Kate oversees the challenge and community events at Combat Stress, keeping things human and exciting! She shared her recent lived experience of the most recent iteration of March in March - which saw a giant leap in YOY fundraising - exceeding their original target by over 400%!
Kate's Talk - Combat Stress UK's March In March 2021 Event
What is March in March?
This year we decided to look into a new fundraising platform and ultimately settled with Funraisin. The ease of use was remarked upon by many people of all ages, even trustees. As a result, the quality of stewardship made a real difference to fundraising uplift.
What was one of the major changes for this year's event?
This year we decided to look into a new fundraising platform and ultimately settled with Funraisin. The ease of use was remarked upon by many people of all ages, even trustees. As a result, the quality of stewardship made a real difference to fundraising uplift.
Did March in March really achieve over 400% increase on last year's fundraising?
Yes! We are also proud to say that 71% of fundraisers received at least one donation of £5 or more on their page. This was more than double the previous year's activation rate too!
Kate's Top Take-away
We wanted to make life as easy as possible for fundraisers...I'm very much of the belief that the easier you make it for fundraisers, the more they will raise. The leaderboards even engaged our older supporters, 71% received at least one donation - and 10% of our fundraisers made that first donation themselves.
Luke has had his hand in many of Australia's highest performing fundraising events -including The May 50k which has raised $17million in the past three years alone. He will be sharing his expertise gathered over the past 15 years, covering the opportunities available to you within data-led experiences that start with your reg flow.
Luke's Talk - Elevate Fundraising Director - delves into The May 50k and other successful events
Why is it so important to tailor your registration flow?
The Rego process is the ONE thing you can use to collect information to understand your participants (and assess their connection, intent and motivation etc). This means that we need to focus on maximising every touchpoint and utilising every opportunity available! Don’t be afraid of adding extra questions / asking for information if it will improve your comms and results (i.e. an extra few seconds on rego is fine). Even if you increased your rego process and lost 1-2% of regos, the gains in fundraising (from using that data) would mean better ROI.
Use the registration flow to understand the connection to their cause (PT1)
With The May 50K- We use the rego process to collect ‘connection’ to cause to understand the market and their connection to MS. This also instils a fundraising culture as to drive in the MS message to all participants. We only allow answers related to the cause to build the fundraising culture – i.e. even if you have no connection, we don’t let you say ‘I’m doing this to get fit’, you have to say ‘I have connection but I want to support a worthy cause’. For those with a connection and talking part for a person with MS, we ask them their name and add it onto their page – thereby making their page a personal tribute to that person (they are talking part for), and increases sense of ownership of the page… and as a result, the fundraising. Plus, this also increases the conversion rate of the fundraising page as their friends and family are also connected to the person they are walking / running for!
Use the registration flow to understand connection to their cause (PT2)
Utilising the ‘distance goal’ and ‘activity’ (i.e. running / walking) help us tailor the comms to increase relevance and personalisation. It’s a good idea to use this in email comms and social sharing as it increase the conversion of participants to ‘email a friend’ and ‘share’ as the message is so relevant to them – and if a big distance (i.e. 50km), then conversion rate of email and social increase as their friends take notice (and the bigger a distance, the more funds raised). As 90% approx of income usually comes from email and Facebook, making these channels as relevant and personal as possible = big increases in revenue. For the Great Cycle Challenge, we have a Tribute day where we have photos on an 80ft billboard in times square, and we allow those with a personal connection to add an additional ‘tribute’ image on the board (as we know these are our best fundraisers).
How can I harness the passion of participants to increase fundraising?
Well first off, I want to shout out to the ‘invite a friend’ feature. It is cheap promotion. It's great for utilising existing participants to spread the word on your behalf.
If you watch the talk, you'll see that there are loads of personalisation techniques, for instance with Million Paws Walk, we tailored messaging to the dog names rather than the dog owners names. There is so much room to play with the creativity of your event, it is really a fun part of getting in the headspace of your participants and what makes them tick. Dog lovers love their dogs! So focus the relevance and utilise the passion of your audience to create a more engaging and rewarding experience across your event.
Fundraising goals and intent
Do not discount people who set a lower goal, as even though they set a goal lower than you like… it’s a considered action and they are telling you they ‘intend’ to fundraise (they just don’t have the confidence to set a high goal). Then lead into how to increase intent and example from BLW and other events where we align the goal with the cause (images etc) and then prompt people to set a higher goal by inviting then, making it sound exclusive and also communicating benefits and incentives.
Luke's top take-away
Keep people's connection to the cause - even if they don't have one - in their mind. Even if they are taking part in The May 50k for the fitness side of things, don't let them say that - encourage them to say "I don't have a connection to MS, but want to support a worthy cause". This helps them build the cause into their mental picture of the event, and is going to get more people over the line to actually fundraise.
Kate oversees the challenge and community events at Combat Stress, keeping things human and exciting! She shared her recent lived experience of the most recent iteration of March in March - which saw a giant leap in YOY fundraising - exceeding their original target by over 400%!
Keith's Talk - A detailed look at Conversion Funnels
The Importance of Registration and Conversion
In P2P, registrations is the first step before fundraising. It's where fundraising success starts. Because of this, registration should be a highly optimised machine that drives fundraisers. The data captured in registration should empower you to create personalised fundraising pages and magical digital and real experiences. This is why we so strongly believe that registration and fundraising should be built as one platform, not two.
The Acquisition & Conversion checklist
Ensure you have access to key funnel performance data
Obsess about every marginal gain, every day.
Have the tools to take immediate action to improve any part of the journey.
Understand what the tools are, and how to make improvements mid-event.
Where can I download the Conversion Calculator resource?
In my talk I spoke about the power of "going one more". Adding 1% difference to each part of the funnel can result in increased income generation.
To help you see this effect, and to model out your own event conversion predictions (though of course, it's only a rough planner, and only you can truly know the factors affecting your event), we've made a Conversion Calculator spreadsheet you can access for free.
Keith's top take-away
Focus on the “the power of “Go One More” , by adding 1% to each step of the funnel, we increased the value of the example event by 38%. These incremental changes can be life-changing both for your event, your cause and the people you support.
