DEC Strategy 2019-2024

© Richard Nyoni/Christian Aid

DEC STRATEGY 2019 2024

INTRODUCTION

10 PRINCIPLES

Over our 55-year history, the DEC has responded to 72 major emergencies, collectively raising £1.5 billion and reaching millions of people with humanitarian assistance.

During preparatory stakeholder consultation and analysis of external trends, 10 principles emerged that inform and underpin the strategy. Six are concerned with maintenance and improvement, and four with development and innovation. Although the DEC is operating in the context of transformational political, social, technological and environmental change, stakeholders felt substantial elements of the previous strategy were a strength in these turbulent times and should be maintained. However, continued innovation is vital to ensure the DEC remains relevant.

The coalition of humanitarian agencies and media and corporate partners that the DEC brings together is needed now more than ever. Working collaboratively has demonstrated we can do more together and to greater levels of success.

It is our joint ambition to continue this approach to strengthen DEC appeals and our response and accountability to our supporters and the people and communities we serve.

MAINTAIN AND IMPROVE

Although resilience is increasing in many middle-income countries, the number of people affected by disasters and conflict is rising. There are more, and more localised, natural disasters, and a record number of people are displaced by conflict.

1

The DEC’s fundamentals – our charitable objects, vision, mission, values and appeal criteria – remain relevant. There is no need to change them in the foreseeable future.

The nature of humanitarian crises, and the way in which assistance is delivered, is also changing. Local and national organisations are taking a bigger lead and technology is playing a bigger part. There is recognition that humanitarian organisations and the system in which they operate must change to remain fit for purpose.

2

The DEC must continue to operate as a collective of the members, coordinated by the Secretariat. Our positioning and activities will not seek to compete with members.

3

The major public broadcasters remain an essential ingredient in successful DEC appeals, despite greater media fragmentation.

The DEC will not run appeals without the public broadcasters’ support.

4

The DEC must continue to be an efficient way of raising money for major humanitarian crises overseas and we should improve the way we communicate our fundraising costs.

5

The DEC must continue to strive for the highest standards in programme quality, transparency and accountability, particularly to the people affected by crises.

6

The DEC must do everything we can to preserve and strengthen public trust in our brand. We should build on the existing brand and retain our name and identity.

Over the last three years, the DEC has responded by continuing to improve quality and accountability and demonstrating best practice. We have maintained a robust accountability framework and revised our membership criteria to include the Core Humanitarian Standard. We maintained flexibility in our funding mechanisms and promoted good practice to enable members to maximise effectiveness and speed of response.

Meanwhile in the UK, multiple pieces of research broadly identify three main groups within the public – approximately one third engaged with the topic of international aid, one third totally disengaged and one third with the potential to be more engaged. The DEC is effective at raising money amongst the engaged group, and our insight into existing donors has improved significantly, but we haven’t yet explored the potential for reaching new groups of donors.

Following high-profile media exposure in recent years, trust in charities has fallen.

The overseas aid sector is in the spotlight. The public’s continued willingness to donate to humanitarian crises overseas cannot be taken for granted.

During the previous strategy period, the DEC invested in the Secretariat’s digital infrastructure, resulting in significantly improved digital capacity and performance. Digital is now ‘business as usual’ rather than a transformation project. However, digital technologies and trends continue to emerge and evolve.

MALNUTRITION CHECK

© Daphnée Cook/Save the Children

WATER AND SANITATION

© Bruno Bierrenbach Feder/Oxfam

WATER AND SANITATION DRAWING WATER FROM A BOREHOLE

DEVELOP AND INNOVATE

7

The DEC should adopt a more proactive approach to engaging the public in supporting complex, protracted crises.

8

The DEC must identify and reach out to potential new audiences to sustain and grow appeal income – including young people and those who are sceptical about humanitarian aid.

9 10

The DEC must continue to innovate in the digital space.

The DEC should work to improve the public’s trust and support for humanitarian crises overseas.

OUR GOALS The DEC Strategy 2019-24 is structured around four goals. Each goal has elements that seek to maintain and improve on current objectives, and others which aim to develop and innovate in that space.

GOAL 1: LAUNCH Launch the right appeals at the right time The three criteria the DEC uses to decide whether to launch an appeal remain relevant and will be retained. The processes around rapid data collection for crises that meet the criteria will be maintained and refined. The DEC’s broadcast partners remain critical to the success of appeals and the DEC will continue to build on these relationships.

The DEC must demonstrate the strategic contribution to humanitarian financing and the added value that comes from working together. We should also develop and deliver a stronger public narrative to explain the types of crises we launch appeals for.

playing a co-ordinating role, to generate increased awareness of the crisis and maximise collective fundraising.

The DEC should also explain publicly the reasons why we do not appeal for some crises which have extensive media coverage.

© Hariandi Hafid/British Red Cross

EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI IN INDONESIA

The DEC will adopt a more proactive approach to complex and protracted crises. The Board will agree which crises should be prioritised, and members will work together to highlight these crises using their own brands, with the Secretariat

GOAL 2: MAXIMISE Maximise the money we raise for each appeal The DEC will continue to maximise funds raised for every appeal through continuous improvement across existing income streams, and continue to develop insights about current donors and test new propositions and channels to increase donations. We will continue to work with DFID and the devolved governments to maximise funds for DEC appeals.

We will seek to launch appeals quickly where necessary, particularly on digital channels.

The DEC must think digital first and significantly expand our fundraising through improved use of social media; developing strategic digital partnerships engaging with digital influencers; and working with public broadcasters to increase their digital offering during appeals.

© DEC

ORE ODUBA

The DEC will gather evidence about and test approaches to new groups of supporters, aiming to increase trust in supporting humanitarian crises. We will also collaboratively explore ways of increasing income for complex and protracted crises by testing different audiences, channels, messaging, supporter journeys and partnerships.

We will reshape and grow our approach to external partnerships with corporates, community organisations, education establishments, campaigning organisations, philanthropists, trusts and other high value relationships – leveraging the DEC’s unique position. Alongside this, we will review our approach to peer-to-peer, community fundraising and volunteering. We will aim to make donating to the DEC as frictionless as possible, monitoring and exploring disruptive technologies, to see how they might be applied effectively in the DEC context. We will also explore the potential for innovative appeal-related programming with the public broadcasters, and seek to maximise our members’ charities’ capabilities by encouraging greater collaborative working across all our fundraising and marketing activity during DEC appeals

We will continue to maximise the impact of the DEC’s accountability framework to provide assurance that DEC funds are used efficiently and effectively; and to drive improvements in DEC-funded programmes.

UNLOADING SUPPLIES

We will support members to meet the Core Humanitarian Standard; provide evidence and share learning about how this is done in DEC-funded programmes and continue to promote improvements in safeguarding practice.

The DEC’s flexible approach to funding and enabling adaptive programmes that best meet the needs of people affected by crises will be maintained. We will continue to evaluate DEC funded programmes and share learning amongst members, and the wider humanitarian community to drive improvements in practice and organisational systems.

© Hariandi Hafid/British Red Cross

GOAL 3: IMPACT Increase the impact of the funds we raise for the people and communities affected by crises

We will seek to increase the impact of funds in the following new ways: xplore collaborative approaches to increasing the E accountability of DEC-funded programmes to people affected by crises – including adapting the response based on communities’ feedback and their perception of impact.

© Josh Estey/CARE

EMERGENCY SHELTER

As part of the commitment to the CHS, support members in strengthening their approach to targeting vulnerable groups and show how DEC funds are enabling members to provide assistance in hard-to-reach places.

Monitor if, and how, commitments made at the World Humanitarian Summit – including to localisation and cash programming – are integrated in DEC-funded programmes and impacting communities.

Promote collaborative approaches to due diligence and compliance monitoring of delivery partners and strengthen their capacity and ability to meet the highest quality and accountability standards.

GOAL 4: STRENGTHEN Preserve and strengthen the public’s willingness to donate to humanitarian crises overseas

We will continue to invest in public transparency and reporting on international platforms such as IATI and OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service.

Learning from the 2017 Thank You campaign, we will explore new ways to communicate the impact of the public’s donations, aiming to strengthen their belief that donating to the DEC and our members at times of humanitarian crisis is ‘the right thing to do’.

As part of this initiative, we will maximise the potential of all channels and digital platforms to engage in a conversation with supporters and targeted sections of the public about the changing nature of humanitarian crises and assistance, explaining the trends, talking about how humanitarian aid works, dispelling myths, increasing understanding about the

cost of fundraising, and being open about risks and how they are managed.

We will extend the DEC’s partnerships with major institutions and other interested parties across civil society, and educate and support partners, parliamentarians, journalists and other influencers about the DEC, our way of working, our coordinating role and the changing nature of humanitarian crises and humanitarian aid delivery.

© Paddy Dowling/DEC

e will build on our strong brand to position the DEC as W the ‘central coordinator’ of the UK’s fundraising appeals for humanitarian crises and apply learnings from audience research.

THE DEC’S FUNDAMENTALS OUR CHARITABLE OBJECTS

OUR VALUES

To support UK charitable sector NGOs (“agencies”) in their task of alleviating acute human suffering amongst those least able to withstand the effects of a major overseas disaster, by:

Collaboration

A. providing an accredited national forum for joint fundraising

by UK charitable voluntary sector NGOs in order to maximise the funds raised and facilitate immediate commitment from participating agencies; B. creating a focal point for the response of the public, the broadcasters and others to such disasters; C. facilitating agency co-operation, co-ordination and communication; D. ensuring that funds raised are used in an effective, timely fully accountable way.

We bring together the leading UK-based humanitarian agencies and reach out to work in close cooperation with media and corporate partners and others. Together we meet our commitment to raise funds to save, protect and rebuild the lives of disasteraffected communities.

Accountability and transparency We are accountable to the people we work to help during emergencies, and also to our supporters who make this work possible. When we ask them for money, we are clear about why it’s needed. We also uphold the highest standards in delivery of programmes that meet the needs of disaster-affected communities.

Learning A world where the impact of disasters on affected communities is minimised by working together through effective humanitarian response and growing resilience.

OUR MISSION Together we will raise funds to save, protect and rebuild lives in vulnerable countries that are impacted by emergencies and major disasters. We will: Raise funds quickly and effectively in large scale humanitarian emergencies.

Uphold the highest standards of accountability and transparency.

Learn and share information to promote effective programmes of response.

We ensure that our collective expertise maximises funds raised and brings about an effective response that also respects the dignity of disaster victims. We share our learning within each emergency and from one emergency to the next.

Humanitarian We always put first the humanitarian imperative. This means that the focus of work of our member agencies is towards beneficiaries according to the urgency of their unmet needs and through those organisations or local partners best placed to meet those needs.

Impartiality We stand up with integrity for principled humanitarian action.

We work impartially, independently and without the influence of governments or donors to ensure that our humanitarian response is effective and supports the needs of disaster-affected communities, regardless of the age, gender, colour, ethnicity, faith or political affiliation of individuals.

SHELTER CONSTRUCTION

© Lewis Inman/DEC

WATER AND SANITATION

© Pablo Tosco / Oxfam

WATER AND SANITATION

© Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

OUR VISION

DISASTERS EMERGENCY COMMITTEE Tavis House Tavistock Square London WC1H 9NA Tel: 020 7387 0200 www.dec.org.uk Registered Charity No. 1062638 Company no. 3356526