The floor surrounding my desk is covered with an array of folders containing chapters of material for a new book Kevin Schulman and I are working on.

Tentatively titled Start Over: Building a growing, sustainable nonprofit from scratch in today’s fast-changing and challenging environment, the book aims to be a helpful guide to the vastly changed world we all face.

In addition to adding case histories, research results and our own insights, we’ve been adding the thoughts and recommendations of other veterans to this growing ball of string.

So I was delighted to find Giles Pegram’s 7 Things I Would Do Differently If I Were An Appeals Director Now appear in my weekend reading file.

Before becoming a consultant, Giles was, for 30 years, one of the most successful fundraisers in the UK as appeals director of The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children where he pioneered many innovative and record-breaking campaigns.

Now, as he puts it, “on reflection I can see a lot that I should have done differently … not so much about leadership or management … but about fundamentally changing our approach to fundraising”.

Giles is not one to dwell on the past and his list sure isn’t an apologia of ‘mistakes’. Rather his 7 Things I Would Do Differently reflects today’s changed demographics, technologies, and competitive environment.

Here’s an abridged version of Giles’ 7 Things. I urge you to read his complete and unabridged version here.

1. Create and implement a clear vision for fundraising leadership

“Create, with appropriate consultation, the vision for fundraising. Not the fundraising strategy, but the vision. It should be donor-centered and fill just one side of an A4.

Then embed that vision throughout fundraising.”

2. Improve the donor experience

“When Mercedes market a new car, they focus on the car, the Mercedes experience, not the need for Mercedes to make money.”

“What we are marketing is all the communications that make up the donor experience and how that permits and shapes the work we do. Those who focus on marketing the charity, the cause or even the good work being done miss this simple truth. That donor experience would be the core of my vision.

“I would immerse myself in the charity’s fundraising. Spending time with all those who have contact with donors, not just meeting people, but seeing and doing their work. Working with the teams responsible for outbound telephone, inbound telephone, in-house supporter services, etc. Seeing all the communications that go to donors. Then, doing the same for community fundraising, corporate fundraising, etc.

“This of course is a big undertaking that would need to be done properly as it’s crucial to understanding to what extent current activity is consistent with the vision.

“While doing all of the above, every time I look at a communication with a supporter, I would ask myself how the donor would feel after the experience of that communication; how it would enhance the donor experience.

“I am fairly confident that I would find a huge disconnect in many quarters between the vision for fundraising and actual practice. Because we hadn’t made real the 90 degree shift from thinking about the needs of the charity to thinking about the needs of the donor.”

3. Make the first ‘thank you’ perfect

“The thank you letter/welcome pack is the most important communication we send. Someone who, probably, has seen our recruitment material many times before, has decided to donate. She will wonder if she has made the right decision.

“The first thank you is vital in reinforcing the donor’s decision to give and to making her feel special. But it takes some organisations a fortnight or more to send a response and some charities don’t send a response at all. The thank you needs to be special and quick.

“I would chair a cross-departmental working group in our charity to look at how we get the first thank you/welcome pack out within 48 hours. If we can do that, we’ll be four times more likely to deserve a second gift.”

4. Measure and reward long-term performance, not just short-term

“I became used to, and part of, a culture where each year, department by department, we would set the annual budget. And even a monthly cash flow. Income was monitored monthly, with variances needing to be explained. The very walls of our offices whispered ‘budgets’.

“Looking back on it now, it was mad.

“I would work to change the culture, throughout the charity, to focus on five/ten year results, as well as monthly/annual results. Charities are acting in the best interests of their beneficiaries if they think with a five/ten year time horizon, as well as one year.

“I accept this would be a time-consuming process … [but] … you don’t achieve change like this in a single meeting. I would marshal my facts and work my way through the hierarchy from CFO to the full board of trustees. Some meetings would be difficult. But if I had got my facts right, any reasonable and intelligent person could not fail to buy into the idea.

“This would fundamentally change the culture, and get everyone seeing fundraising as an investment, not an overhead.

“But I wouldn’t suggest seeing five/ten year results as an alternative to keeping tight control on cash within the year, because that is vital to keeping the charity afloat.”

 5. Consider satisfaction as the key measure of Lifetime Value

“The key driver of LTV is donor satisfaction; how good is the donor experience. And measuring and influencing that can and should be within our control.

“Now, I would get all my direct reports to think about specific measures they and their teams could introduce that would be the key indicators of donor satisfaction in their area. There would have been zero resistance to this, I’m sure. People wanted to be more donor centred and would have been delighted to be asked to think about measuring it, if they knew it would be taken seriously.

“Adrian Sargeant and Roger Craver have each produced a remarkably similar list of seven drivers of satisfaction. They are all within our control. I would work with my senior team, to agree our own list of drivers from these two lists, and refine one key set of actions we should all take to improve each driver of satisfaction. Each department would create their next annual plans on the basis of what each member was planning to do to make the action list real. This would help to create a culture whereby the donor experience is key.

6. Spend at least as much on retention as we spend on recruitment

“We spent a fortune on recruiting new donors. We even had a stewardship department, to try to make stewardship of donors key.

“Nevertheless, we spent relatively little on retaining donors and accepted attrition as a fact of life. I believe we were wrong.

“I would have invested serious money on retention.

“I would empower all donor-facing staff to improve the donor experience, and resolve most enquiries and complaints. This may involve treating these staff as fully fledged fundraisers, with adjustment of salaries if necessary.

“This would also involve changing the method of working of telephone fundraising staff. Or I would bring my outbound TFR [Tele-Fundraising] in-house. Scripted telephone calls take 6 minutes. Unscripted, donor-led calls can take 21 minutes. Immediately three times the staff, each now being paid more. In TFR, you don’t buy the cheapest offering.”

7. I’d keep my head in the clouds and my feet firmly on the ground

“We are led too much by data and spreadsheets and not enough by the donor experience we need to create.

“I would get the relevant staff to focus on the content of our communications with vigour. And I would get involved myself. Every communication that didn’t work to enhance the feelings donors had, would be changed. This needs to be fed through to appraisals, which should be as much about the donor experience, using the measures we had identified above, in the section on satisfaction, as about income.”

Giles concludes: “Doing all of the above isn’t about leadership and management, but about empowering managers to make decisions that reflect the new paradigm of today’s fundraising.”

A well-deserved Agitator raise to Giles and a reminder that fundraisers always get a second chance. It’s called ‘tomorrow’.

What will you do differently tomorrow?

Roger