Rally and M+R will be sharing the key findings of the Digital Benchmarks Study in a free public launch and webinar on Wednesday 7 July at 4pm BST. All are welcome.
BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER TO BUILD POWER & MAKE TROUBLE.
Rally exists to help build power. To show people they have it and help them to use it.
One way to do this is to bring together like minded people who don’t know each other in an attempt to create connections that didn’t exist, which can lead to collaborations that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.
A few weeks ago our founder Paul de Gregorio and one of our favourite people in the world Georgie Laming, collaborated to put on a virtual screening of an episode of the incredible US documentary ‘And She Could Be Next’. In the film makers words - ‘a documentary series that focuses on a defiant movement of women of colour, transforming politics from the ground up’. Here’s the trailer…
CONNECTING AMAZING PEOPLE TO MAKE AMAZING THINGS HAPPEN.
One of Rally’s founding principles is that we want to drive change at a scale that is bigger than our size. And that central to creating change is exposure to new ideas and partnerships. So we are always keen to be generous with our knowledge and network, helping make connections to spark change that otherwise wouldn’t happen. This is a story of one of those moments.
In January 2020 - back when being out and about was ‘A Thing’ - we spent three fantastic days touring the coffee shops, charity meeting rooms and lunch spots of London with one of our favourite people in the whole world.
Meet Adrian. Adrian is a Dublin based pal of ours, he’s a brilliant thinker and all round Facebook fundraising genius. We love him.
Adrian.
He’d been developing a new approach to virtual challenge events that was delivering mind blowing results with his clients in Ireland, achieving both scale and huge returns on investment. He does it all on Facebook and it’s transformational. Honestly. Transformational.
We could see the results and knew the UK needed what Adrian was doing. Thankfully Adrian also believes in being generous with knowledge and was keen to share the approach beyond Ireland.
Back to our tour of London.
Adrian was keen to meet people who were smart, agile, open to new ideas and able to make decisions quickly. So with that brief Rally set Adrian up with a load of meetings with the right people at the right organisations. And we accompanied Adrian to make the introductions and show these clients, who didn’t know Adrian, that we really believed in him and his model.
In those two days we generated a lot of inspiration, some excitement and a lot of enthusiasm to try new things. We had 8 meetings in three days. Adrian got back on the plane to Ireland with connections that turned into 6 charities testing his approaches. Over the next few weeks and months, as the pandemic hit, we set up Zoom sessions that turned into another 5 relationships.
And the point of this story?
Well it’s the impact our collaboration has had - especially at a time when events fundraising has been severely impacted by the pandemic and many charities have experienced huge challenges in income generation, just when their services are needed more than ever.
We’re delighted to have helped inspire charities with new ideas in the most challenging of fundraising and working environments. And to have enabled them to access expertise to test and roll out a new approach to virtual events.
One year on we are incredibly proud that those introductions have turned into millions of pounds raised for the charities who chose to partner with Adrian. When we checked at the end of January they’d made £4,611,084 from an investment of £550,301. Which blows our mind.
And we know there are already a couple more million (yes, MILLION) pounds to be added to the income total - as some of those organisations have virtual events live right now.
And it’s honestly more than the money. The clients who’ve worked with Adrian have started applying his methods to other elements of their digital programmes and are seeing incredible results. And the eyes of organisations have been opened to the true potential of creating, engaging and empowering digital communities, whose members share values and passions with each other and the charities themselves.
All of this means that in the course of a year - because of COVID which has forced charities to act quickly to innovate and diversify - those meetings back in January have helped change the way digital is done across the whole sector.
Main photo by Nastya Dulhiier on Unsplash
INTEGRATING CAMPAIGNING AND FUNDRAISING AT BROOKE.
When we say a digital mobilisation model, we mean an approach which engages the public at scale by elevating values over transactional ‘products’. And then using those values to attract people who share them and to inspire them to take actions to make change happen - all in a digital space.
"We loved working with Rally on this project. Their skill, expertise and collaborative way of working helped us at every stage of the process – from designing the approach and engaging our trustees to connecting us to the very best delivery partner in Forward Action and supporting us throughout the project’s execution to ensure we delivered against our strategic goals. Jasvir Kaur, Director of Fundraising & Communications at Brooke
CONFIRMED UK DIGITAL BENCHMARKS STUDY PARTICIPANTS.
Last week we released the names of the first UK charities to sign up to take part in the UK Digital Benchmarks Study we are launching in collaboration with our friends at US digital agency M+R Strategies.
We are absolutely delighted with this first wave of charities that have confirmed their participation! And we’re receiving really positive signals from many more UK charities. So we expect to be adding to this list very soon.
The study has been run in the US for over 14 years and in 2020 reviewed over 100 digital data points from over 200 US charities. So you can imagine how excited we are to partner with M+R to bring this incredible resource to the UK. You can read all about the study in this post.
And a huge thanks to UK Fundraising for helping us spread the word and for being so supportive of the project. You can see their article here.
Main photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash
RALLY IS TWO.
We’re now two years old.
Which means we’re on our way to becoming part of the establishment right?
Nope.
We’re just as committed today as we were two years ago to help our clients attract the public’s support at scale and convert that support into action.
We're still committed to challenging the status quo and being a positive force for change in how the sector approaches the challenges it faces.
We’re still convinced that the sector needs radical change in the way it seeks to attract the public's support in order to remain relevant. We recognise that change is unsettling and for some it’s an uncomfortable process. But it’s a necessary one. As Saul Alinksy said. ‘Change means movement. Movement means friction.’
We know we’re really lucky. We’re lucky to be a part of a brilliant community of people, clients and partner organisations who share our values and ambition.
So we want to say a HUGE thank you to our amazing clients for putting their faith in us and equal thanks to our AMAZING partners who help us make it all happen. We are immensely proud of the collaborations we’ve created and the impact that has come from them. And we’re honoured to work with such an inspiring group of radicals, rebels, agitators, activists and troublemakers.
Being part of such a badass community brings us real joy.
And before we go... Keep an eye on your letterbox. You might get a little something from us.
RALLY PARTNERS WITH M+R STRATEGIES TO BRING THE DIGITAL BENCHMARKS STUDY TO THE UK CHARITY & CAMPAIGNING SECTOR.
DELIVERING DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT AT SCALE FOR PEACE DIRECT.
If lockdown has taught us anything it’s that perspective is important - taking time out to pause, reflect and refocus. So at Rally, we’ve done just that with our first ever client, Peace Direct.
A partnership to build a new approach
When we set up Rally, we wanted to create a new way of working: one that is focused on collaboration and partnership, so clients are empowered to transform how they mobilise the public at scale. A movement, not a moment. Lasting change, not a one hit wonder.
We share these values with Peace Direct. Their approach to peacebuilding in the field is unique amongst INGOs and they wanted to carry on this non traditional approach to radically change how they engage the public at scale. All of this with a view to ultimately making their income - and with that their work - sustainable.
So we were both really excited to be able to form a partnership back in November 2018 to work together to create a Digital Engagement Strategy. A strategy to build an engaged community of digital supporters, joined by a desire to build long term peace - and so lay the foundation to create sustainability and lasting, impactful change.
As Gemma Britton, Head of Fundraising and Communications at Peace Direct said, ‘Our work together has felt very much like a partnership because Rally’s values and approach are so well aligned with our own work with peacebuilding partners around the world. Those of collaboration, learning, innovation, being honest about what’s not working, and always holding long-term success and sustainability at the heart of what we do.’
A joined up plan for lasting change
Key to our approach was establishing the levers that would drive us forward to deliver scale, sustainably and for the long term. This meant reviewing Peace Direct’s whole digital ecosystem - from search to social, content to conversion - so we could understand how everything works together and then identify opportunities to take co-ordinated action to transform performance.
From this we created a plan for radical change: a plan where our actions were always led by data and in service of a clear goal shared across fundraising and communications. Namely to deliver, more reach, more action, more money and more impact.
We made it easier for people to find us, overhauling our use of the Google Grant to transform the number and quality of visitors to our website.
And because there’s no point increasing web traffic if you make it hard for those visitors to take action, we focussed on improving our conversion in our priority areas for engagement - our email sign up and donation pages.
Alongside that, we updated our opt-in wording to help build Peace Direct’s community of digital supporters so we could have ongoing communication with as many supporters as possible.
And to make that communication more effective and responsive, we overhauled our email programme - its frequency, content and call to action - to make it geared towards inspiring ongoing action from the community we’re building.
And we didn’t just build a digital community through email, we radically improved our performance in social too, using a storytelling approach to transform reach and engagement.
Embedding new ways of working
All of this was underpinned by a focus on fundamentally changing how the Peace Direct team works forever. Firstly they busted through the old silos of fundraising and communications and put in place shared goals and plans to deliver them. And we adopted a long term view - that this was a never ending journey, where we would always be testing and learning from the data to refine our approach and keep moving forward and building success.
Most importantly Rally helped equip the Peace Direct team to be self sufficient to carry on this journey themselves by bringing in the right partners to share their expertise - Jon who helped us shape the strategy, Chris who trained us in how to use our Google grant more effectively, Rachel who helped us learn how to make our email programme more responsive and Jean who worked with us to build scale, response and engagement in Facebook.
Gemma says ‘After many years in the non-profit sector, it’s been a refreshing change to work with an agency partner which isn’t closed off to working with other experts and most importantly does not create a cycle of long-term over-reliance on their support. A core facet of our work together is that we identify the gaps in our knowledge and operations so as we deliver improvements, the team is also upskilled to do this work ourselves moving forward. This makes it much better value for Peace Direct, much more fulfilling for the team, and crucially we will be able to continue delivering really impactful digital engagement work in the long term’.
Seeing the cumulative impact
A year and a half down the line, with Rally’s help, Peace Direct have not only created the foundations for long term sustainability, but have already made tangible strides forward in their digital engagement approach.
The email file has grown by over 600% since January 2019 and it continues to grow at an extremely cost effective rate.
We’ve increased reach and engagement in Facebook by over 400% and successfully converted this engagement into action through more effective paid social strategies.
The quality of web traffic has significantly increased as we have focussed on our use of the Google Grant. Traffic from this source has increased by over 150%, with an incredible 1,000%+ increase in the conversion of this traffic to our engagement goals.
We’ve launched Facebook fundraising campaigns that have delivered significant income through the use of virtual events.
A new dynamic for the future
These are the first steps in a long journey to transform how Peace Direct engages the public at scale digitally, but we are all excited by the cumulative impact of our efforts so far. And based on what we’ve learnt to date we’ve set goals for the next 12 months to keep on growing scale and improving engagement.
And this success is sustainable because the Peace Direct team is empowered to keep evolving and refining the approach using the skills, confidence and knowledge they’ve acquired - all with an unrelenting focus on their shared goal and with the tools to measure their progress.
Gemma said, ‘Peace Direct’s work with Rally has been transformational. It’s provided us with knowledge, ambition and a real focus on delivering results which will ultimately allow us to shine more of a spotlight on people building peace around the world and give them the support which works for them. We no longer seek out small wins - in a niche sector which has struggled to cut through with the public, we are now seeing that with the right strategy people do believe in our cause and are willing to support us. Rally has given us the confidence to know we can and should be striving for growth and scale.’
So while Rally is still very much part of the next chapter, thanks to how we’ve worked together our dynamic has changed. The Peace Direct team is firmly in the driving seat. And we couldn’t be happier about that. Because that was the initial plan.
Photographs are supplied by Peace Direct and were taken by Greg Funnell.
RALLY APPOINTED BY JCWI TO HELP DEVELOP THEIR DIGITAL MOBILISATION STRATEGY
We are delighted to announce that we’ve been appointed by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI).
JCWI is an incredible, small but mighty organisation that fights for the rights of immigrants. It’s an organisation that defines its vision of the UK as a country in which the benefits of migration are celebrated and shared, with no community left behind. A place where newcomers are safe and welcome, and communities are strong and open. A country in which the politics of migration do not rely on or fuel fear, division and animosity.
These are values which we wholeheartedly subscribe to.
Over the next few months we are going to be working with their amazing team to define a digital mobilisation strategy, framework and plan that will enable them to radically increase the scale of the public’s engagement with their work. Our overall aim is to deliver more reach, more engagement, more supporters, more donors and ultimately more impact on the lives of the people JCWI exists to support.
Satbir Singh, CEO of JCWI said, “We’re really excited to be working with Rally to improve our in-house digital mobilisation capabilities. Working with Rally will help us determine the strategies and tactics we need to attract, mobilise and retain the public's support at a critical time for migrants’ rights’.
Paul de Gregorio, founder of Rally said, “It’s a dream to be able to work with such an impressive organisation as JCWI. Migrant rights is an issue that we hold dear and we couldn’t be happier to be able to help JCWI deliver on their mission’.
Main image by Markus Spiske via Unsplash
APPLY NEWSDESK THINKING TO GROW YOUR MOVEMENT.
Radical collaboration is important to us. And we are very lucky to operate within a fabulous community of talented people. A Barbican coffee and a catch up with the wonderful Kat Sladden of Chorus Campaigns led to us collaborating on the article below for Civil Society magazine. We’ve only just got around to posting it here. Let us know what you think…
We live in a world when a tweet from the US President sent at 2am resets the entire news agenda and when a powerful photograph can travel the world in minutes and bring more attention to a forgotten global crisis than a meeting of world leaders scheduled months in advance. As the way we consume our news has changed so has the speed people react, share opinions, spread hashtags and plan action. In this new reality, mission driven organisations that want to connect with people and make change, need to adapt to succeed. The era of the ‘five year campaign plan’ or writing emails to supporters three months in advance is over. Charities and campaigning groups need a new approach: we like to call it ‘newsdesk thinking’.
Newsdesk thinking takes lessons from how media outlets set themselves up to be flexible to react to breaking news events and adds that to smart campaign strategy, so that when the moment arises, your team can spot it quickly and has the confidence to be first out with a way supporters can channel their reaction into a constructive response.
“Organisations spend so much time and money creating contrived ‘moments’ - when there are real moments happening every single day ripe for hijacking.” Says John Coventry, who runs GoFundMe’s Europe and Australia operation and previously led Change.org’s global comms team. “There are so many News cycles happening all the time it’s hard to make sense of it all sometimes - but if your teams are set up right, empowered to execute quickly and given the space to fail well, the rewards can be huge: the perfect triangle of reputation, donations and real world impact.”
Hope Not Hate are an example of an organisation that does this brilliantly. When President Trump tweeted that the four US congress women should ‘go home’, the global outrage to this racism was instant. Hope Not Hate, who stand against racism and fascism in all its forms, decided that they needed to act, so they wrote an open letter of solidarity to the four women and asked their supporters to sign it. It gave people something to do to channel their anger in a constructive way, it showed that Hope Not Hate would act on its values even if it means taking on a President and it helped them reach out to new supporters who were mobilised in their disgust for the tweet. And this instant reaction to the news cycle resulted in close to 5,000 new people joining the Hope Not Hate email list.
Matthew McGregor, Campaigns Director at Hope Not Hate said, "This was a quick feel-good piece of campaigning. We did it because we were angry and because we thought our supporters would be too. We wanted to say something, even if it was a small thing, to send a message. And in this case we saw our list grow as a result too. It's important to have a theory of change, but our theory on this one was that sometimes it’s nice to say 'p*ss off, Mr President'.
It was this newsdesk thinking that helped grow Change.org from a small site with a few thousand signers to the world’s largest petition platform. It was a bank holiday Monday when the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Ian Duncan Smith said on Radio 4 that people complaining about welfare cuts were wrong and living on £50 a week was easy. The reaction on Twitter was instant. Outraged people called him out for being out of touch. Change.org’s then Director of Communications John Coventry spotted an opportunity, reaching out on Twitter to suggest that people should start a petition. Within an hour the petition to ‘get IDS to live on £50 a week’ had started and before civil servants had got back to their offices from the long weekend the petition had ten of thousands of signatures. It went on to be the first petition on the site to reach over a quarter of a million signatures and led the news agenda for over a fortnight, opening the space for people experiencing the sharp end of welfare cuts to talk about their impact.
So how can other organisations adopt newsdesk thinking, we’ve broken it down into 6 steps:
Be ready: Every media outlet has a clear editorial position. You need the same. Having a clear vision of the world you are trying to create, the issues you care about and the values you hold are the essential starting point. Newsdesk thinking isn’t about jumping in with your hot take on every Love Island breakup, it’s about knowing what you care about and being confident to act when an opportunity emerges.
Active scanning: What are people talking about today? That’s the question to keep asking. Keep an eye on leading activists on twitter, instagram and blogs. Often this is where issues rise up before they make news. It’s not about everyone in the office listening to the Today Programme, often 5 Live, Victoria Derbyshire and LBC are more helpful to get a sense of what people are talking about outside of Westminster. Consuming the news and talking about the news needs to be a part of day to day life, not just something the comms team do.
Ideas culture: Journalists are expected to turn up with new ideas for stories everyday. Building an ideas culture in your office is vital. Create a safe space for people to share without worrying if it’s a good or bad idea. It could be at daily stand ups, a ‘have you seen this?’ whatsapp group or slack channel - whatever works for your team. Not everything will lead to an action but it’s only with a culture that welcomes ideas that you’ll spot the golden opportunity quickly when it comes.
Rapid response: When a story matches your issues and values and has got people talking, speed matters. Attention spans are short and to capture the energy of the moment you need to be out with an action quickly, we’re talking hours not days. That means having a set up for rapid response campaigning - a faster sign off process, a way to queue jump to get an action email out and a nimble team that has the permission and power to move fast.
Invest in systems: Spend some time making sure that you can produce beautiful customised landing pages at speed that seamlessly integrate with your email platforms. Time after time we see organisations de-prioritise this type of work and then give the absence of these resources as a reason not to act when they should. If you build the things you need to respond quickly, you will be itching to use them and it will drive your speed of response!
Fail fast, fail forward: If you are taking more risks and testing more actions, not all of them will fly. That’s ok! After each take the time to understand what worked and what didn’t. Moving quickly means taking risks and piloting more actions, so it needs to be ok to fail and learn.
Newsdesk thinking is more than a process, it’s state of mind backed up by practical steps so when you have an idea you have the tools and processes already established to make it happen. It’s an approach that can bring real energy to how your organisation engages with the public and connect your organisation more closely to the conversations people are having everyday.
It’s fun, it’s fast and without the right attitude can deliver big results. We urge you to try it out!
Written by Kat Sladden & Paul de Gregorio: Originally posted here: Why charities should apply ‘newsdesk thinking’ to grow their movement http://bit.ly/37PcjHH
Header photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash