Innovation in Giving

What are the Innovators in Giving up to?

Helen Goulden - 27.06.2012

Last Thursday, I found myself in a room with the first innovators funded through the Innovation in Giving Fund. You can find them all here.

Separately, these 39 organisations are doing some great work to increase giving; whether that be the giving or exchanging of time, assets, resources, skills or money. But when looked at collectively, they're like a force of nature. A collection of formidable and passionate people who are committed to creating compelling platforms, opportunities and incentives for getting more people to give and share with each other, with charities and in communities.  

It was a real opportunity to reflect on some of the things that are going well, and celebrate some significant achievements. Youthnet have celebrated their millionth volunteer and Pennies celebrated passing the £500,000 donation threshold (that's a whole lot of pennies...). There have been some great successes in driving up giving through big national and local events from People Who Share, Solar Schools and  Good For Nothing and some significant site upgrades from Timto and BlueDot. Guess2Give have been shortlisted for Orange's Different Business competition and Stephen Fry tweeted about the Greeniversity... to name a few highlights of the last couple of months.

It's clear that all the Awardees are each on their own journey towards success and sustainability, but I wanted to share some reflections that I had following the event:

How do we know what's working?

Almost all of the IIG Innovators have a web or tech dimension to their work.  And it was clear from talking to them that being responsive to the needs of consumers when you're operating a web-based platform is easier than ever and many awardees talking about taking advantage of AB testing and other forms of real-time user feedback to develop better, slicker giving experiences.  A huge amount of innovators are using Google Analytics to understand what's working and what's not in terms of user experience and how to drive traffic; but how deeply are they using it? I came across this great blog post by Avanish Kaushik which gives eight tips for working Google Analytics harder - Fall in love with people, not page views!

Mixed motivations for giving

Jon Huggett talks really eloquently about how approaching giving with a mix of motivations can result in much deeper and sustained engagement - and at the heart of this is reciprocity; that the 'giver' gets something of value to them.  This was strongly reinforced from talking to innovators, as it's clear that they are trialling some very different and mixed motivations for giving. BlueDot aim to offer  'money can't buy' experiences in return for doing good; Guess2Giveare driving increased giving through creating competition amongst social networks, and Ecomodo are slicing into traditional markets by offering frugal consumers viable alternatives to people when they are at the point of making a purchase (the offer being 'borrow don't buy').

What's clear is that those innovations that seek to offer their target audiences something that they value in return for their support (and for many that could just be a better, more authentic way of giving a personal and public thank you) are going to be the winners when it comes to driving up giving in austere times.

Know Your Business

Some of the organisations awarded funding through the Innovation in Giving Fund have strong business models; and many have potential routes to sustainability that while ambitious, are logical and are making some credible assumptions about the world, their business and their customers. I think what came through strongly for me at this event, is that some people have some great  - really good and solid - ideas that are working to drive up giving but that are yet to really pin down who is going to pay for what they have to offer; particularly those who are looking to increase the giving or exchanging of time; where the revenue streams not always as obvious or predictable. Building mass and scale also came through as a persistent and common challenge; and Rachel Botsman's blog on this might be useful for people navigating that dilemma of building both supply and demand for their service in equal measure.

Shared Experiences

The final session of the day focused on the most important things that were coming up over the next 8-10 months and asked awardees to explain what they found most exciting about what other awardees were up to - a great exercise to go through. I thought it was interesting that it was the offline events, happenings and gatherings that most attracted people's attention and excited people. These are people who have founded organisations that are very often focused on driving people to go and act online to do something; but when it comes to their own preferences - whether that be Project Dirt's UK bus tour or Good For Nothing's Wild Thing Weekend, DoAction's big award party - it's the things that bring people together, united in a shared experience, that get them all excited.  The fusion of this visceral, human desire for social, shared experiences with digital experiences that connect, create and facilitate real-life giving and sharing I think has to lie at the beating heart of a shift in the culture of giving across the UK.

A few reflections from an incredibly rich day and we'll be sharing more insights from this event over the next couple of weeks. The key reflection for me is that there is a huge amount happening over the next 12 months in terms of building demand, momentum and collaboration to take great innovations in giving to scale and I'm taking bets as to which ones become household names in 2013.