflections on learning has prompted me to think about it a lot.
So perhaps a next step might be – instead of pushing the project harder to your existing networks – find out from your potential customers who have NOT participated – why they haven’t. If it’s because they haven’t really engaged/understood/appreciated the scale of the famine, you have your answer. Of course if they say that they have donation fatigue from so many requests all the time, or that they’re short of money at this time, then you’re potentially facing problems that you alone can’t solve.
Regardless, 5005.gd is already a huge success on so many levels. You’ve engaged dozens of organisations, hundreds of people, thousands of donors/sharers, and raised a fantastic chunk of money – and even if you have your BHAG of $1million in donations, this isn’t even necessarily the right measure of success. Real success is that you saved the life of just one child. And then another. And then another. Anything beyond that first child – and whether you’re able to help or save dozens or hundreds or thousands – is something to be very proud of.
Thanks for the comments guys, appreciate you taking the time to read my ramblings.
@Dan: Ha, yeah, let’s hope that sort of arrogance is a thing of the past. It definitely seems to be, but then I’m no expert when it comes to the prevailing attitudes of the big ad guys.
@Juz: Hit the nail on the head. Donating is easy, and with the onslaught of new clever technology (see JustTextGiving, TweetGive, etc.) you’d have to assume that your customer was near incapacitated by lazy if you thought there was a barrier to giving.
Activation is a tricky one. Over here in the UK you’d have to be entirely disconnected from society to not know that the famine is happening, however it’s different in the states; the message just isn’t as all-consuming over there.
So what about us over here? What’s our excuse? I think you’re right: people forget. I wouldn’t call it apathy as such – although I’m sure that is a real issue – but rather that there is so much “news” rammed down our necks on an hourly basis it’s often difficult to keep a cause such as this on people’s radars.
I think somewhere along the way we got lost. It started with a lot of talk about how to raise awareness more than anything. How we could communicate an issue that had no ongoing coverage; no imagery; no real, personal stories. Tim’s insistence on using Instagram to help fill one of those gaps was a great idea, but, so far, we’ve yet to address the other.
While we can’t necessarily influence mainstream media and their coverage of the disaster, I do believe we have the technology to collect these people’s stories and place them front-and-centre into our digital realm.
So how about a slightly more adventurous challenge? Let’s connect the people who actually need our help with the donors themselves. There’s no reason why we can’t do this. Take a helpful dash of SMS technology, and hook it up to whatever “social” network is trending over here.
Enthusiasm aside, for projects such as this to succeed we need to acknowledge that we’re the facilitators. Charities have people on the ground; they have the local knowledge; they have the infrastructure. Which, thinking about this, clarifies my original point:
Who are the ‘customers’ for the 5050 ‘product’ Donors? Probably not, for all the reasons you’ve given. I had always intended 5050 to be a platform to enable and encourage; and it has, but I think it’s time to humbly admit what we don’t know, and partner with those who do.