The future of charity challenges: our predictions for the year ahead...
2020 is now in full swing and a new year brings with it the opportunity to create change and make plans for what you would like to achieve in the years to come, and this applies to us at Choose a Challenge, and our charities too, in the ever-evolving fundraising and challenge events world. It’s important to be progressive and innovative to keep supporters engaged, inspired and loyal to your cause, and we have every reason to be optimistic about the future of charities - the sector is in excellent health with 168,000 charities on the Commission’s register attracting over £77 billion in income over the past year. But how do we keep ideas fresh, our audiences invested, our events exciting and our practices sustainable?
Here are our predictions for the trends that will continue to carve out the charity challenge landscape as we move forward and keep up with the always changing fundraising world.
Becoming champions of sustainability
Charities are now increasing public awareness of climate change, reducing carbon footprint and minimising the sector’s collective environmental impact. They want to encourage their supporters to go green and nudge their fundraisers and event attendees into behavioural changes.
The most important and significant changes will come with charity events as we begin to see changes in making these paperless, avoiding supplying packaged foods, choosing vegetarian options and ensuring there is no food waste - any left over food can be distributed to food banks, homeless people or shelters and there are many local social enterprises who can help with this. Event signs can be reused year on year (just by removing the date from any signage) as can banners and name card holders. We all know that cable ties can be a bit of a lifesaver at big events, but why not go for eco-ties or get some re-usable cable ties which you can use event after event?!
Other ways causes will be making their events more sustainable will be to encourage a ‘leave no trace’ approach, recommend travel to and from events, ensuring there are plenty of recycling bins at all venues and, most importantly, making sure there are water refill points to avoid supplying plastic bottles.
All of these things are going to benefit a charities reputation and build trust with supporters - these small changes make a huge impact.
Storytelling
Charities are going to be providing donors with a compelling and emotive case for support and offering a more personal approach to build an emotional connection to the cause that will help retain supporters for much longer.
Most of the major fundraising consultancies predict that this year, this idea of storytelling will become more mainstream. Providing donors and fundraisers with a captivating mission is one thing but it’s another thing completely to directly connect those fundraised pounds with a beneficiary of the cause and highlight the transformative difference those donations have made.
It’s always been true that challenge events have provided access to these stories both in terms of allowing top donors to connect and tell their own stories but often directly see the impact of their funds. As the more 360 nature of organisations comes to the forefront in 2020, the ability to host these events which allows for collection of stories from board members and volunteers through to those charities serve will become only greater.
Donor Retention
It goes without saying that retention and holding on to your loyal supporters is a key focus for charities and, with so many causes vying for our audience’s attention, this is more important than ever before.
The focus will be on engagement and keeping donors interested, motivated and connected to the cause, and experience - ensuring that their experience with you is a positive one, we’re listening to the needs and wants of the audience and being transparent with our fundraisers. They want to know how their money has helped, what their cause is doing to create change, future plans and how they can get involved in the upcoming months.
Research has shown that fundraisers are often disappointed by charities and them behaving in ways they don’t feel is reflective of the cause, being more interested in growth and expansion than in the interests of the people they are supposed to be helping - this is why transparency, honesty and trust are such important factors in fundraising for the year ahead.
Going digital
It might seem like an obvious one, but many charities are still using the old methods of communications with their participants, including direct mailings and postcards, so this is the year that we can predict this all changing (finally!)
Event tickets, information brochures, raffles, lotteries, silent auctions, event confirmations and newsletters will all be shared online - it will not only save charities a huge amount of money but it will make things more simple, more eco-friendly and all the more easier for charity staff too.
This also goes hand in hand with charities wanting to take the lead on epic viral campaigns. We all remember the ‘no make-up selfie’ and the Ice Bucket Challenge but these were originally started by members of the public, charities now want to launch these fundraising trends themselves and get more social media savvy - coming up with new ways to inspire people to donate money and raise awareness at the same time.
Finding new ways to fundraise
Naturally, with more ways to reach into people's homes and pockets and more access to data than ever before you would expect intelligence backed charity giving to be on the rise. However with more ways to do anything normally comes more people trying to do it and more brands and causes vying for attention and donations. Charity challenges will always remain a point of difference and a great way of giving people the story and the tools to grab attention on to your cause. Creatively designing, marketing and pricing these events is something we will likely see a lot of development in during 2020 but the base cause of gaining publicity and staying in the forefront will remain.
Gone are the days where a charity could put on just one fun run or a raffle to get their fundraisers engaged - supporters are now looking for more exciting, fresh and exhilarating ideas to tackle on behalf of their cause, from climbing up Kilimanjaro to cycling to Paris or running a marathon. It’s important to keep up with trends and listen to your supporters when they express what they would love to do to raise funds for your charity.
Tackling Transactional and ‘vanity’ fundraising
Questions will always remain on this topic, it’s true. Challenge events normally have a restrictive price tag attached to them, whether for the charity or the participant, and questions will always persist regarding any form of charity activity with a high cost. For challenge events, for executive salaries, for cause marketing partnerships, the same nay-sayers will always be present. But actually, although we are sometime loathed to admit it, right at the heart of charity sits the value for value exchange. The donors give something of value, money or time, and the charity gives back something of value to that donor. The value given back can be any number of things, depending on the donor’s motivations. It may be an intangible feel-good. Or the sense of fulfilling a moral or religious obligation. Or paying it backwards or forwards. Or seeing their name in lights. Or… the list goes on. So although these questions will likely remain in 2020 our communities achievements will grow and these speak for themselves.
