E-database at the heart of a ‘tax effective’ promotion

How do you get 180,000 registered charities in the UK to collect donations tax effectively. This rather challenging problem was set Bright in February by the Institute of Fundraising.

The brief is tricky, not because the message isn’t succinct – increase your donations by approximately 30% by tax effective giving – but because the audience is so broad and surprisingly disparate. Most large charities are already structured to ensure they take maximum advantage of government initiatives and incentives, but getting the message to smaller organisations, run generally on a voluntary basis, is more challenging.
 
A tender was arranged and won by Bright because of the careful way we proposed to target the audience. Lee Grant, Tax Effective Giving Manager of the Institute: “The tender was complex, especially choice of media. We want smaller organisations to benefit from key government initiatives such as Gift Aid. Organisations who may not even subscribe to important charity press such as Third Sector.
 
“Bright have a terrific understanding of the sector and knew blanket advertising would not be as effective as a more focused campaign to smaller organisations”.
 
Typically these might be schools, scout groups, and smaller lesser known charities.

Bright proposed organising an email database. Bright Client Services Director, Stephanie Spowart, takes up the story: “We wanted the campaign to be personalised and go directly to the secretaries and key organisers of these smaller organisations. No simple database exists so called upon our own in-house own database collation service to form accurate lists of these key contacts. The legislation on emailing is very clear, but this is a straightforward and most effective means of communicating urgent and important information from the Home Office.

“After formulating an accurate database we began the controlled programme of emailing the information on a regional basis, inviting respondents to a workshop in their area to help their organisation to be more tax efficient. Recipients were invited to visit a special campaign microsite to find out more and book online. The emailing is personalised, focused, straightforward, cost effective and environmentally friendlier than a conventional direct mailer – it just ticks all the boxes.”

But would it get more people into the workshops and registering for Tax-effective Giving?

Lee Grant: “The creative was incredibly simple but very effective, showing two ‘piles’ of coins, one obviously larger than the other and asking recipients to “choose your donation”. The take up has been successfull on the first two mailouts.

If you would like to know more: steph@bright.co.uk