Hi all,
I'm Marinella- I work at Giving What We Can as a Research and Communications Analyst. One of the things I work on is outreach. Giving What We Can’s outreach efforts can be broadly divided in two categories: work on chapters (i.e. outreach focusing on creating and supporting GWWC and EA groups) and individual outreach (i.e. all the outreach that does not revolve around chapters- e.g. reaching out to people who might be interested in Giving What We Can, organising campaigns, etc). Jon told you about the yearly review and future plans for chapters growth in a previous post. This post focuses on plans about individual outreach. In particular, I'd like to tell you about an outreach strategy we have been calling ‘active membership’.
What is 'active membership'?
‘Active membership’ is an outreach strategy consisting in encouraging and supporting Giving What We Can members and supporters in talking about effective donations in general and Giving What We Can in particular.
Why 'active membership'?
Analysing data on membership we found that talking to friends is the single most common way in which members hear about Giving What We Can. Giving What We Can members and supporters are generally very serious and passionate about effective giving, so it is unsurprising to find they’re great advocates for the idea. Moreover, research on behavioural insights on charitable giving shows that one of the best ways to encourage people to give is to draw on peer effects, by making acts of giving more visible to others within one’s social group. This strategy also seems to be a very organic pathway to growth, which could potentially lead to very high increases in membership. If every current member reached out to two friends and persuaded them to join in a year, and that continued happening, then membership would triple each year. If that happened for 4 years, we’d have around 137,700 members.
What we've done so far
We started by putting together a plan with ideas to explore and a list of next steps. We then collected information about what kind of barriers prevent members from talking about Giving What We Can, and about what we (as an organization) can do to remove these barriers. To do so, we invited some of our members to talk to us about the topic and, on the basis of these conversations, we drafted and circulated a survey among our members. (Thank you so much to all the members who agreed to chat to me about this and the ones who filled in the survey!)
Here are graphs showing the results of the survey. We found the survey results very interesting. To begin with, the survey indicates that quite a few people find it challenging to talk about Giving What We Can (on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is very difficult and 5 is very easy, 42.2% of respondents answered ‘1’ or ‘2’). This suggests there is space to make these conversations easier.
By far the most common reason why members find it difficult to talk about Giving What We Can is that people are afraid that talking about donations will make them come across in a negative way, e.g. nosy, preachy, judgemental (this answer was marked by 84% of respondents). However, the majority of people (61% of respondents) also said it is difficult for them to find an occasion to start these conversations.
With respect to resources that GWWC could develop to make the conversation easier, the most popular reply was a summary of key facts, possible objections and replies (68% of respondents), but the majority of respondents would also like a list of suggestions on how to make the conversation easier and content of topics of general interest to share on social media.
With regard to activities that GWWC could organise to make these conversations easier, almost half of the respondents would find it helpful to have a workshop on 'talking about effective donations'. Around 40% of respondents also thought it would be useful to have a 'Talk to your friends about effective giving' drive, a social media campaign during which all members talk to their friends about effective giving, sharing their experiences on line (on the same lines as the New Year Pledge Drive).
What we're doing at the moment and what we’re planning to do in the future
1. We're working on a list of suggestions on how to make the conversation easier and we will soon start working on summaries of key facts, possible objections and replies. These documents will collect ideas on how to talk about effective giving in a positive and constructive manner. We plan to write these documents in May.
2. The two documents mentioned above will help us collect the content for a workshop on 'talking to about effective donations'. We expect to have both a Skype and an 'in person' version of the workshop, and to start running sessions in June/July.
3. We are planning a 'Talk to your friends about effective giving' drive for July 2016.
4. We have launched Just One Net - a fundraising campaign for the Against Malaria Foundation that will run until World Malaria Day on the 25th of April. We are hoping as many people as possible will join by buying a net (£1.70/$2.50). The goal of the campaign is not only to raise funds for AMF, but also to give GWWC supporters an occasion to start conversations about effective giving.
What you can do to help
We'd love to have EA’s input on ‘active membership’. Here are some ways you could help us:
-Give us some feedback on the Active Membership plan
-Suggest key facts, possible objections and replies about effective giving in this document
-Comment on this list of suggestions on how to make the conversation easier
-Join the Just One Net campaign, share the Facebook event and invite your friends, change your Facebook picture to the campaign picture by following this link, and message your friends about the campaign and Giving What We Can (if you think it might be helpful, here is a template message).
-Write to [email protected] with any kind of comments and suggestions.
Thank you in advance for your input on this!
Marinella
