Fundraising Innovation | Gamifying the Process
Innovation Heroes Episode. 3 with Smita Challu Tulsani of the Canadian Cancer Society on approaching fundraising through the lens of open innovation, gamifying the process through immersive experiences, metaverse and AI-driven donor-validated products.
There is a new era of fundraising on the horizon and the Canadian Cancer Society is leading the charge. After an abrupt and almost total disruption to traditional fundraising and in-person events, approaching the fundraising process through a new innovative lens was mission-critical. Nonprofits turned to unchartered territory online, looking for new pathways of connection. Through data-driven efforts, with a focus on value exchange partnerships and donor-centric products, organizations such as CCS have successfully navigated a post-covid (🤞) reality, and might even call it good fortune. Digital immersive programming has opened up access to a whole new generation of fundraisers and donors. Explore how gamifying the process of fundraising, the metaverse, augmented reality and AI are changing the landscape, experience (and participants) of charitable fundraising.
🔉 Click to listen 👇
Ushering in a new era for #fundraising! This week’s Innovation Heroes segment welcomed Smita Challu Tulsani Director of Direct Response & Innovation, to discuss how the Canadian Cancer Society is approaching the fundraising process through a new innovative lens.
In this episode, Adam and Smita Tulsani discuss all things fundraising:
- Fundraising is the Science of Inspiring People to Care
- Digitalization, AI, Value Exchange & Channel Optimization
- Moving from Waterfall to Agile Mindset in a Core vs. Crowd Hybrid
- Fundraising That is Not Disruptive — Gamifying Fundraising
- New Supporters & Advocates: Great Wealth Transfer, NextGen, Streamers, and Influencers
The conversation covered a lot of ground, here are 5 key highlights: 👇
1) Fundraising is the Science of Inspiring People to Care
Personally, I think of fundraising as a key driver for social impact and social entrepreneurship because the outcome of the fundraising efforts is having a positive impact on societal change. As sociologists would define it — social change is a kind of a package of human interactions and relationships, but it also social change drives slowly, it changes the cultural thread of the society. I think of charitable fundraising as the science of inspiring people to care, which is unique in itself and what inspires me and I think what I hope interests you and our listeners as well is that we are at this cusp of change where together we can actually influence this through technology, through innovation, and through strategic partnerships as well.
2) Digitalization Mindset Shift
I truly believe that innovation is not a team or a department or a title. It is more of a mindset adoption and we do see that over the last 30 months we have seen a lot of exploration in digitalization and digital transformation like those have become the key terms. It has enabled us to challenge the norm in fundraising and we are seeing that there is this need to constantly evolve as your donor insight or consumer mindset is changing and it’s not only the internal factors that impact fundraising, it’s also a lot about external factors that are influencing your decisions.
3) Trying new things and venturing into new audiences
There has been a significant emphasis on adopting an innovation mindset or testing new things or even kind of being more bolder than our traditional approaches. We are seeing that in the charitable sector, we’re also seeing interesting partnerships where for profit and non for profit are coming together to create something unique immersive experiences. There is this new muscle of kind of trying new things and venturing into new audience inside which is developing.
4) Where Donors Drive the Product
A lot of our insights are donor-validated. We’re testing new products, we are testing new channel optimization tactics, and seeing where is the market appetite…”how do we engage our donors in a more meaningful way?” And the crux and the core of it is that value exchange, which is a different mindset than how we would traditionally work. It was kind of one-size-fits-all, so to speak, but now where we are with a lot of data-driven decision making, we are seeing that offerings are moving from being just product-centric to more donor-centric marketing, where donors are helping us drive the product.
5) Failing Faster and Learning What Not to Do
We’re taking the lead from the market and one of the key things that worked well for us is adopting the agile mindset and methodology. In the fundraising context you have to be very mindful, where do you invest the donor dollars, and pretty much the pressure is on, every pilot of yours has to be successful. That’s where moving away from waterfall to agile has been really helpful for us to be able to concurrently evaluate multiple streams of tasks or initiatives and see with the data-driven insight which is the most compelling one to scale up, and be able to cap the ones, or have the permission to fail faster, which is, a new muscle and sometimes they say if you learn quickly what not to do that’s far better learning than continuing something which down the line would not be as impactful. so really interesting.
Connect with Smita:
Twitter: Canadian Cancer Society | Resources: Partnerships
The Canadian Cancer Society, or CCS, should be known to many of our Canadian listeners, but for those tuning in globally, CCS is a non-profit organization with a mission to improve the lives of all those affected by cancer — through world-class research, transformative advocacy and compassionate support.
🔉Thank you for checking out Episode #3 of the Innovation Heroes series!
Let’s keep the conversation going! Interested in chatting with Adam on an Innovation Heroes segment or recommending a guest? To join the queue, send an email to possibilities@herox.com Attn: Adam + Innovation Heroes Include your name, email, and topic of interest (you can also use the HeroX contact form).
🔉 About the Innovation Heroes podcast
The Innovation Heroes series covers all things open innovation, crowdsourcing, and remote work. It’s time to open up the airways, share strategies, engage partners, and leverage the power of crowd intelligence to expedite solutions to the pressing problems facing every level of organization, individuals, and the world. The key word here is OPEN.
We’re bringing our partners in innovation, organizations who have run their own crowdsourcing projects, innovator powerhouses, and remote work legends into the spotlight. There is a global network ready to contribute time, energy and intelligence to just about any challenge that comes their way. All we need to do is provide the opportunity. Thank you for being a part of the solution. Discover the Power of the Crowd
About Adam Olsen | Connect
Adam is your Podcast Host and Possibilities Manager at HeroX, connecting with innovation leaders from around the world to gain insights on how they approach innovation, the technologies they’re most excited about, and how these innovations impact their industries.
HeroX is a platform and open marketplace for crowdsourcing innovation that allows anyone, anywhere, to solve everyday business and world challenges using the power of the crowd.
Connect with Adam: LinkedIn, possibilities@herox.com
Your Crowd. Your Solution.
Originally published at https://www.herox.com.
