‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ - surviving the upcoming enforced isolation
We are all wondering what will happen over the next few weeks and months. Are critical events and face-to-face meetings going to be cancelled, how will the productivity-slowdown affect the funds we can raise and therefore the critical work we do across our sector??
Will the most vulnerable be whacked by global events yet again? Some by the virus, even more if there is a drop in our services and support upon which they rely.
The charities I work with are contingency planning with me. (And there’s an offer of free support for you and your charity at the end of this blog).
Together we are exploring the 2 key areas:
Threat: how can we maintain levels of fundraising if fundraisers have to work from home, if donors won’t meet us or visit our services, if events are cancelled?
Opportunity: what might we do that we don’t usually have time for? What might our supporters do that they don’t usually have time for?
Lots of good and workable ideas are bubbling up from these conversations so far:
- Helping your team to work their smartest: taking this opportunity to bring in some remote coaching to drive productivity and ensure that everyone in your team is working at full capacity
- Tech solutions - how can your team use tech to still ‘meet’ donors, introduce them to your work and beneficiaries, host virtual tours
- Good old-fashioned phones - call through your supporters, get feedback, update them, focus on international donors
- Stewardship - does your stewardship usually take a backseat? What can your team do from home offices to maintain and grow your current support and drive down attrition?
- Training webinar for board members, trustees, senior leadership team in major donor fundraising skills to support your efforts – it’s a great opportunity to step up how much they are able to support fundraising if they are scaling back other activity
- Shaping a campaign to energise and grow your supporter base: where are our next supporters coming from and how can we trigger relationships with them?
- Strategic stock-taking: identifying untapped opportunities and considering which areas of fundraising we are weakest or under-performing in
- Engaging volunteers and supporters in the crisis: video chat meetings to seek their support/advice
- Plugging the gaps left by the crisis: I’m in discussion with one elderly care charity about reaching out to a whole new cohort of volunteers to volunteer by FaceTime-ing older people who are now at even greater risk of total isolation.
Every charity will have their own risks and opportunities. In this time of such threat to our critical work, I am offering a no-strings strategy chat: a call with anyone who wants to explore these and other ideas to ensure that your beneficiaries are not suffering the after-effects of this crisis in months and years to come.
Ilana Jackman is a fundraising coach and consultant working across the charity sector to support, drive and innovate best practice fundraising.
