Best Emerging Fundraiser

Transcription

1 Best Emerging Fundraiser 2015 Nomination Form To sponsor this category please contact Scott Kelley on or by Nominations should be in respect of activity completed during the organisation s 2014 financial year. For a fundraiser who, in the last three years has shown aptitude, ability and success beyond their experience. The nominee should have worked as a fundraiser for less than three years. Nominations should describe how the nominee has had a major impact on the organisation for which they work. Criteria: The nomination should explain the context and background to the individual s nomination, and will include some or all of the following information: Net funds raised as a direct result of the fundraiser being recruited. Number of donors recruited as a direct result of fundraiser being recruited. Demonstration of aptitude, ability and success beyond their experience. Demonstration of commitment to their own professional development as a fundraiser and also to the organisation in which they work. Ability to work well within a fundraising team (where applicable). A record of engaging well with donors and associated fundraising agencies and consultants. In summary the nominee should be someone who has shown great potential in the area of professional fundraising.

2 Nominator s Details (every line in this section is compulsory): Name: Michela Giuliani Job Title: Head of Donor Marketing Organisation: Concern Worldwide Address: Lower Camden Street [email protected] Telephone: Nominee s Details: Sarah Mackey Nominee:(must be a member of Fundraising Ireland) Job Title: Organisation: Address: Telephone: CHY: CHY 5745 Junior Direct Marketing Executive Concern Worldwide Lower Camden Street [email protected] Please complete the following sections in full: Excellence: On what basis has the nominee demonstrated consistent excellence and significant results in fundraising? Please also include other information such as: how many years the nominee has been involved in fundraising, how much the nominee has raised in the last 12 months, and in the previous years. (Max 300 words) Sarah Mackey joined Concern Worldwide in November It was her first job straight from college. Not only has Sarah learned how to work in an office environment, as part of a team and as a fundraiser, but she has also excelled in her role managing the donor welcome and stewardship journey in this short time. Many charities have the challenge of implementing a bespoke and effective welcome journey for donors recruited by a variety of sources. It is something that

3 Concern has had in place for years but with limited success. Each year has seen some improvements, but in 2014 we saw a dramatic increase in KPIs reached and significant improvements being made. Sarah is responsible for implementing, tweaking and improving the welcome process on an ongoing basis. The welcome process is then followed by six months of stewardship and then donors fall into our retention journey. This is essentially three journeys for the first 12 months of a donor s relationship with Concern. Sarah has made huge improvements to this journey by constantly monitoring, evaluating and recalibrating the effective elements of these journeys. She does so in a thorough, detailed and rational way. As a result of her changes we have seen measurable improvements: Donations received from Regular Giving donors increased by 23,300 in the six months that donors were receiving the retention journey. Opt-out rates for SMS reduced by 1% Opt-out rate for Telemarketing reduced by 3% Maintained an average open rate for s of 26% Sarah has also created engaging content for these three journeys. We ve seen an increase in positive donor feedback, have listened more to donors with surveys and requests for feedback which we are taking on board to help us improve the journey. The biggest impact has been seen in our non-starter rates: Non-starter rate has significantly decreased by 10.7% Month 6 attrition has also dropped by 7.6% In detail, Sarah has identified times during a donor s first 12 months when they are most likely to attrite and is putting steps in place to try to reduce this. Sarah has also identified elements of each donor recruitment channel (DRTV/F2F/website) that can be improved along with the most successful channels to use for these communications ( is better than SMS). Financial: How much of the charity s fundraising performance can be attributable to the nominee? Explain the basis for this. (Max 250 words) The impact of reducing our non-starter rate by 10% to regular givers could be worth up to 150,000 each year to Concern Worldwide. There is also an increase in donations and engagement from donors which will help us to build a more loyal and valuable database in the future.

4 Understanding: Explain how the nominee has demonstrated thorough understanding of the charity s mission and programme they were fundraising for?(max 250 words) Regular Givers account for 15.5 million per year but as of 2013, 33.2% of new donors did not make it past six months with nearly one in five recruited regular givers not starting their RG at all. This journey has been developed to steward donors through these six months when they are most likely to cancel, to retain their engagement with Concern and continue their regular gift. Sarah did research on newly recruited donor s profiles to understand her audience better. She also asked donors what they like to hear about and what they would like to hear more of. Sarah used this information to inform the content of the journey where demonstrating impact was very important. Sarah also used data to support all of her decisions for implementation for the journey from communication channel to content (videos, links etc). Sarah has a deep understanding of how this stewardship affects all of our strategic objectives and overall improves the health of our database and subsequent fundraising to donors who have been welcomed well. For example, donors who have a strong welcome process will be less likely to lapse, more likely to upgrade, better prospects for cross-selling to cash/emergency asks etc. And of course, when donors don t lapse it means more income for Concern. Donors: How many new donors has the nominee recruited for the organisation within the last year, in terms of corporates, individuals etc Sarah works with donors who have already been recruited. We recruit approximately 7,000 new donors each year. Sarah s process helps to retain approximately 1,000 donors from lapsing each year. Teamwork: Please provide evidence of how the nominee worked effectively within teams. (Max 250 words) The welcome, stewardship and retention journeys involve several different teams and a lot of coordination. In 2013 our Senior DM Executive and our Face to Face team implemented a new RG product and the stewardship journey to accompany this information. Sarah worked very closely with our Senior DM Executive, face to Face team and Creative Agency to develop the ideal journey over the last year.

5 To create bespoke journeys for donors recruited via different channels or at different values and different streams (RG/Cash) Sarah worked closely with our systems team to develop automated triggers for the welcome process. Alongside these triggers Sarah worked with our Donor Care department to implement the letters and welcome packs to donors. She also linked in with the telemarketing team to set up rolling welcome calls to donors. Sarah sends the SMS messages and s herself manually. Most recently Sarah has worked with our Digital Fundraising Leader on moving our welcome and retention s to a new system which will soon be integrated with our database. Sarah coordinates all of these teams to implement a process that is the ideal for her own team (Individuals Giving) and which works for all types of recruitment and donors and is consistent with our strategic objectives for messaging and fundraising. Communication Skills: Demonstrate how the nominee has shown a record of engaging constituencies and relationships connected with the charity. (Max 250 words) Every quarter we hold a review of a project/initiative as a team along with our Creative agency and also our data agency. Sarah presented the welcome and stewardship journeys in our December quarterly review. As the most junior member of the team, she spoke to several managers and two agencies in a confident and well prepared way. She presented a power point presentation to illustrate her points and used graphs where information was dense. She explained the complicated journey in a detailed and logical manner. Sarah knows this campaign inside out, is extremely thorough and very detailed. She did a really great job presenting to this group of people. Personal statement: Please provide any other information as to why you believe the nominee to be worthy of an award. This can include successful volunteer management, development of new/innovative ideas and the potential that they have for management roles in the future. (250 words) Sarah is one of the most dedicated, competent and genuinely lovely people that I have had the pleasure to work with. Sarah supports a team of 8 people with several administrative tasks such as managing An Post, event codes, receipt letters

6 etc as well as managing large integrated campaigns like the welcome and stewardship journey. Sarah is organised and extremely focussed. She manages everything well, isn t afraid of getting into the detail of campaigns (which often throw up more questions and complications) and continually works with a smile on her face. She has been an excellent addition to the team and we hope that Sarah has a long and happy career with Concern. Authenticity Guarantee: I confirm that to the best of my knowledge, the nomination is legal, decent, honest and truthful.* * Entries must be submitted by a charity and not an agency, consultant or other commercial supplier. Date : 21/01/2015