Subject: WRVS strategic repositioning - Charity Talk

Jon Barrick , CEO of The Stroke Association asks:

Can you amplify on the techniques you used to ensure internal staff working on service delivery were behaving in ways that were in harmony with the overall repositioning?

Attn; PAUL PALMER

I am keen to know whether you are doing any research specifically on smaller charities (i.g annula income upto 500K).

I observed that while these form the large of charity but they do not get the attention or services they deserve. In pariticular they spend far more on back office services compared to larger charities.

regards,

Golam Morshed
Director
CHARITY ACCOUNTING SERVICES
WWW.cas-live.com

One question how is the WRVS going about renewing its membership base ?

An inspiring talk illustrating how to achieve organisational renewal in the voluntary sector in many instances light years ahead of commercial organisations.

Was very inspired by the presentations last night. Knowing that a huge organisation such as WRVS can turn itself around, embracing a new vision / mission, starting to fundraise and doing it all in consultation with 2500 staff and 55,000 volunteers is great!

Was particularly interested in what Lynne was saying about a cultural change of communicating with people electronically. She said that when stakeholders were told the cost of postage they were happy to be contacted by email. She was saying that interactive TV, text and Skype were all methods they were starting to use to communicate. A particularly difficult challenge for an organisation working with older people I'm sure.

Lynne's comment about fundraising campaigns really stuck out for me. She said that WRVS were using direct mail as their main fundraising tool but a lot of this was 'misery messaging' - telling sad stories of old ladies in trouble. She said that these stories just didn't fit under the new vision of being 'positive about age'.

Its an interesting dilemma that it is the sad stories which raise most money but often at odds with the ethos of an organisation. I think Paul said that there is some research about whether people give money based on the vision of the organisation or the individual story they are responding to. I'd be interested in finding out more about this.

Hi Golam,

in strict research terms no but a number of my MSc students have undertaken assignments in this area and we hope with CFDG to make them available.

bw Paul

Story about new WRVS strategy leading to 20 redundancies in Third Sector this morning.

Funny the way it is reported as 'shock horror redundancies'! Having heard about the change process they went through, it's not surprising that the structure and staff of the organisation has to change too. You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs.

I would like to disagree with MelBelle's point that "misery messages" are necessary to raise money. Lynne made it clear in her Charity Talk that a)"MMs" work against WRVS' ethos of respect for older people but also that b) their use of positvive images had been successful in their direct mail. Lynne, can you give us an example of a +ve image you used and indicate how successful it was? 

Within the debate around the use of negative verses positive language & imagery within fundraising messages I would suggest that a clear distinction needs to be made whether the 'sadness', 'misery' or any other negative perception reflects the beneficiaries of the charities work OR the negative perception relates to the circumstances within which the beneficiary finds themselves.

For instance, it is one approach to create the perception that a blind person is inherently sad and lonely - it is quite different to create the perception that a blind person becomes sad due to his/her inability to find employment due to the misinformed views of potential employers.

Quite clearly it would be a very strange charity that sought to amplify perceptions that the recipients of its work were helpless, victims, powerless etc. It is however quite appropriate for a charity to explain the circumstances that negatively effect its recipients.

With regards to 'sad stories' (by which I mean appeals that demonstrate someone needs help) there is much academic work available from around the world, ranging from behavioural economics to psychology to marketing, that explains why 'sad stories' raise more money that positive - the clearest example is probably the Norm Activation Model which places great importance upon the consequence of not giving upon the individuals self-image.

Thanks for your comments James. You might also be interested in these other discussions related to fundraising campaigns: 

• internal threats to your campaign
• charity advertising campaigns - worth the money?
  

Sorry to have been so long replying. I’ve been at the Party Conferences.

My Blackberry has helped me keep in touch with e-mails but I couldn’t get on line to answer you until I returned to my PC. And that’s also, in many ways, the answer to one of the questions you’ve posed about the use of IT: when you have access to it, it’s brilliant - and fast. You can’t imagine that other people are not on line, available and responding. I often seem to live in a virtual world - sending out messages and suggestions by e-mail or on our website. If I don’t get an answer in a few minutes, a day at the most, I can start to think there’s no one out there. The pace of change in an organisation as wide-spread as WRVS is influenced by the speed of communication. And most people are not on line – yet. Fortunately most people have phones and these, together with the rumour mill, seems to work faster than any internet connection. So, if there’s no internet, don’t forget – it’s good to talk.

The question about positive images is interesting. This isn’t a new debate – development NGO’s have been working to develop guidelines and good practice on this for ages. We do need to think about the images we use. Two examples from WRVS: we set up a ‘Wise Line’, a telephone helpline staffed by volunteers in their late 70s and 80s. They went on local radio, syndicated around the country, and answered questions about how to cope with everyday family problems based on their years of experience. It was a great success. Another was to look at how we described the experience of older volunteers who were supporting others in their communities. We described their work as peer-to-peer support, as mutual assistance and talked about inter-connectedness to describe the relationship of volunteer and those who received services. We have also started to use some of the vocabulary of the user and patient movement ‘experts by experience’. I couldn’t claim we always get it right – and some things slip through for the kindest of reasons. We keep trying though. I want to describe the world of older people as they tell me they want it described – not as I imagine it. And to that end – look at our website and see the four challenges we have put to the political parties – we’re asking for the things older people tell us they want.

And how are we going to change behaviours in line with the cultural changes we are bringing about? We have run a managing change series which was attended by 120 or so middle managers. It has made clear the behaviours we expect of everyone in the organisation as well as articulating the values and practices we expect to be demonstrated. These managers have now got the task of spreading those messages to their direct contacts within the organisation. We hope that the new culture will go viral. We are also using the luxury of an overlap period when people in the new posts will be able to work together with their new volunteer partners, to develop the new culture that we will want to demonstrate. We will also be looking at our performance management system – it needs to be explicit not only about the outcomes for which people are accountable but also the behaviours - the way of achieving those outcomes - that we expect.