MOST INNOVATIVE CAMPAIGN

Team Nikki Kerridge

Aggie Morris

Jo Watson

Save the Children

Regular Giving Optimisation

High Commendation

Sponsored by:

Liz Cruger

The Regular Giving Optimisation Team

Save the Children (STC) relies on Regular Giving (RG) for 70% of its fundraising. Given the changing external climate (covid, recession etc) and some internal challenges impacting the ROI of their regular giving program, a decision was made to set up a dedicated campaign targeted at lifting RG performance. Instead of individual teams chipping away at small improvements they established a cross departmental Agile team with a focus on data driven decisions, digital advancement, and the ability to shift focus quickly. Central to the approach was the supporter experience and increasing communication and connection. The campaign had clear objectives and targets around increasing income and ROI across all acquisition activity whilst ensuring at least three viable acquisition channels.

Having an Agile approach was critical. They scheduled regular stand ups and experimented with different agile frameworks. Collaboration was across multiple departments and learnings were shared along with reviews and retrospectives in real-time. This united the teams from Acquisition to Donor Development through to Digital Marketing and Analytics and gave them an understanding of what each were doing and why. From establishing a new acquisition channel, to challenging the Faceto-Face model and the recruitment of a dedicated Conversion Optimisation role, improvements started to be seen. A strong focus on first year retention, expanded donor journeys and gratuity calling using machine learning, ensured that acquisition results continued on for the longer-term. Ultimately, the net objectives were hit along with substantial improvement in the ROI.