In this blog, Woods Valldata’s specialists have shared the different (and many!) reasons your charity should consider outsourcing fundraising services as well as how our own teams can support you with our unparalleled fundraising services for charities.
If your charity’s fundraising team is running into campaign roadblocks, it might be time to consider outsourcing.
Initially (and understandably), this thought might be daunting. After all, every charity – including your own – has its own unique goals, ambitions and ethos; something that you might worry that an external team won’t be able to embody as well as you'd like.
However, outsourcing to a fundraising services specialist is more than possible with the right people on your side – and the benefits you can derive from external services, are enormous! Read on to discover what these benefits are...
7 reasons to use outsourced fundraising services for your charity:
1. It’ll save your team a huge amount of time
Working on a fundraising programme is, without question, time consuming.
Not only do you have to think about the overall programme itself (such as who you’re targeting and how you’ll promote the unique campaigns within it to them, the design of your printed and digital materials, ask strategies or approaches, data segmentation, campaign concept etc.), but everything around it (such as response handling and fulfilment, capturing and reporting data etc.) ... all of which leaves you with just about enough time to breathe!
The best external fundraising teams will act as an extension of your own team, deploying the right mix of technology and industry specific expertise in the areas you're looking to outsource to ensure you have all bases covered. Consequently, you'll get back all the time you need to focus on the fun stuff!
2. It’ll also save a significant amount of your charity’s budget and resources
On the surface, outsourcing fundraising services like response handling and fulfilment for your charity might sound like it will be more expensive than keeping things in-house.
The reality, however, (depending on the scale of your operations) is that outsourcing can become much more cost effective and provide your supporters with a better supporter experience.
For starters, you’ll have access to the latest technology, so you can process responses and fulfilment faster and accurately.
You'll also be working collaboratively with teams who are extremely experienced in outsourced services - whether that's response handling or data strategy - and are regularly trained on compliance to ensure you're always following best practice.
As a result, the relationship you build with your provider will quickly become a partnership where you work together to achieve the best outcomes for your fundraising objectives..
3. You’ll also achieve an incredible ROI
Alongside other KPIs, the ultimate goal of any charity fundraising campaign is to increase your income generation.
Because an external fundraising services provider will have first-hand experience of working with similar charities to yours, as well as being abreast of key trends and developments within and around the industry, they’ll know exactly what approaches to take in order to help to reach (and even exceed) your fundraising goals and achieve an outstanding ROI from your campaigns.
Just one example of this is the raffle strategy Woods Valldata supported The Air Ambulance Service with, which exceeded the charity’s programme target of £500,000 and provided them with an incredible £1.1million raffle income!
4. You can breathe easy on compliance
Remaining compliant is a considerable pressure for charities when it comes to fundraising. As well as being a compulsory regulation, it's also essential to get this right in order to maintain a positive supporter experience; in short, this will ensure you maintain supporter trust in your charity, and therefore loyalty.
It's also important for the wider reputation of your organisation. Breaches in compliance can result in negative PR, which could ultimately damage your charity’s reputation.
This, thankfully, is a weight that the right provider can take straight off your shoulders!
For example, at Woods Valldata, we have our very own in-house head of compliance, and are proficient in several key compliance areas, including:
- PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider (the highest level of PCI DSS compliance)
- Gambling Commission ELM and RTS Compliance
- UK-GDPR
- Corporate and social responsibility compliance measures
- Information Security Management Systems (ISO/IEC 27001:2013)
- Business Continuity Management (ISO 22301:2012)
- Quality Management systems (ISO 9001:2015)
- Environmental Management systems (ISO 14001:2015)
- Bacs Approved Bureau
5. Your provider will help you make small changes to achieve a big difference!
One of the things a good charity fundraising partner will do is ensure that what you are doing works – and works well!
For example, at Woods Valldata, much of the innovation our clients have experienced has come from making smaller improvements and suggestions!
This has included changes as small as where the tick box goes on a response form, resulting in more efficient response handling, removing opportunities for error and improving response times to supporters (and reducing costs).
Other examples might be exploring where variable text goes on a letter or introducing variable text, or taking a look at your data and segmentations and suggesting an alternative way of breaking it down, adapting ask levels, or looking at the approach by segment.
Woods Valldata can help you with the big changes, too, but we know those small incremental adjustments can make significant differences to your programme.
6. Your supporters will become more engaged than ever before
With services such as response handling and fulfilment, external providers like Woods Valldata make the acquisition and retention of your charity’s ideal supporters easier than ever, at no expense of your time and resources.
Just some of the services we provide specifically include:
- improving the way the data is used to make campaign approaches it more relevant to them from initial concepts and approaches through to ask strategies (data strategy)
- sending a personalised “thank you” faster so that the delay between donation and thanking is minimalised
- resolving supporter enquiries quickly and efficiently with a supporter services team who act as an extension of your own team
- getting supporters’ sponsorship/ membership/event packs out to them quickly so that they feel valued and equipped to start actively supporting your charity
...essentially, anything and everything to make your supporters feel valued and cared for, and consequently eager to keep supporting your charity for the long haul!
7. They’ll help you to improve upon future campaigns
As mentioned above, your work on a fundraising campaign isn’t over when the campaign itself ends; you’ll also be looking to report back on the success of the campaign and think about ways that you can improve it for the future.
Again, this is where charity fundraising services come to the rescue!
As an example, Woods Valldata can offer you access to comprehensive reports throughout your campaign so you can clearly see how it is performing. Ultimately, this will help you with reporting back within your charity, and making changes for the future if necessary.
What’s more, our Data Strategy and Insight team delivers comprehensive and easy-to-understand analysis and reporting following every campaign, which includes actionable insights, ideas and innovations to consistently improve your approach and any costs across your fundraising programme.
Our experts at Woods Valldata have provided unparalleled fundraising services for charities for over 20 years.
You need only explore our selection of case studies to see the evidence of our impact, but we would also be glad to chat about the fundraising services for charities that we provide, and how this could benefit your unique cause!
As a quick overview, the services we offer include:
- Raffle
- Lottery
- Response handling
- Digital scanning
- Fulfilment
- Direct debit management
- Data strategy and insight
If you like the sound of any or all these services and want to discuss them with our team in more detail, the best way is to book your free consultation with us.
At Woods Valldata, we truly believe that we are stronger together, and would love to see what we can do to support your charity’s campaigns as your chosen partner!
