Brangelina, the FPS and controlling the narrative
Angelina Jolie has managed to control the narrative surrounding her divorce from Brad Pitt — how can universities do the same in light of the FPS and negative press about fundraising practices? Ahead of the CASE Regular Giving Conference, Kurstin Finch Gnehm tells us how Imperial College London is being proactive in getting donors on-side.
Angelina Jolie has officially gained control of the narrative around her divorce from Brad Pitt, according to Buzzfeed. She filed first, made the first public statement, was the first to hire an attack-dog solicitor, and timed her key moves to occur during a month when Oscar buzz kept Brad from a counter-strike. Brad, meanwhile, has no choice but to respond to her accusations.
Angelina’s made a smart move. She’s worried the press will make her out as the villain; after all, there’s nothing the media loves so much as a story with a good ‘baddie.’ And I sympathise — by the time the dust settles on the FPS and new fundraising regulations, I worry that the charity sector, stuck in the role of whipping boy, will also find itself perilously close to losing control of the narrative.
While CASE and the Institute of Fundraising look after our best interests at a policy level, we can still manage the narrative for our individual donors. At Imperial College London, the Regular Giving team is trying to be a little more ‘Angelina,’ using the time during the final FPS negotiations to speak to our donors about our values and high professional standards, to set ourselves apart from the very few charities who violated public trust.
We’re not spending a lot of money on this, but our hope is that, by the time our alumni are given the chance to hit the “big red button,” they’ll have bought into a new narrative, one focused on the value of their relationship with their university and our commitment to meeting and exceeding their expectations as donors. It won’t change everyone’s mind, but if it works for Angelina, we think it can work for us.
Here are some of the ideas we’re putting into practice.
1. We’re asking questions. We don’t know enough about what our donors (or non-donors) think of us, and we need to if we’re to change their minds. We’re conducting three focus groups where we’ll explore what we’re doing well and what we can do better. We hope to find out things like, “What does it feel like to be an Imperial donor?” and “Do you feel like your gift to us is accomplishing what you’d hoped?” We’ll use the data to shape our 2017 strategies.
2. We’re making promises. Starting in September 2016, everyone who receives an Imperial direct mail appeal will also receive a copy of a new document we’re calling our “donor promise.” Shorter and more conversational than a donor charter, it’s a set of six commitments we make to our donors about transparent fundraising and secure data management. On the reverse of the document we invite them to let us know if we don’t live up.
3. We’re thanking more, and more often. Our donors receive a copy of the Annual Fundraising Report, but it can be a little alienating for those who gave less than £1,000 in a single year. So, at the regular giving level, we’ve launched a new stewardship programme. We now send each donor a personalised annual impact report (which reports only on the funds he or she has contributed to) as well as three quarterly email updates about how we’re using the gift. We also distribute “Proud Supporter” pin badges to current donors at alumni and fundraising events, regardless of size of gift — a perk previously reserved for those who give £1,000 or more.
4. We’re promoting security. Like many of you, we attach our data protection statement to everything we send out. But a blanket approach isn’t enough. We now record when an alumnus receives a print piece including the DPS (it’s an action attribute on the alumnus record), from solicitations to thank you letters to emails. Soon, we’ll be able to identify groups of alumni who may not be aware of our strict data protection policy and develop strategies to share it with them.
5. We’re tracking feedback. I think the sense that charities routinely ignore complaints and requests is exaggerated. We respond to every complaint, request or enquiry within 24 to 48 hours, and I imagine that you do too. But we’ve found it hard to prove. Last autumn, we developed a feedback tracker — a simple spreadsheet where we record all negative, positive and neutral feedback to every appeal, along with our responses. We also save this information as an attribute on each donor’s record. This allows us to evaluate our own processes, measure improvements, set KPIs for donor satisfaction and demonstrate response time to external stakeholders.
Unlike Angelina, we’ve lost the chance to be proactive about our story, but it doesn’t mean that we’re out of options. By taking the steps I’ve described, we hope that our actions will supersede the narrative the newspapers want to tell, at least in the minds of our donors. It will not fully insulate us, and we’ll continue to make provisions for implementing all final fundraising regulations. But it may help cushion the blow.
