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Giving Fund makes first grants
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
The Innovation in Giving Fund, run by NESTA and the Cabinet Office, has announced its first round of grants of £50-£150k. We’ve featured many of the organisations, like Buzzbnk, BlueDot and Peoplefundit in previous briefings. The bias is towards small-scale volunteering, timebanking and support for carers. There’s less to promote actual giving of money. READ MORE
Customer analytics for the Red Cross
Monday, February 20th, 2012
For the Red Cross, emergency response is the biggest way in which they acquire new donors. A new project, in partnership with Wharton, will mine donor data to better understand how to convert one-off givers to lifelong supporters. It’s an approach to customer data that’s common in the private sector, but only seen in a few of the larger charities. READ MORE
Give more
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
The 2011 Philanthropy Review (like many reviews of its kind) suggested that there was a real need for a public-facing campaign to promote “giving” of time and money. The Pears Foundation is taking this forward with the launch of the Give More campaign, which had a soft launch this week. Whilst laudable, the risk to this sort of campaign is that it confuses the means with the ends. People rarely volunteer because they like volunteering, but because they are motivated by the causes that volunteers serve. READ MORE
Women’s services cuts
Monday, February 13th, 2012
The Trust for London and Northern Rock Foundation have released new research into the cuts faced by women’s services. Funding for these services comes from a range of sources, so cuts have a cumulative impact. The other important point is that the total pot of money is not a large one relative to the size of the problem being addressed. READ MORE
Friday, February 10th, 2012
Pinterest has grown rapidly to become one of the top 10 social networks. Like Twitter before it, it can be hard to initially understand how or why you are going to use it, but the focus at the moment is on picture sharing and ‘social shopping’. Its demographic is 70% female with a focus on 25-44 year olds. Those two facts alone should make it interesting to fundraisers and campaigners. READ MORE
Trust declining everywhere
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows (with the exception of media) trust in institutions is in global decline. The majority of people now distrust government. In most parts of the world NGOs are still the most trusted institutions (p17), but this is also declining. The exceptions are China and India, where trust in NGOs has surged. READ MORE
Impact investing in African SMEs
Monday, February 6th, 2012
‘Impact Investing’ seeks to generate both financial and social returns but as a concept it exists more in theory than practice. A new fund from Oxfam and fund manager Symbiotics will invest in small businesses in Africa and Asia. In practice, much of the investment will be in small farms and other agricultural enterprises. READ MORE
Philanthropic trends
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
This presentation is a really good summary of the strategic challenges facing charities, social enterprises and their funders. The key point is that the current model is not sustainable. We are moving from an world of ‘doing good’ to one of ‘demonstrating value’ and one where social and financial returns exist on a spectrum. READ MORE
A dangerous delay
Monday, January 30th, 2012
Oxfam and Save the Children’s thoughtful report on why systems and organisations were slow to respond to the Horn of Africa report received widespread coverage this week. Duncan Green’s blog offers a good summary of why the response was slower than it should have been. READ MORE
Real Time Giving
Friday, January 27th, 2012
The Knight Foundation has released a study on those who made text donations worth $43m to the Haiti earthquake appeal in the US. They describe much of this as ‘impulse giving”. Donors did not do much research and often gave on the same day as hearing the news. READ MORE