Megatrends for NGO Fundraisers, Marketers and Communicators

In April I organized a workshop with Christopher Bosch, Director of Strategy and Operations for World Vision. 

Through his work, Chris researches trends affecting that agency, and other church-related NGOs.

During the workshop, Chris spoke about megatrends affecting people who do fundraising, marketing and communications in the international relief and development sector.

Chris defined a megatrend as a “large-scale recognizable change to accepted norms or assumptions about how people organizations or governments will behave in the future.”

He went on to identify some megatrends NGOs need to be aware of.

The Philanthropy Environment Has Changed

World Vision has discovered it is more expensive to acquire a donor than before, and they leave more quickly.

These new donors are less attracted to long-term pledge-style giving. such as child sponsorship. 

At World Vision, support for child sponsorship—it’s hallmark product—is declining. People are no longer willing to make 3-5 year commitments.

New donors consider a donation an investment, and they want to see results.

They want to participate, not just donate. They hate it when someone says “trust us—we are the experts.” They want to be involved. We need to invite them into the discussion about how and what we do.

World Vision’s research into donors also shows that these new donors aren’t seeking a long-term relationship with a charity. The older cohort of donors want to "marry" a charity—be donors for life. 

But the new givers are more interested in a one-night stand: Give once this year, maybe next year. But no commitments beyond that.

Poverty Message Isn’t Connecting

Canadian NGOs talk a lot about poverty and helping the poor. But maybe that message doesn’t work anymore, Chris said. People have heard it forever, and maybe growing tired of it.

Chris suggested we might have more success talking about resiliency—the ability to withstand shocks and bounce back from disaster.

He said that people might understand this better than poverty, since the new generation of donors, unlike the older ones, have never experienced poverty or hardship. (e.g. the Great Depression.)

Although they can’t relate to poverty, these donors can relate to vulnerability, and the need for outside help to overcome challenges or disasters—things like the Fort McMurray wildfires, flooding or storms in various parts of the country, or just a personal loss.

Helping someone come back from a disaster, or being equipped to better withstand a shock, is more relatable than talking about poverty, Chris said. 

He asked: Should we brand ourselves as vulnerability reduction agencies, rather than anti-poverty organizations?

A Blending of Non-Profit and For-Profit Efforts is on the Rise

Chris indicated that a social enterprise approach to development is on the rise—corporations seeking to make a profit while helping the poor. 

NGOs could partner with businesses to help them do this well, maybe even take an equity stake in the enterprise.

He went on to say that corporate donors have two pockets. We mostly reach into charitable, or foundation, pocket. But that is becoming emptier. What about reaching into the one that is full—investment portfolios?

NGOs have not asked businesses to channel their investments into our work to get a return. This could be attractive to businesses, high net worth individuals, mutual funds, and insurance companies that want to do good in a business-like way.

Disruption & Disintermediation

He noted how new businesses like Arbnb, Uber, Amazon, Etsy, Crowdfunding have disrupted traditional businesses. Their genius is to bypass traditional ways of doing business by connecting people who want to supply something with people who need it (disintermediation).

NGOs are not safe from this kind of disruption and disintermediation. They can also be leaped over. The day is coming when people in Canada can connect directly to NGOs in the south—they won’t need us. Someone in Kenya with a smartphone could launch a crowdfunder to raise $1,000 for an enterprise—all he needs is 100 people giving $10 each.

Already, an organization called GiveDirectly is enabling people to give cash directly to the world’s poorest people. Its vision is to bypass traditional top-down NGOs, with all their costs of doing business, and give money directly to the poor.

Chris noted that NGOs are not universally loved like we used to be. There are some harsh critiques out there, like the book Dead Aid.

Click here to read Are Non-Profits Ready for Disintermediation? 

Other Trends

Other trends Chris noted include how the centre of NGO action is moving south (Oxfam is moving headquarters south.) And western governments are indicating they will require NGOs to have more southern partners for their work.

There is a vibrant southern church, and partners there are developing more expertise and capacity.

And there is more wealth being generated in countries that are middle income. NGOs might be able to raise money there and nourish local fundraising capacities.

At the same time, southern governments are becoming more critical of southern NGOs, wanting to see more western government money given directly to southern NGOs (instead of first passing through Canadian organizations).

Then there is the move to giving cash, instead of physical aid. Many NGOs are not technologically sophisticated to use cards and phones for e-transfers of money, nor have they developed good systems for tracking.

It’s a changing universe, in other words. (And we hardly touched on communications.) 

They may or may not prove 100% accurate, but NGOs (and other charities) ignore them at their peril—better to be planning ahead than caught unprepared.

Report About Communications, Churches and Missions Released: Tell Me a Story

"The challenge is just information overload and then you go numb."

“It takes energy to be connected to all these things.”

That’s what a respondent to a survey about church and missions told Rick Hiemstra of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada about the challenge of staying up-to-date with all the communication coming from church-related ministries these days.

The respondent went on to compare life today with what it was like before the Internet.

Now, he said, “the circles of concern are increasing and some of these people are just stretched to the limit because there so many issues at all these different levels.”

The response was part of the Canadian Evangelical Missions Engagement Study, sponsored by the EFC and the Canadian Missions Research Forum.

During the study, over 3,400 members of evangelical churches n Canada were polled about their engagement with missions.

In the fourth of a series of five reports from the study, Rick shared results about how people in Canada want to receive communications about missions.

(Another finding of the study was about what has been called the domestification of priorities when it comes to how churches decide what to support—more and more are deciding to keep money at home for important local needs.)

Although the study is about missions, it still provides insights for church-related groups doing relief and development work.

In his report, Rick notes that many respondents “talked about the challenge of managing the volume of communications from missionaries and mission agencies.”

Said one person: “The challenge . . . is just information overload and then you go numb.”

At the same time, many respondents said they wanted information. Yet they “saw a paradox in the demand for information and the common complaint that there was too much information to absorb.”

So what kind of communication do churches and individuals want?

Most commonly, respondents said they expected written communications anywhere from monthly, to twice a year, to annually.

Said one: “I think twice a year is good. If you get too many letters you tend to stop reading them because sometimes they don't have new information and then they all start to sound the same!”

And what do they want to see in the communications? Most said they want two things: Stories of lives changed, and evidence that missionaries have a plan that they are carrying out.

Said one pastor about an agency he thinks is doing a good job of communicating: “They communicate well, a lot of stories . . . but they are also good at saying this is how we are spending our money.”

Said another after noting appreciation for information about what is being done: “At the same time, they’re telling the story where it’s not boring, they’re telling it actually how it’s affected people and what’s going on and what they’ve gained . . . it's not just numbers and facts.”

And how long should communications be? If it is printed and mailed, keep it short.

Said Rick: “Almost all informants said the ideal length for a written report is about two pages and it should be “as basic as possible.”

They went on to say that the “elements they want in a more formal written communication are goals set, goals met, and stories of transformed lives, and they want this in two pages.”

What about social media? Some churches like to be able to have a Skype conversation with a mission worker—it makes it much more personal.

Said one pastor: It's the relationship that's key. Social media is personal and immediate unlike form letters.” Said another: “Skype in the service makes missions extremely personal and much more alive.”

One form of communication that people also appreciate is in-person, which helps authenticate and personalize the need and the person or agency being supported.

Says Rick: “Printed media, on its own, is not sufficient. It needs to be corroborated or authenticated by a person. As quality communications have become easy to produce, people are paralyzed by the volume of information and are looking for ‘real people’ and relationships to help them sort what is important.”

And yet, despite all this, the challenge remains: Even when agencies follow all these guidelines, getting people to pay attention is hard.

As one pastor put it about the lack of pick-up for missions in his church: “I suspect that they are not catching what you are throwing at them because they do not have the resources of time and energy to process it.”

For the complete report, click here.