EduSpots' Big Give Appeal

2022

The Big Give

Christmas Challenge Awards Application www.eduspots.org

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

ABOUT US EduSpots exists to connect, train, and equip local volunteers who drive

community-led change through education spaces called ‘Spots’. Currently, we have more than 250 volunteers and we are actively recruiting more!

The Spots are led and owned by community committees comprising local educational

leaders,

traditional

leaders,

political

leaders,

teachers,

students, and parents. These committees build local volunteer teams who we connect centrally via WhatsApp, national and regional conferences, and our leadership programmes.

We are a UK registered charity and a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO)

in

Ghana.

We

are

proud

of

our

innovative

low-cost

and

community-led model for driving greater educational equity in rural Ghana and Kenya.

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

New year, new target In 2021, our first year of participating in the Big Give, we set our target at

£2,500 and we were delighted to receive online donations of £3,935 (157%) from 24 donations.

This year, with a better understanding of how the Big Give works and ideas for a more strategic approach, we set our fundraising target at an

ambitious £10,000. Although this was a huge leap from the previous year, we felt confident that we could do it!

We put together a core team for the challenge. This included our Founder,

Cat, our part-time Head of Partnerships, Farida, and our part-time

Fundraising Manager, Rebecca. However, there was so much excitement around the Big Give within our network, that our staff team and volunteers also contributed ideas and content for the week which was a huge help!

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Campaign Focus UNESCO estimated that, in Ghana, around 222,000 females and 214,000

males aged 15 to 24 were illiterate in 2018. We are determined to change this, so chose to focus on our literacy for the 2022 Christmas Challenge.

In recent years, we have developed a strong literacy programme, EduLit,

and encourage our volunteers - most of whom are trained teachers - to lead EduLit clubs at their Spots so this programme can be delivered.

Currently, more than 40 of our 250 volunteers are involved in our EduLit programme, leading EduLit clubs in 15 of our communities.

We want to see our literacy programme grow, so we can support more

Ghanaians to improve their literacy skills. To do this, we need to raise

funds so we can provide further training and mentoring, and strengthen our existing model of monthly literacy-based challenges.

With the funds raised, we will develop and deliver physical EduLit boxes to

our communities with context-specific literacy resources, as well as develop an online resource hub, and purchase much requested books by African authors. The impact will be huge!

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But why?

Literacy is so important for the following reasons: Improves the development of the wider community Empowers women and girls

Impacts economic growth beyond the local community Lifts individuals out of poverty

Books are severely lacking in most government schools in rural Ghana, with fiction books almost non-existent. EduSpots has worked hard to place

more than 100,000 reclaimed and donated books in our community

learning spaces, but we continue to be desperately short of African fiction books for all ages. These are not often donated and have to be purchased - but we struggle to secure funding for this.

At EduSpots, 2022 was our 'Year of Books' and we launched a campaign, 'Bringing Africa to the Bookshelf'. Studies and our own direct observations of library users and analysis of book loaning, shows that African fiction books are more sought after than western books by a considerable

margin. The importance of identifying with stories and characters in books, in the development of literacy skills and to inspire reading is well documented, and we know in our own Spots that, when young people can

identify with characters and experiences that the can relate to, this increases their interest, understanding and engagement in reading.

With all this in mind, it felt like a good fit for us to center the Big Give Christmas Challenge around this.

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campaign aims Focusing the Christmas Challenge around our EduLit programme, we defined our campaign objectives as follows:

01. Enhance training for volunteers To build the capacity of our committed volunteers so they can lead EduLit clubs, growing their own skills in literacy development and leadership more widely.

02. Development of key literacy skills To strengthen the literacy skills of young people (especially JHS students targeted by EduLit clubs), enabling them to grow their skills in creativity,

critical thinking and teamwork, whilst also advancing their literacy abilities and wider engagement in reading.

03. Provide valuable literacy resources To support our volunteers and students with further literacy resources, including physical EduLit boxes with context-specific literacy resources, alongside creating a literacy learning hub on our website.

04. Bring Africa to the bookshelf To provide the users of the Spots with more books that reflect their culture and context, investing in fiction and non-fiction books by African authors

for all ages, alongside much requested local textbooks meeting current syllabus needs.

05. Supercharge our EduLit Clubs To continue to develop an impactful and sustainable model for EduLit clubs through a clear handbook, monthly literacy challenges and an annual literacy festival.

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Communications Creating a powerful communication plan was important to us.

We focused on good communications that: Engaged our volunteer network

Enthused our email newsletter subscribers Lit up our social media platforms

Focused on storytelling at the heart Knowing that effective and emotive narrative is one of the most important tools in our fundraising toolkit, we asked our volunteers to share stories of their experiences with EduSpots so we could share this across the week.

It soon became clear to us that videos were most engaging for our

audience. We chose to post videos in the evening because we felt that people would have more time to watch long-form content in the evenings.

Throughout the campaign, we aimed to build a connection with our audience. If we could encourage our supporters to feel strongly about

EduSpots and our EduLit programme, they would want to do something to address it. Trust and transparency were key pillars of our narrative.

Our Big Give team needed an easy way

to

remotely.

connect We

with

formed

one

a

another

WhatsApp

group specifically for the Big Give so

that we could bounce ideas around quickly and easily. Each morning, we shared plans for the day and talked

about the content that would appear on

social

media.

We

shared

our

excitement as donations rolled in. This really helped with motivation!

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Newsletters With a good number of subscribers to our newsletters, we knew that emails

would form part of our communication strategy. We sent a total of seven emails to our supporters in relation to the Big Give. Two of these emails

were sent in advance of the seven-day campaign, three were sent during the Challenge, and two were sent afterwards. The emails were sent over a six-week period.

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Social Media We intended to plan all our content in advance but, with a big ambition of posting across most of our platforms three times a day (morning, afternoon, and evening), the lack of time in the lead up to the Christmas Challenge meant that we created content ‘on the go’ rather than in advance. To some extent, this worked better because it meant we could react to what was working well and tailor our graphics to match the pace of the campaign. Where possible, all our posts linked straight to our donation page on the Big Give website (generally using our bit.ly link).

We wanted to frame the impact of a single donation in easy to understand terms. So, we kicked off the campaign by sharing contextualised standard donation amounts, giving the donor assurance that their money would be spent meaningfully. For example, £5 buys a local textbook, or £100 would buy an entire shelf of books

by African authors. We wanted our supporters to know exactly what impact their donation would have.

As we progressed through the week, we shared updates on social media about how we were getting on, and how long we had left to reach our target. We were keen to ensure that we mentioned that the match funds would be lost completely if we were not able to raise £10K.

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Instagram Whilst we are not sure if any of our donations derived as a direct result of

our Instagram posts, we loved being able to share more of our work on this platform and really felt the community engagement.

During the campaign week, we shared 21 posts, 65 stories, 9 reels, and 2 videos on Instagram! We reached 840 accounts, an increase of 72.1% compared to the previous week. A total of 101 accounts engaged with us, an incredible 90.5%

increase compared to the previous week. Throughout the week, 14 people followed us and one person unfollowed us, so overall growth of 13 people!

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

LinkedIn It was important for us to maintain a strong presence on LinkedIn throughout the Christmas Challenge as we know that many of our

supporters are active on this platform. We used LinkedIn to share stories of

our incredible volunteers, and the impact that they're making. We're

confident that LinkedIn derived a good chunk of our donations, likely a result of our supporters reposting our content.

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Nimatu's Story Throughout the Christmas Challenge, we shared stories of the amazing individuals who volunteer for EduSpots. Towards the end of the campaign, EduSpots Founder, Cat, shared the amazing story of Nimatu AbdulRahman, a remarkable individual, mum, nurse and EduSpots Catalyst!

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"I met Nimatu when I was working at the incredible African Science

Academy run by the African Gifted Foundation - a school for gifted young female maths and physics students who complete A-levels in one year ahead of applying for STEM-related subjects at university.

Seeing the huge potential of these young women to work with young learners in their home communities as mentors and role models, EduSpots

set up a grants partnership programme to give their incredibly inspiring young gifted female STEM students the opportunity to set up a Spot in their home community.

Nimatu's huge passion for opening up educational opportunities for other

young students in her home community of Savelugu was evident from the

start, and she was awarded just a £500 grant to create a Spot within the Junior High School she had attended.

Nimatu was training as a nurse, and was also a mum to daughter Ramzia,

but set her heart open ensuring that the Spot was well-resourced and well-used by students in the school and the wider community.

Nimatu enlisted a local volunteer team and together they run regular EduLit challenges, alongside a whole host of locally designed educational

initiatives such as a community-wide spelling bee competition, and leadership of a 'STEM for a Sustainable Future' holiday camp.

Nimatu enrolled on our CLEd (Community Leadership in Education

Programme), and she decided to create a mobile library initiative,

enabling books at her Spot and further local text books and African book to be shared on rotation through setting up visits to schools across the local area.

"I have realised that before change occurs you must take action.

EduSpots has given me the confidence and skills to take action even if nobody else does."

Today, Nimatu is an EduSpots Peer Mentor, supporting four other CLEd Catalysts on their leadership journeys.

Nimatu is why EduSpots exists: to enable passionate individuals to bring

local teams together create the changes they want to see for their communities, whilst growing themselves in the process.

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

Little extras Our Christmas Challenge hashtag We circulated a questionnaire to our staff team in advance of the Big Give

to ask for their thoughts on a number of things, including a suitable

hashtag. The preferred hashtag was #OurCollectiveChristmas, so we used

this throughout the campaign, alongside the ‘official’ Big Give hashtag, #ChristmasChallenge22.

QR code After reading the Big Give Marketing

Guide (thank you for creating such a helpful document!), we signed up to bitly.com to create a shortened URL

for our Big Give platform, and to generate a QR code that would link

the viewer directly to our Christmas Challenge donation page. This was free.

QR codes enable quick and simple donations so we thought this would

encourage more people to donate.

We created posters that could be shared at events, or in schools.

Doubling up One of our Trustees committed to doubling up any donations received

from his personal network, up to a maximum of £500. He posted to his LinkedIn page to encourage colleagues and acquaintances to donate, enticing them with the prospect that their donation would be doubled

twice, creating 3x the impact. So, a donation of £10 would result in a £30 donation to EduSpots, plus Gift Aid, at no extra cost to them. We were incredibly grateful for the generosity of his network, resulting in the full £500 being donated to us.

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

Personal outreach We found that reaching out to our friends

and

family

was

the

most

effective route to securing donations throughout the campaign, especially

where this created a chain reaction and the link was shared further.

We created a few graphics that our staff

team

and

volunteers

forward to friends and family.

could

Festive event in London We were able to secure a lovely venue in central London to hold a mulled

wine and mince pies evening on the Saturday during the campaign week.

We asked that attendees make a minimum donation of £20, paid directly

to the Big Give website. On reviewing the donations, we noted that several attendees generously donated more which was wonderful!

Book competition We were delighted that two publishing

companies agreed to donate reading books to us for our Big Give campaign.

Whilst we had planned to introduce the book competition at the beginning of

the week, we ran our social media very

organically, based on what was working well and what we felt would benefit

The books were all written by

Ghanaian authors! Yaa Gyasi, Caleb

Azumah

Nelson,

Peace

Adzo Medie, and Taiye Selasi.

from being shared next. This resulted in our

post

introducing

the

book

competition being delayed to later in the week and unfortunately, the book

competition did not get the traction that we hoped for.

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Why donate?

We wanted people to feel that their donations would go to a good cause, so, in our email communications, we shared five reasons our supporters should make a donation to EduSpots. Here are the five reasons:

01. Our model is volunteer driven Our 250+ Spot volunteers contribute thousands of hours annually, and many of our core UK staff members are also volunteers, adding significant value to the organisation with our admin costs at an astonishing 12%.

02. We are sustained at a local level This year (2022), over £10,000 has been raised by Spots at a local level to sustain their activities locally and ensure ongoing Spot maintenance.

03. Our impact has sustained over time Spots such as Abofour and Akumadan, which were founded over six years ago, continue to advance their ambitions and activities.

04. We have high standards Our training receives outstanding feedback from volunteers, and it is creative, collaborative, and based on evidence of what works.

05. Our work is transformative You only need to read a few of the stories we share to see the impact our

volunteers are having. They understand the needs of their communities, and are empowered to lead community-centered change.

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

The end result We reached our target shortly before the deadline!

Our highest donation was £1,000, whilst our average donation amounted to

£57. We are so grateful to those who supported us throughout the campaign - both those who supported us financially through donating funds, and those who supported us by sharing our resources.

Grand Total

£11,835

pledge funds

£2,500

Champion funds

£2,500

Thank you to our generous pledger, and The Friends of The Reed Foundation who kindly supported us with champion funds.

Target

Gift Aid

donations

Total raised

£10,000 £5,678

£1,157

£10,678

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

How many people donated to EduSpots?

99 Supporters

Last year was our first year of participating in the Big Give Christmas Challenge and we were thrilled to receive 24 donations. This year, we experienced a 312.5% increase with 99 donations!

312.5% Increase

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

Spending the funds Reaching our target means that we can invest the funds in enhancing our literacy programme, EduLit. We will be spending the £10,000 in a way which we feel will have the biggest impact for our communities. Here's how:

01. EduLit boxes We will develop our existing EduLit literacy programme which currently supports

over

40

local

volunteers,

in

leading

EduLit

clubs

in

15

communities. Fifteen Spots will be equipped with rich Edulit boxes which are boxes with context-specific literacy resources. This will help to

strengthen the literacy skills of young people, enabling them to grow their

skills in creativity, critical thinking and teamwork, whilst also advancing their literacy abilities and wider engagement in reading.

02. Books by African authors We can purchase much requested books by African authors so that the

children at our Spots can relate better to what they're reading. This will motivate and encourage them to develop the vital skill of reading with

comprehension, and develop a deeper connection with books and reading more widely.

03. Creating an inviting environment We can purchase more bookcases to house the ever growing book

collections at our Spots - being able to display the books in exciting ways

draws students to these shelves. Simple developments like this have a huge impact, encouraging students to visit the Spot and interact with our programmes, supporting their learning journey.

04. Literacy training To make our EduLit programme the best that it can be, we want to provide further training and mentoring to our volunteers, and strengthen our existing model of monthly challenges. We can do this now!

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

We were so excited by the Supporters' Choice Award as we are fortunate to have a large community of volunteers and felt confident we could get

them on board! Although we didn't win the Award last year, our network had been amazing at getting engaged so we knew we could do it again!

We are so pleased that the hard work paid off as we were granted the

Supporters' Choice Award following the campaign, winning an additional £1,000. Thank you to each and every person who talked about us on social

media, and shared why they thought EduSpots should win! In particular, a huge thank you to one of our volunteers, Adam, who won the judges over with his post.

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

Our reflections Similar to last year, we learnt so much through participating in the Big Give.

Looking back on the Christmas Challenge 2022, our reflections are as follows:

01. Bright and colourful is fun!

We created a new colour scheme for our Instagram feed especially for the

Big Give! We chose bold, bright colours that reflect our ethos that learning should be fun. We were delighted with how colourful our feed looked during the campaign week, and have been trying to keep up with it since!

02. Our network loved getting involved The Big Give was an excellent way to get our network involved with fundraising. Our staff team really rallied behind the campaign, and our volunteers were so excited to be part of it. It was great for teambuilding!

03. People loved our videos Throughout the week, we shared stories of our volunteers via video content.

The videos were really successful at engaging our audience, and a great way to showcase the wonderful work that we do.

04. Investing time is important We invested a lot of time into being visible during the campaign week,

showing up on our various social media channels, as well as reaching out to our networks through email communications and WhatsApp messages.

05. People believe in our vision Exceeding our target of £10,000 reminded us that people believe in the

transformative work that we are doing, and feel confident investing in our charity because they can see the huge impact that their donations have.

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Looking ahead We hope the Big Give Christmas Challenge becomes an annual event in our fundraising calendar. Here are some of our reflections from 2022 which we will take through to future campaigns in 2023 and beyond:

01. Plan earlier Next year, we will start the planning process earlier. At the application

stage, we will engage our staff team and volunteers by starting the conversations around our campaign theme for 2023.

02. Build momentum within our network Encouraging our staff and volunteers to reach out to their networks for donations seemed to be the most effective way to secure donations. Next

year, we would focus on this more heavily in the lead up to the campaign to ensure our network is engaged and excited to share our campaign.

03. Plan more video content We found that our video content was really well received! Next year, we

would film a series of shorter videos suitable for social media, instead of condensing longer clips. Perhaps we might delve into the world of TikTok!

04. Aim for more pledges With two years under our belt, we are feeling more confident in how the Big Give works, and how to get the most from it. In the future, we would like to secure pledge funds from several existing supporters.

05. Perfect our follow up 36 of our 99 Big Give donors opted-in to receive communications from

EduSpots. In the future, we would like to develop our post-campaign communications, ensuring that our supporters have the best possible donor journey and remain engaged with our work.

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022

A selection of the social media graphics that we shared with our audience at the end of the campaign!

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CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE 2022