Helen & Douglas House/MEM Consumer Finance

In September 2009 MEM established a strategic partnership with Helen & Douglas house with a target of raising over £150,000 in the first year. It also needed to raise staff morale, build team spirit and generate a 'feel good factor' throughout MEM's workforce. MEM worked closely with the charity to develop a multi-dimensional partnership. This included staff fundraising activities, company donations, matched giving, payroll giving, gifts in kind and participation in the charity's events and volunteering. In 12 months 70 staff fundraising activities were planned; from raffles to quizzes and waxing. In the end £200,863 was raised, including £7,000 donated through the payroll giving scheme. MEM completely furnished a new office suite for the charity worth £25k. MEM's involvement has led to Helen & Douglas House becoming Charity of the Year for another company and one of the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire charities in 2011/12.

NSPCC/Childline/First Direct

First Direct aimed to raise £2.1m in cash, pro-bono and added value for the NSPCC during 2010 to celebrate their 21st birthday. First Direct raised £822,000 in direct donations from the business, customer and employees and from office events, sporting event teams, CRMs and headline sponsorship of high profile NSPCC events. A senior call centre manager was seconded to Childline for one year and First Direct also contributed specialist advice on digital strategy, corporate culture and training. Its agents took incoming NSPCC 'Letter from Santa' phone calls. It also facilitated additional donations and developed relevant and meaningful volunteer opportunities. One of the objectives was to create a truly integrated, multi-platform corporate partnership that can be used as a model for both organisations. Results exceeded projections due to the success of expansion of the partnership into HSBC Direct Bank sites which had never fundraised before. First Direct has agreed to support the NSPCC until the end of 2011.

Wallace & Gromit's Children's Foundation / Yorkshire Tea

The Great British Tea Party formed a partnership with Yorkshire Tea. This aimed to drive people to register to take part in the event, to increase awareness and raise funds for the Foundation, increase brand awareness and trail of Yorkshire Tea nationally, and increase sales. An integrated, multi-channel marketing campaign was created running over four months and supported by a six week on-pack promotion. Both parties benefited and since 2008 the number of people registering has increased by 100,000 a year. Yorkshire Tea has seen an increase in sales of around 20% from on-pack promotion and the number of registrations driven from the promotion. The campaign has seen £2 raised for every £1 spent.

Cancer Research UK
Faces - Upgrade Pack

This mailing was sent to warm regular donors, asking them to upgrade their regular gift. It aimed to inspire regular givers about the impact of their gift on people's lives. The result would be to motivate them to increase their monthly gift and to bring them closer to the work so they would continue supporting if they couldn't increase their gift. Targets were DD and standing order monthly donors who had given between £2 and £330 a month for more than 12 months. As well as the mail pack, a dedicated microsite was created where supporters could engage with stories from other supporters, scientists and cancer patients in their local area and across the UK. The projected number of upgraded donors was 1,293 at a cost of £20.33 per upgrade. In the end 1,977 supporters upgraded at a cost of £18.53. The five year RoI was 8:1 and the pack beat the control pack response rate by 28%.

Crisis
Crisis at Christmas warm Direct Mail 2011

This campaign aimed to raise £910,000 for Crisis at Christmas 2010, to upgrade the support of 25,000 existing donors by motivating them to give another cash gift, to develop engagement and deepen loyalty and to build the crisis at Christmas brand. The segmentation and targeting was built on previous engagement and transactional behaviour of supporters and prompting was based on their last gift to Crisis at Christmas. A High Value appeal targeted supporters who had given £100 or more in the past three years. The standard value income target was £446,934 and the high value target was £124,066. Results achieved £467,462 from the standard value appeal and £289,549 from the high value appeal. Reminder appeal packs brought in a total income of £268,276.

WaterAid
Dig Toilets, Not Graves

Dig Toilets, not graves saw WaterAid undertake cold recruitment of new donors on the back of a sanitation message, timed to coincide with the Millennium Development Goals summit and the generation of campaigning noise to apply pressure on the UK government to take a lead on the issue. Creative included a remote control replica faeces chasing the unsuspecting public around the streets of London, achieving over 250,000 views on YouTube. 167 spades sprung from the ground in Trafalgar square and the core DRTV ad contrasted jovial UK school children singing 'The diarrhoea song' with a grieving Zambian boy, his own sister a victim of diarrhoea, completing the rhyme. It showed how difficult issues can be made to work in different but successful ways.

RNIB
Gruffalo campaign

The campaign aimed to generate cash income from existing donors and acquire new cash donors from cold (reciprocal) lists in the run up to Christmas. Direct mail has traditionally proved the most successful medium for RNIB. The target audience was the stereotypical Dorothy Donors - aged 75+ - so the pack had to stand out from the crowd. The creative concept challenged recipients to consider what a child's life would be like if they never encountered famous characters from popular children's books, both classic and contemporary. Asks were at a variety of levels. Results exceeded forecasts on every level. Even the cold lists achieved a response rate of 1.83% against a target of 1.2%.

The Salvation Army
Christmas 2010 donor mailing

The main objective was to raise as much as possible through a one-off donation from the active donorbase. Brand new creative (Lost and Found) was developed using donor research findings. This was tested head to head against the 2009 creative to those donors recruited at Christmas 2009. Donors could respond by post, phone or online. Emails were sent before and after the mailing to those donors who had opted to receive email updates. The mailing to 690,000 was forecast to get a 15% response rate with a £25 average gift. It achieved a 21% response rate with an average gift of £32.53. The new pack proved to be more responsive than the old and the reactivation part of the campaign was also very successful.

Diabetes UK
Diabetes Challenge

The key feature of the Diabetes Challenge website is its integration with social media. This was chosen because of its ability to take fundraising news - whether as words, image or video - and make that news viral, helping word of Diabetes UK fundraising activity travel fast and reache large numbers of new audiences. Anyone interested in raising money for Diabetes UK is encouraged to set themselves, a friend or family member a challenge, which can be absolutely anything. Supporters create their own online profile, set and accept challenges, receive donations and monitor their fundraising progress. These can all be shared on social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace, Flickr and Facebook. In one year, 642 challenges were set up, bringing in a combined income to date of £212,191. Core development costs were covered in six months.

Shelter
Christmas Online Campaign

This campaign consists of dynamic, interactive products to drive engaging content to the donate page. The direct marketing team created a campaign to drive online donations direct to the website and donations through online seasonal online products, which drives engagement. Different online channels were used to drive traffic to the sites. The objectives were to increase donations by 30% compared to the same period in 2009 and improve RoI by 10%. Festify is a Facebook app that downloads the supporter's Facebook profile picture and allows them to add festive images. Santacam gives supporters a chance to make a child's Christmas magical, with a personalised video message from Santa. Ecards are also available. The campaign exceeded all expectations and saw a 49% increase in overall donations and an improvement in RoI by 33%. 81% of donors signed up to Gift Aid.

Crisis
A Positive View

A Positive View was an exhibition and charity auction of international signed photography by iconic photographers. The month long exhibition at Somerset House was fallowed by a Royal Gala charity auction hosted by Christie's and attended by the Project's Royal Patron, Prince William. It was targeted to raise £206k, actively involve Crisis' clients in the exhibition and achieve exhibition footfall of 15,000. In the end, net income was £358,596. The exhibition was internationally important in its own right. Crisis photography staff and client groups worked alongside the events team from the beginning, ensuring homeless clients were involved in the exhibition. A year's photographic course was run, resulting in five clients having their work hung in the exhibition and sold at the auction.

The Royal British Legion
The Afghanistan Heroes Field of Remembrance

The Afghanistan Heroes Field of Remembrance aimed to create a fitting tribute to remember the servicemen and women who have lost their lives in the Afghanistan conflict. It comprised three elements: mailing to the target audience; planting and setting up of the garden and an official opening on 9th November. 413,000 existing supporters were mailed and a mail pack was doordropped. In the three days before the opening, 30,000 Remembrance crosses were planted, that had been returned to the charity from warm and cold supporters via DM and the website. Projected income was £507,854. Actual income was £762,996 with an RoI of 2.34. The National Fundraising Team were supported by a number of volunteers, by local Army cadets, RBL branch personnel and by regional fundraisers. BAE Systems also provided 40 volunteers to help plant the crosses.

Guide Dogs for the Blind Association
Cold List Sponsor a Puppy Recruitment Campaign

After successful tests in 2009, Guide Dogs scaled up this acquisition activity to recruit 6,500 brand new regular givers with an average annual value of £79 to strengthen the Sponsor a Puppy scheme. Ethicall were involved in setting strategy, sourcing all data and recruiting donors. Data was sourced from telephone and internet lifestyle surveys using a sponsored question approach. Lifestyle survey responders are potential donors who are causal responsive and therefore highly targeted and every record comes with a callable number. Those who refused the Sponsor a Puppy proposition could be asked for other forms of regular giving or for one-off donations, maximising all ask opportunities. Telephone is also a very interactive way to introduce a new donor to a charity. In the end 7,364 new regular givers were recruited with an average annual value of £81.75. Additionally 386 people elected to give regularly outside the Sponsor a Puppy programme and 262 supporters gave a one-off credit card donation averaging £27.93. Total income generated by the campaign including Gift Aid was £755,014, giving a near positive Year 1 RoI: almost unheard of in cold recruitment.

Wood Green Animal Shelters
Hungry Mouths SMS & Cash-to-Committed campaign

Wood Green had never tried SMS before and this campaign aimed to data-capture new supporters and call to convert to committed giving. It also set out to reinforce the Hungry Mouths Christmas appeal imagery through the 'see it, see it and see it again' method. The campaign was publicised for four weeks in posters on trains between Peterborough (near Wood Green's Godmanchester shelter) and London's King's Cross. These asked people to donate £3 by texting the word FEED to a shortcode. Posters were also displayed at all three shelters and the text-to-donate banner was included on each animal's kennel card. SMS means the donor can give instantly and without involvement. The downside for the charity is that the only information captured is the phone number. Donors were called a few days after their donation, enabling Wood Green to engage with them. The campaign was a test to see if Wood Green could engage with a different audience to the usual supporters. Over three months 652 text donations were made, with an impressive 276 donations received over the first 11 days of the train poster campaign. Nineteen per cent of contacts made by Ethicall agreed to sign up to a monthly gift at an average of £73.45 per year.

Breakthrough Breast Cancer
Breast Cancer Awareness Month Donor Recruitment

This major face-to-face campaign aimed to recruit 700 direct debit supporters in Breast Cancer Awareness Month and meet budgeted financial targets. It worked with UrbanLeaf to deliver the programme, which took place at the same time as Breakthrough's first brand awareness campaign. This was promoted via outdoor posters, online and through Metro advertising and product promotion. Breakthrough knew that quality KPIs would drive the performance improvement and this needed a particularly innovative treatment. Fundraisers were trained using interactive quizzes and generated a real in-depth level of fundraiser awareness. The campaign achieved 702 new donors and exceeded budgeted financial targets. It has also shown significant year on year improvements in donor quality and therefore the long-term financial impact of the campaign.

The Myton Hospices
Lottery Uplift Campaign

The weekly lottery provides a vital source of regular, predictable and sustainable income for the charity. At the beginning of 2010 there were 8,500 members paying annual membership of £52. The key objectives of the uplift campaign were to increase membership by 12,000 in year 1, 10,000 in year 2 and to generate £1.5m per annum by the end of 2011. It also needed to increase Bumper Draw income to £120,000 a year. All fundraisers were trained in-house by Myton and went through the same induction as all Myton staff. With regular meetings and monitoring, year one income achieved £915,000 and year 2 £1.8m and retention has been maintained at 88%.

Freedom from Torture
Loyal Supporter Legacy Fundraising: An Integrated Campaign

The Medical Foundation's warmest supporters received a short phone call explaining that a letter was coming to them. The letter argued the case for a legacy, and a further phone call followed (to those who hadn't opted out) to ask if the supporter had considered a legacy. If appropriate they were offered options for personalised follow-up assistance from a legacy specialist. The integrated - call and mail - element involved 390 supporters within a wider mail only (7,610) campaign. The integrated call yielded an 8.13% pledge rate with an extra 20 pledges declared. Six people have asked for more contact and 17 have expressed their intention to leave a bequest. The Medical Foundation doesn't have a big budget for testing new fundraising approaches and this was hugely innovative and groundbreaking for the charity.

RNIB
Legacy Reception Programme 2010/11

The RNIB has a programme of 30 UK-wide events to increase awareness and pledges of legacies. At each reception, the RNIB demonstrates how it invests voluntary income and puts to good use legacy gifts. By implication this also shows what the adverse consequences would be without this support. Through the receptions, new prospects are generated for face-to-face follow up by regional advisors and new pledgers are identified, thanked and put into the Pledger Programme. Targets and projections are measured by number invited, number attended, number confirmed as new pledges and hot prospects.

TNT Post
Payroll Giving Can Really Ignite a Charity

The group charity, The World Food Programme is well supported within TNT Post. The objective with GAYE was to allow staff the flexibility to give to their own choice of charitable organisation with the company's support. A target of 10% sign-up was set initially, with a view of increasing this in future. Charities Trust helped to develop a very striking campaign with a play on TNT and its dynamite association. Marketing included CEO endorsement, a visual campaign, 'dynamite sticks' issued with payslips, site visits and reminders. The targets were achieved, with a total of £6,048 being raised in the first year.

Workplace Giving UK
LemonAIDer Campaign

Workplace Giving exhibits annually at the Employee Benefits Life Show. Despite genuine enthusiasm and passion from companies at the time of the exhibition, once back in the office other matters take over. This LemonAIDer Campaign aimed to encourage companies to promote their scheme by offering a timed incentive to all their employees. The exhibition stand was redesigned like an old fashioned lemonade stand and included a timed offer that added £5 to the chosen charity of every employee joining if the scheme was promoted before a certain date. Targets were to launch five new schemes and to promote them with a budget of at least £1,000 to give away. In the 10 week period to 17 December 14 employers launched the scheme with 346 employees being eligible for the £5 sign up.

Marie Curie Cancer Care
The Marie Curie Nursing Fund

This fund is a product developed by the major gifts team and invites supporters to sponsor a Marie Curie nurse (£19k a year) or healthcare assistant (£13k a year) for each of three years in a community of their choice. It is marketed to those with the capacity to give a single gift of more than £5,000, who either have an existing link to Marie Curie or an interest in supporting. Prospects were identified through internal prospecting - database mining, screening and external prospect research. The Fund is promoted through personal selling by fundraising staff and individual senior level fundraising volunteers. The target was to raise £350K per year and actual figures saw year 1 raise £561K in income and pledges.

National Trust
Quercus

The Quercus programme was developed as a new annual giving programme for major donors giving £5k a year or more, launched in December 2007. As a membership programme it aimed to attract new major donors, encourage existing donors to increase their level of giving, offer additional value to those giving at this level and recruit a small group of committed major donor advocates. It was originally launched as a three-year pilot and had to meet the National Trust 3:1 RoI criteria. It had to raise £450,000 within five years of its launch, but is actually forecast to raise £1.1m by the end of year five, as well as recruiting 60 members by the end of February 2010, which happened 12 months early. As well as being major donors, Quercus members also sit on advisory panels and the NT's Council. They have also introduced other major donors to the programme.

Beatbullying
The Big March

Beatbullying launched The Big March in November 2010 which was both a uniquely innovative and integrated digital campaign and an integrated sponsorship and merchandising fundraising campaign, which saw hundreds of thousands of supporters 'march' over 60 independent websites during a 12 hour period. Fundraising was a key campaign objective, levered principally through the sale of wristbands. Packs were sold to schools and youth communities as well as individually. Over 85 sector, corporate and media partners took part, hosting the Big March, pitching virtual tents and seeding in their own related activities. The entire campaign was run as a cross-departmental collaboration, bringing together colleagues from fundraising and communications, new media, practice, policy and research and the CEO office. Media coverage was good and there were many learning outcomes to take into account for The Big March 2 for 2011. However, it still beat all its targets by wide margins.

WaterAid
Dig Toilets, Not Graves

'Dig toilets, not graves' needed to integrate fundraising and campaigning asks in a single campaign. The objectives were to recruit regular givers from a different audience and to influence the outcomes of the MDG summit by collecting petition submissions. A media stunt - placing 167 spades in Trafalgar Square to represent the number of children who die from diarrhoea every hour - aimed to achieve coverage in a minimum of three national pres titles. In the end 23 articles were published. The DRTV recruitment ad was projected to achieve a minimum test channel Year One RoI of 0.4 and beat this by 7.5%. The viral film needed to achieve 35,000 views, but was watched by over 266,000. The campaign targets were exceeded by 67%, garnering 33,042 campaign petitions.

Havens Hospices

Havens Hospices places the utmost importance on offering the best possible training to its staff and volunteers. This is ensured through mandatory training, key skills courses, professional qualifications, job shadowing and personal development. Staff retention is encouraged through offering career development paths through the organisation. The appraisal system links back to the charity's business plan and the CPD form sets out the fundraisers' training needs for the year. Training takes place throughout the year and includes creative thinking workshops, networking classes and IoF 'tests' to ensure currency on Codes of Conduct.

Warwickshire Association of Youth Clubs

WAYC recognises the vital importance of its fundraising team and ensures their professional development is supported through monthly supervision, annual appraisals and personal career development interviews. WAYC's professional training policy provides a definitive pathway to enhanced qualifications via the Institute of Fundraising and a budget to meet the various course fees. WAYC actively shares fundraising knowledge across the organisation and promotes a policy of inclusion by involving all front line staff in the planning of funding bids. Paid study leave is available for all fundraisers.

HOME Fundraising

Home has worked closely with Oxfam for two years, showing dedication and commitment to the development of door-to-door fundraising. Supplier ethics are vital to Oxfam and Home has been open and enthusiastic about its Impact ethical practices audit carried out in August 2010. The audit scrutinised all aspects of Home's employment conditions and labour standards via staff interviews, observation and process inspection. This audit was one of the first to be carried out with an Oxfam services provider, and within the charity sector, and Home came out of it with flying colours.

Workplace Giving UK

Workplace Giving UK works with a plethora of charity and corporate organisations to boost Payroll Giving income, with clients including Arcadia Group Ltd, Barnardo's, Beaverbrook's, British Heart Foundation, Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks, Crisis and Flight Centre UK Ltd. Those who nominated Workplace Giving praised the organisation for their refreshingly energetic and innovative approach, as well as their willingness to go above and beyond their remit to help their clients increase take up of the scheme, significantly boosting income for the charities they represent. Their 'Geared for Giving' campaign alone has provided access to Payroll Giving to an additional 1.2m employees in the UK and has generated more than £1.5m for charities since 2008, with millions more pledged in future donations.

National Star Centre for Disabled Youth
The Fundraising Team

In 2009/10 the College lost its promised matched funding from the Learning and Skills Council towards an essential capital redevelopment project worth £15.4m, putting the future of the college at risk. The fundraising team responded to this by delivering an outstanding fundraising, lobbying and media campaign that has completely transformed the outlook for the College. They worked hard to retain the £3m already secured from donors and the trustees had enough confidence in the team to proceed with a building contract worth £6.8m, knowing that a further £2.5m was needed to complete the appeal. In the following six months the team raised £2.4m. During the second half of the year they collectively doubled the number of corporate supporters, increased regular giving by a third, challenge event income by 125% and trust and foundations income by 400%.

University of Exeter
Development Team

The team launched the University's very first major fundraising campaign to raise £23m by 2012. They were severely understaffed but still secured £6.6m towards the total against a target of £3.5m. The team put relationship building at the heart of everything; from working together, to working with others in the University, to working with potential donors, donors and stakeholders. The team learned that you can achieve great things in a very short time by focusing on outputs, working very hard, being flexible and learning on your feet. The steps the team has taken to ensure the success can be replicated elsewhere in the organisation include demonstrating best practice, professionalism and effectiveness.

Jewish Care

Jewish Care's core values of caring, excellence, integrity, enabling and inclusivity are at the heart of everything the charity does, alongside the Jewish values of warmth, kindness, honesty and respect. It is core to provide staff training and needs are assessed as part of the annual appraisal process for all staff. Annual team awards recognise the learning achievements of staff who have gained professional qualifications in the course of the year, and there is a monthly random draw among staff with a 100% attendance record in the previous quarter to receive a £100 gift voucher. A quarterly staff newsletter and intranet keep everyone updated and the charity strives to maintain a good work/life balance for everyone.

Warwickshire Association of Youth Clubs

WAYC actively supports flexible working policies such as job sharing, home working, part-time opportunities, time off in lieu and staff inclusion around decision making. Staff benefits include additional days holiday for every year of service, two extra days holiday at Christmas, free fruit and drinks, personal career development training, 15 hours paid employee volunteering time each year, free fitness class, pension scheme and a health and wellbeing day. Staff are involved in fundraising events for the charity and all fundraisers undertake Institute of Fundraising training. Through weekly staff meetings, people develop ideas and have opportunities to contribute to the organisation's overall three year strategic plan. This all creates a positive atmosphere and has resulted in participants referring to 'the WAYC Family'.

Isabel Hudson

Isabel joined Scope in 2004 as a volunteer on a business networking committee known as the Business Development Board (BDB), becoming Chair in 2009. She tasked the BDB with leading a specially created dinner, 'Sporting Inspirations' to be held at a London hotel. The event would raise unrestricted funds for Scope, rejuvenate the BDB and access new networks of high value supporters. Following the success of this evening Isabel worked with Scope's Head of Philanthropy to develop an appeal for the transformation of one of Scope's services for disabled adults, at the heart of which was a 'venture philanthropy' product targeted at private donors and grant making trusts. The appeal went on to raise £1.8m in donations and interest-free loans.

Polly Odbert

For 19 years Polly has volunteered an average of 40 hours every week for Watford New Hope Trust. She is passionate about the plight of homeless people, and is an extremely popular character among the homeless community of Watford as she is notorious for offering care and support to those most in need. For 5 years she has been the sole full-time voluntary manager of the WNHT charity shop. This shop is the largest charity shop in Hertfordshire and during the past five years it has generated a consistent profit of at least £120,000 a year, enabling WNHT to run its drop-in centre. Polly is an extremely humble lady whose commitment to raising funds to help those who are homeless and vulnerable goes largely unnoticed.

Joe Doyle

Joe started as Campaigns Assistant in the direct marketing team for the British Red Cross and has progressed to Senior Campaigns Officer in well under three years. He has managed numerous target-busting campaigns and oversaw the introduction of a sophisticated raffle programme requiring complex data analysis. He took over managing the rolling reactivation telemarketing campaign and increased the reactivation rate by 15%. Since taking on the more senior role, he has made a significant contribution to the cash supporter acquisition strategy for 2011 and reviewed how data is purchased and processed, which could save hundreds of thousands of pounds each year. Joe is a naturally intuitive fundraiser who is comfortable in any media and across acquisition and development.

Samiya Rashid

Samiya joined the Muslim Youth Helpline as a part time Assistant Fundraiser in 2009. In 2010 the MYH Head of Fundraising went on maternity leave and Samiya showed great strength and dedication to the organisation by taking on additional responsibilities and extending her working hours to full time. She became the lead on all MYH fundraising events and campaigns and in a few months her work and presence impacted greatly on the organisation. She has initiated and implemented a donor management system; a regular monthly donor newsletter; managed the MYH annual fundraising dinner; overseen the first series of fundraising challenges and contributed to raising funds for the prisoner outreach programme. All in all, she has pushed herself to develop key leadership skills and the ability to manage dedicated volunteers and nurture their talents.

Hannah Scott

During the four years Hannah has worked with JDRF, she has concentrated on growing and developing the supporter base within the Greater London area, growing income from under £200k to more than £1m. She strives for excellence in everything she does. She is driven to achieve excellent results within JDRF, she is passionate about the cause and has a desire to develop and grow within the charity. She builds excellent relationships within the team and with key donors. She is a key member of the regional fundraising team and has shared her expertise with the team in a very modest way. She has Type 1 diabetes herself and is passionate about JDRF's mission to find the cure for the condition.

Jools Tait

Jools is 'an inspiring person, fundraiser, leader and friend', said her nomination. She embodies the positivity, creativity and ambition most fundraisers aspire to. Her role plays to her strengths of relationship building and driving exponential growth across corporate and supporter partnerships. Jools started the Supporter Partnerships team in 2008 to provide a range of partnership options to high value and celebrity supporters. In year one, these delivered £1m, this doubled in year two and in year three they will account for over £5m income. Jools thinks strategically and has clear vision but makes decisions and ensures quick action. She drives excellence and inspires hard work, passion and dedication. Her energy and passion are infectious and she inspires many people to great achievements.