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Love Charity Research

Here at Killer we’ve always believed that there’s a strong link between the way someone feels about a charity and the amount that person is going to engage with that charity. Well, think about it… The more you like someone the more likely you are to listen to them, right? Charities determine their success through measures such as the lifetime value of a donor, the average gift amount and attrition rates, but what about the people that fall off the radar entirely? How are they left feeling about the charity? Those figures often get left to anecdotal guess work. To remedy that, we drafted in the help of YouGov and went out to the British public to ask the question we wanted answered -What do you love about charity?

This is what we discovered…

Communicating how the money is spent is VITAL.

When it comes to trust, 71% of people felt that they needed to understand how the money they are donating is being spent. For a lot of people, when they give money to a charity, they feel like it is still their money. Understandably they want to know what their money is going towards. If you’re not being entirely transparent with donors & fundraisers about how you are spending the money, why not? If you’re not sure, it’s a question you need to be asking. And this isn’t simply a moral question… When it comes to donating money, 77% of people felt that how the money was spent was an important consideration so, morals aside, this is a huge factor when it comes to increasing donations.

Mass Participation Events are the most loved way to fundraise: Half the people we surveyed responded positively.

Half of all the people we surveyed responded positively to mass participation. It’s an amazing way to engage with both current and new supporters; you can talk about your brand in a unique tone of voice to a whole new audience without conflicting with your core brand identity. Because you are leading with the activity, you don’t need to find people with whom the cause resonates. You can talk to runners, walkers, swimmers, cyclists, knitters. You can literally reach out to anyone. On the flipside, only 5% of people reacted negatively to mass participation events, so they are an incredibly low risk method of fundraising. Even if someone doesn’t participate, they’ll still walk away from promotional material thinking “That’s a great idea…I like that, I like what they are doing”.

Now what you are left with is:

-Low risk

-Very high engagement

And when all is said and done, it pays for itself!* What’s not to like, eh?

Potentially millions of pounds are lost to Gift Aid confusion.

Worryingly, we found that over half the people we asked couldn’t correctly define gift aid. Over £1.3 billion of gift aid is claimed each year, but how much money is being lost because people simply don’t understand what it is and what they are signing up for if they tick that box? We need to be asking ourselves: are we truly explaining what Gift Aid is in the most simple and appealing way we possibly can?

Impact is key when people are choosing a charity.

The majority of people care immensely about the impact charities have and what they can achieve, so to put it simply, you need to open up to your supporters, connect them to your mission and be transparent about what an impact your charity has with their support.

People still love charity and are giving more.

When we asked people about their giving and how it’s changed in the last year, we found that more people have increased their gift amounts than those who have decreased their giving.

Over 70% of the UK have donated to a charity in some way, shape or form in the last year.

Nothing about humanity has fundamentally changed – people want to be asked, they want to engage, they want to help.

Be bold. Be brave. Be fearless. Get in touch to join us on our mission to double the amount of money donated to charity by people in the UK – louise.bryant@killercreative.co.uk 01273 606000

*Check out our case studies to see how we’ve achieved fantastic ROI for our clients

To find out more about our findings download the final results here