Tim Johnson 0:03

So, we often talk about the foundations for successful fundraising, and we talk about story and narrative as being one of the things tha t really underpins all good fundraising. And Laura, you've been at the convention recently running a session on this. What were some of the things thatat you pulled out in that around story and what donors are actually looking for in a fundraising narrative?

Laura Phipps 0:28

Yeah, I drew on some analysis that we've been doing within More Partnership because, as you know, we speak to donors a lot for our clients. We are in this privileged position of being able to talk directly to the philanthropists who are giving to these organisations and hearing directly from them what they like and what they don't like about a case for support. So, we've run an analysis of that, and I presented that back and talked about some of the things that donors that we know donors are looking for, but sometimes I think having been within an organisation writing a case for support, I wasn't always aware of, and so they're quite useful things to know. I mean, one of the biggest things that we hear from donors is just around clarity, and it can be really difficult if you work for a complex institution or you have lots of different things that you're doing to try and feel that you have to tell your whole story or your whole organisation strategy, or sometimes leadership expect that your case for support will be your strategy with a whole load of asks in, and so trying to distil that clarity can be one of the biggest challenges. And often what I've found and what we try to help clients with is that's like starting with why you exist instead of starting with the bigger problem that's happening in the world. So, you know, what is what is the problem, what is the need and the opportunity, and thinking about what is the moment, why is now the moment that a donor needs to take interest, and then what is the vision of that change that's going to drive in the world, and then finishing by saying almost that's where my organisation comes in. So, putting yourself in that picture. And one example that we talked about at CIUF because I was doing that talk with Peter Halewood, who works for Alzheimer's Research UK, is that there was a moment when they were running their defeat dementia campaign when there was just so much happening politically and socially around dementia, there was so much surround sound that almost that became the moment, but now they're moving into their next campaign. That moment's died down, there isn't so much noise around it, there isn't a prime minister's challenge on it. So, they've had to look for another reason why that that's the moment, and so they've looked to kind of drug successes and building on the success of clinical trials, etc. But I think it's really important for that clarity of narrative for an organisation to find what is that moment, that reason for a donor to be interested.

Vérane Castelnau 2:52

It's important to be in the moment, but to tie it to your purpose as well or and what you do as an as an organisation. So, working at the moment with a top school in France, they are kind of a comprehensive top university, and they are really strong with AI. They have kind of a purpose with AI because they deal with humanities and science and all of this. So, there's a moment for them to be to be out there. And so their alumni will be very interested in kind of knowing what they do with this. But at the same time, it's not all about AI, and it's also their tradition. They need to bring in their tradition and the things that are not going to be connected to AI, but they're gonna talk to their audience as well. So, we developed a case for support that has AI in it, but not only, but people were like it needs to be to reflect who we are, not only what's trendy and the word that in the buzz at the moment. So, attention there and a balance that need to be to be struck.

Tim Johnson 3:54

Yeah, I think your point around surround sound is and distinctiveness is quite an interesting one, actually. And you know, we've done a number of pieces of work with organisations recently focusing around cancer and interviewing donors who are supporting them. What's very clear is that actually they want to understand that cancer landscape. So, in telling your story, you've also got to tell your story within that world that you're working in in that context, I think, because we take these things for granted, but actually, it's a very confusing world out there. So, I think we've got to we've got to help donors to understand how distinctiveness comes within that context, and therefore the difference that will be made by supporting this particular organisation rather than perhaps any other organisation.

Laura Phipps 4:38

Yeah, there's two really important things that you mentioned there that came out in the analysis that our colleague Tim did of these donor insights as well. One is distinctiveness. So, what makes your organisation stand out? And like you mentioned, cancer, there are lots of cancer charities. By definition, only one of them will be the best in the world. So, what are the other points that you talk about? It may be the difference that you make within your community or the expertise that you bring to a particular type of cancer or particular type of treatment, and it's finding that niche, that USP, that reason why your supporters connect with you that feels most important. We've got a colleague who often talks about where are you first, best, or leading the way in something, and that can be really important to help think about well, what is it that makes you stand out and gives meaning to why you're the one who's talking about AI when lots of other institutions may also be talking about AI, what's the thing that you're offering? But also partnership, I think, and that goes to the point that you raised about donors wanting to feel like an organisation is connected into a landscape. And I think you know, I've fallen into the trap of this before of thinking that you need to centre your organisation as the sole problem solver of a problem, but actually donors don't necessarily want to see that, they want to know why you're distinctive and what you bring. But what we hear from them is what's happening in the wider world and where are you plugged into it? Where's that kind of credibility point? So, you know, we've had organisations where instead of saying, well, we do this and we've done this number of things and we've trained this number of scientists, is actually to move and being able to say, well, we're part of lots of the major international initiatives that are happening in that space. And for a donor, that can be much more compelling than just focusing on all of the things you're doing on your own. So, I think often that can be quite surprising to clients or a kind of new perspective of thinking you don't need to be the sole person changing this landscape. Donors want you to be part of an ecosystem, they want to know where it is, and they want you to know your best place and where you're bringing your best strengths, and then they'll support you for that.

Tim Johnson 6:46

Well, I think some of these causes are so big in terms of what needs to be addressed, it's just not credible to think that you as an organisation are going to solve them all, and donors won't believe that. So, I think you've got to pull out, you know, the area where you can make a difference and then paint a picture about how that ladders up with other differences to overall make a real impact on the cause. But it's got to be credible, hasn't it?

Laura Phipps 7:09

Yeah, absolutely. And it's got to be, you know, donors want to see that it's linked to your strategy, that it's not something that's a kind of a pet project of somebody. So, this is again part of what our research showed is that it needs to be credible, and for donors, that means it has to have tangible impact. You need to show leadership in that area, and you also need it to be linked to your strategic ambition. So, they want to hear someone in your organisation telling them this is the direction of travel that we've chosen and this is why, which is often why it's quite difficult to develop a case for support if you're in a leadership transition or if you're in the middle of doing your strategy, because you just can't marry those ways, those things together in a way that can feel credible and authentic to the donor when they're reading it.

Tim Johnson 7:55

Who are the best people to tell the story, do you think, Vérane?

Vérane Castelnau 7:59

I mean, we hear from donors that they want people to, they want leaders inside the organisation, academics and scientists, and the people that embody really an organisation and the cause to be telling this story. And I mean, whether it's universities or charities or hospitals that we work with, they have these people in-house. They oftentimes you're not aware of this, but you have the storytellers, you have to find them so that they can build a narrative that's compelling and that's really genuine and that people can relate to. So, find your storytellers is often what we tend to say to our clients, really. And that really bears fruit.

Laura Phipps 8:39

Yeah, my colleague was one of our colleagues, Adrian, was just tell was telling me a story the other week about how he was kind of shown around, I think, a nature reserve or something similar by someone who'd worked there for years and could talk with total passion about their commitment to what they were doing in that space that was just so powerful and so compelling. And putting someone like that in front of donors would be incredibly powerful. And we, you know, we had someone come and talk to us recently from the National Trust and talk about a big gift that they got and talked about actually for that donor, they'd built a long-term relationship with the organisation, and some of that was through visiting properties and knowing the gardeners of those properties and building those relationships. So, kind of that leadership or the credibility, I suppose, that a donor wants to see in an organisation doesn't just come from the CEO, it comes from the people who are at the coal face of delivering the change that that organisation is, and that can come at all different levels. And so I think it's important when you're telling your story to have lots of those different voices peppered through it. You of course want the CEO, you want the peer, you want the other donors, the donors who've already given for that social proof, you know, so that someone reading it thinks, well, oh, these that person's doing it, and that person's doing it. What am I what am I missing here? But you also need those real people who are so passionate about change that they've been volunteering for 20 years, 30 years because they believe in it so much, because that passion kind of really connects with donors.

Tim Johnson 10:00

How important is it, do you think, to demonstrate impact? And again, thinking about voices, you know, who are the best people to be able to show? Because I think donors are looking for some track record. That's sort of, you know, why should I believe that you can make a difference? I'm probably going to want to see that you've done something to demonstrate that you're able to make a difference. So, who are the best people? I mean, it's the sort of beneficiaries of some sort.

Vérane Castelnau 10:24

I mean it's interesting what you say because yes, I mean, definitely donors want to see the impact of their gifts. Some do. Others also trust the organisation with what they do. And so they are gonna, yeah, be kind of very generous and giving and just like believe that you're gonna you're gonna kind of do a good use of their money. But yes, I mean, beneficiaries will be really good at talking about impact, stories, data. We often say it's emotions and kind of data and the rational head and heart, right? That we need to bring in a story. So, you know, showing the impact through these two methods are kind of very, very helpful oftentimes.

Laura Phipps 11:07

Yeah, I mean we were testing a case for support for a donor just you know a couple of weeks ago, and we put in a kind of box showing an example of how that organisation had kind of driven systems change, which is quite a hard thing to show impact in. And so they have this great example, which was years and years of work, and it was in a different area. It wasn't an area they were asking money for, but it was in a in a slightly different area of the charity's work, but they were able to show the model worked. And actually, when we tested the case for support, even though that wasn't what they were asking money for, lots of the donors we talked to said, keep that in. That is really important. I was really interested by that, hadn't realised that they'd been able to do that, and it just gave them that sense of confidence that even though they were being asked to do something to fund something new in an area over here, the track record was there that this organisation could create change and could attract long-term state funding in order to kind of keep it going. And so it was really, really important to have those proof points. And sometimes it can be hard to dig those examples out. If you work in a big organisation, it's quite complex. It can take quite a while to get those proof points and be able to kind of communicate them successfully, but it really is worth pushing to pushing to get those because they're so golden, I think, for helping that case to land.

Tim Johnson 12:25

We also hear, don't we, from our those that we talk to about, they genuinely want to understand how their gift is going to be able to make a difference of some sort. And I think sometimes there's a tendency to talk about the big problem, how much money's going to be needed to solve this or take this big opportunity. But it also feels important to break that down so that donors can see just how their support is going to make a difference. Is that something that you've come across when you've talked with clients that they're able to break these things down to allow donors to see how they gift will help?

Vérane Castelnau 12:58

It's not an easy thing, but it's definitely something that donors are asking for. Like I want difference like I want to be able to see that I'm gonna make a difference, whether it's you know, £10,000 I'm giving or a million or more. With clients, it's that there is there's a challenge of breaking things down for sure, or also sometimes to be ambitious enough as well for donors to think big to say, okay, yes, I'm gonna go for 10 million gifts, and what does it look like and what will change, what difference will it make? So, it's on both sides of it that efforts need to be to be made sometimes.

Laura Phipps 13:31

And I think sometimes as well, there's that at that the kind of micro level of making sure that your asks are kind of relevant for different types of donors at different levels, and it can be clear what the routes to impact are at those levels. But at that kind of macro level, I remember you know having feedback from cases that have been tested where the scale of the ambition, the scale of the problem is so huge, but the organisation is saying, right, we need a million pounds here and a million pounds there, and I can really I can see kind of the verbatim quotes that we had back from those donors of saying, but the problem is so big, why are you asking for a million here and a million there? And so it's important when you're developing your story to try and balance the scale of the problem with the scale of your organisation. If actually a million pounds is transformational for your organisation, you need to be able to communicate why, why that transformation plays an important part of a bigger problem. If you're talking about climate, you know, it's a huge problem, huge scale, no single organisation is gonna tackle it. So, how do you position the importance of what your organisation does so that your £1 million or £500k or 50k ask feels like it's tangibly going to make a difference to that big problem? And sometimes that can be quite hard to get the balance right in a narrative.

Tim Johnson 14:53

Yeah. I think one of the other things that we come across is, you know, we know at the moment that the giving market is a challenging market. There are there are fewer donors, and it's a competitive market out there. You've got lots and lots of different causes all trying to compete for a what's a shrinking pie at the moment. There's something about urgency as well, I think, isn't there? Because donors could give to all sorts of different things, but I think you've got to get across the sort of why now. What's the opportunity here and now, what's the need now, what's the urgency to give? Otherwise, I might as well give to something else and come back to you in a little while. Is that something we're seeing, do you think?

Vérane Castelnau 15:34

I mean, the why now can be, yes, it's definitely important to kind of plug yourself to what's happening out there in the in the bigger world. Sometimes there's a really good case to be made about it is now for us because we are ready, because we've demonstrated this, and the now is really, really relevant for us. And I think we should try to kind of convince people to play on both aspects as well. Definitely, do you see this as well?

Laura Phipps 16:00

I do

Vérane Castelnau 16:00

I think it needs to feel really authentic though. I think sometimes there can be a reliance on things like anniversaries to be the moment, and I think donors are quite kind of wise to seeing through that it might be your anniversary, but what is going to be different? Are you just asking me because it's an anniversary or because you plan on doing something, or this is a moment, like you say, internally, institutionally, because something is different, or some new level of ambition, or some new opportunity. Maybe there's a new piece of equipment or a new development in technology, or a new you know, you have the opportunity to purchase some land on which to do something truly transformational that you know you haven't had a chance to do before, or something externally because there's an economic moment, a political moment, a social movement that you can buy into, and you need to kind of think about those things as being really authentic moments that a donor's really gonna be able to get behind. And we see this in some ways in the climate space where these kind of big global ambitions have been set like 30 by 30, and you're seeing big, big donors coming together behind that in the climate space and saying, right, okay, we're gonna club together and we're gonna make billions of pounds available for other organisations who are coming together to meet this target in this moment, and they can be really powerful. So, I think, yeah, trying to look at what's happening in the wider world and how you're aligning with that will make sure to donors that you feel like you've got your finger on the pulse of what's happening.

Tim Johnson 17:28

Yeah.

Vérane Castelnau 17:29

There's also the taking into consideration the different types of donors, right, that are out there that have kind of different personas and have different motivations, whether they kind of want to try something, want to try to fund something that nobody else is going to fund, or really care about their community, or kind of want almost to invest in something new. So, kind of trying to tell your story with these different lenses as well is important. Do you see do you see this in in your

Tim Johnson 17:55

Well I think you're absolutely right in terms of different things appeal to different people. So, we've got to be careful not to think that one story is a fit-all for everybody. And this comes back to the importance of building relationships with our prospective donors and really listening and understanding what it is they want to try to achieve, what are their aspirations? Because the sweet spot, of course, is mixing together their ambitions, our ambitions, and you know, hopefully in the middle there, there's something special that can happen. So, I think you make a really good point. One story, one size fits all, that's not how it works.

Laura Phipps 18:27

And we help clients do cases for support, but the case of support we always say it's your conversation starter, and actually, what needs to happen after that conversation starter is listening, and you listen to the client, and then you evolve that story for them and you find the thing that matches them. So, that your case is never going to be, you know, a PDF that you send to someone and a big gift comes in. It's the start of a conversation that says, look at what we're doing, what interests you, let's talk about that, and then it goes off the page into those personal relationships, etc. But it's always good to have that single grounding.

Tim Johnson 19:00

Yeah, and I think I think we need to be careful that we don't just put ourselves on broadcast the whole time. We've got to understand our donors. So, spending time getting to know them, discovering what excites them, what their aspirations are, make sure we're giving enough time to that, not just always telling our story without doing that. Yeah. Exciting times, and I think it all points to the fact that narratives are really important part of the fundraising mix.