Focus On: International Fundraising: DM Fundraising Across the Pond

There’s lots to learn from British marketers such as John — whether you’re interested in fundraising in the United Kingdom or just want to apply similar tactics with your program here in the United States. The following is taken from a phone conversation I had with him recently.

JIM HUSSEY: John, when did direct-response fundraising take hold in England?
JOHN WATSON: The mid-1980s. Until then, charities weren’t very competitive with each other, and they certainly didn’t do very much direct marketing ... it wasn’t popular. Then several of the large charities started to expand, and it became very successful — but purely by asking for a single cash gift. So typically they asked for 15 pounds … and once that had been collected, then the quaint old English custom was basically not to write to them again because it was thought to be intruding on their privacy. So it didn’t take very long before people figured out that the return on investment wasn’t very sensible … and that was largely why we started to develop the committed-giving process. (Committed giving is the British term for monthly or sustainer giving.)