Charities need to focus on inspiring positive emotions as cost-of-living crisis starts to bite
The cost-of-living crisis is really beginning to show its teeth when it comes to charitable donations. According to the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) UK Giving Report nearly 60 percent of respondents said that the crisis will negatively impact their ability to donate. In April, one in 25 people reported that they had already cancelled a regular donation to charity, and by October this had risen to one in ten as a direct response to the rising cost of living. Similarly, 1 in 12 people said they had chosen not to make a one-off donation whilst a large number also said they had reviewed how much they give to charity. Due to this less than rosy outlook, many charities are shifting [...]
With recession on the cards – now is the time to take a different approach to data hygiene
New research from housing specialists Hillarys.co.uk reveals the horrifying truth that a staggering 40 per cent of UK homeowners only clean their house once a year with five per cent admitting to only cleaning if they have guests coming to stay overnight. The most common excuses were a lack of cleaning products and inertia caused by the fact that the house is only going to get dirty again, so what is the point? However, researchers from The London School of Tropical Disease and Medicine say that there is increasing evidence to suggest that a messy house affects both mental and physical health. In fact, an unclean home can make you more susceptible to colds and flus as well as stress [...]
The end of the road for GDPR?
Is the UK going to be free of the constraints of GDPR? If Michelle Donelan’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference is anything to go by, then GDPR’s days in the UK are numbered. The new secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport said GDPR had been inherited from the EU, and its bureaucratic nature was limiting the potential for businesses. She announced that the UK would be replacing GDPR with its own business and consumer-friendly, data protection system. It wasn’t clear if this was to be the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (which itself has superseded the Data Reform Bill), or an entirely separate initiative. Whichever it may be, apparently the plan is to protect consumer [...]
Charities shouldn’t put the data cart before the horse
New research shows that charities are falling behind when it comes to data. With the cost-of-living crisis now really beginning to show its teeth resulting in a sharp decline in donor numbers and donation value, data is now a critical capability for charities to master. However, data doesn’t have to be complex. More on this later… first, let’s have a look at the findings of the State of the Sector Data Maturity Report. The study measured 1,000 charities and rated their data maturity through five stages, from ‘Unaware’ to ‘Mastering’ across seven key themes: Uses, Data, Analysis, Leadership, Culture, Tools, and Skills. When it comes to data leadership over half (53 percent) of those surveyed said that there is no [...]
COVID ravages business databases
The rule of thumb is that data degrades by 33 per cent per year. This means that for a consumer database comprising 3.5 million records if you were to do nothing to it within 12 months 1,155,000 of those records would be wrong. A sobering thought, right? Well, the problem for marketers is that COVID has accelerated the rate of decay. We conducted some research last year which revealed that the property bubble combined with the increased mortality rate meant that data now decays at a rate of 37.5 per cent. But how about for B2B marketers? The rate of data decay due to COVID is also getting faster due to the pandemic. Average job tenure has shrunk to just [...]
‘Significant number’ of charities sending fundraising material to people who have asked them to stop
According to an article recently published in Third Sector Magazine a “significant number” of charities are sending fundraising communications to members of the public even after requests to stop, the Fundraising Regulator has said. The regulator made the statement after a review of the Fundraising Preference Service (FPS), which was set up in the aftermath of the Olive Cooke case, which tragically saw the 92-year-old life-long charity supporter take her own life due to a deluge of charity donation requests. The FPS provides members of the public with a way to ask charities to stop contacting them with requests for donations. The Fundraising Regulator said it was writing to those charities which are not responding to public requests and telling [...]
Consent, control and security key priorities for data in 2022
We recently undertook a review of the GDPR enforcements by the ICO over the past 12 months, which revealed that lack of consent, failure to comply with control responsibilities and data security are the three most common infringements since July 2021. Sixty-one per cent of the 28 enforcements were found to be in breach of Article 4.11 which states: ‘consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her. Article 4.7 and 5.1f were both breached by 14 per cent of the organisations who [...]
THE SOFTWARE BUREAU RECEIVES ROYAL MAIL SORTATION SOFTWARE ACCREDITATION
The Software Bureau has once again passed Royal Mail’s sortation test to become an accredited sortation software provider. Accredited sortation providers are proven to maximise postal efficiency and therefore reduce the costs of a mailing campaign for clients. In an independent review of The Software Bureau’s leading Cygnus, SwiftSort and API products, Royal Mail tested the sortation element of each product and validated their efficiency and accuracy. For the tests, The Software Bureau was required to sort a list of approximately 29,000 UK addresses and submit the Computer Planning Report and Line Listing generated by the Software to Royal Mail for validation. This is the first time an organisation has passed the test since 2016 meaning that The Software Bureau [...]
Fundraising Preference Service Update – what it means for your charity
We were pleased to read about the recent changes made to the Fundraising Preference Service. Whilst some charities might be disheartened by them – we believe they are a good thing and we’ll explain why. But first. What’s changed? People can now request that up to 10 charities stop sending them direct marketing in one go through the FPS online. The previous maximum people could suppress was three charities in one online transaction. However, people can nominate up to 20 charities by contacting the FPS via telephone. It has also been made easier for charities to see if a suppression request has been made on behalf of someone else, with the aim of helping to indicate quickly whether a potentially [...]