40 • F I L M/ T V F U N D RAISIN G
WHERE DID ALL THAT INSPIRATION GO? Finding it hard to see how drtv can work for you?
FI L M/TV F U N D RA ISIN G • 4 1
It’s impossible to inspire people unless you are first inspired. And it’s tough to get your agency to produce wowing creative work, unless you wow it with your cause or brief. That’s why you can’t afford to lose a single drop of inspiration. Derek Humphries explains.
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o, it sounds simple enough. You go see the work, you hear inspiring stories, you turn those stories into emotive, compelling, irresistible, fundraising appeals. And yet too often, a wonderfully rich story of inspiration can become diluted by the time it reaches the potential supporter. Why? Because of inspiration leak. By having too many stages, the story can become dry, sanitised and, frankly, a little dull. To truly inspire the good people who support your cause, you need to streamline this process as much as you can. You start well when one of your colleagues tells you they have witnessed or heard of an amazing story. But by the time someone tries to convert this story into a supporter-facing, inspiring communication, you can be at least 10 huge degrees of separation away from the original inspiration. And that’s before the most crucial degree of separation of all: that between your cause and its potential supporter. The fewer the degrees of separation, the greater the chance that the original inspiration will survive to inspire support. Increasingly, we see that some brave causes are trying to link supporters directly with that original, raw, human story of need. That’s a scary thing for any cause to do, and brings the great risk of loss of control. But it can also bring benefits in linking supporters more directly so they can see as clearly as possible the impact of the support they give. None of this is intended to suggest that we do away with very important processes
and protocols around how we gather and use stories. But there are ways which can prevent ‘inspiration leak’:
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GET OUT THERE Make sure you, your team and your agencies deliver the best possible understanding of your work in as unfiltered a way as possible. Raw stories inspire people and help you to inspire more people as well.
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ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS Find out why people value your organisation’s work: how does it make them feel, what would happen if your cause was not there, what would they say to someone who supports this work? Try to capture feelings and emotions, not just facts. A D RTV AP P EAL THAT T IC KED AL L THE B OXES
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BE FLEXIBLE Sometimes you can go looking for the story to fit an idea you have already had. Be prepared to change tack if you hear a new and inspiring story that you weren’t looking for.
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WORDS AND PICTURES These are of equal importance. An image, a facial expression or small detail can capture as much emotion as any number of words.
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NOT YOUR SHOES Stand in someone else’s shoes – the shoes of the people your cause helps and the shoes of the people who support your cause (even if wearing someone else’s shoes is not always comfortable!).
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FIGHT JARGON We all use jargon in specialist settings and that’s fine. Jargon gives us a shortcut to understand things (and frankly can also make us feel clever!). But it can be cold or even incomprehensible to non-specialists. While the right jargon might help with an application to a charitable trust, it’s likely to bore or bamboozle a member of the public.
7 A couple of months ago, my colleagues, Peter Muffett and Brendan Brosnan, were visiting a project funded by Plan International in Uganda. They had gone there to learn more about the grassroots work and to film a new DRTV fundraising appeal. While they were there, an additional and completely different brief came to life after they heard first hand from mums and project workers about the fears they had; fears of what would happen to newborn baby girls in the future if it were not for Plan International. They got filming right away: no committee, no focus groups. And it inspired a brand-new DRTV appeal that communicated future threats from the perspective of a young baby. It’s now inspiring TV viewers to sponsor girls and thus support Plan’s work.
EDUCATE Work relentlessly to educate your colleagues (policy people, program people and so on) about why this stuff matters. It’s about inspiring people so you have more people supporting you to achieve your mission. Uninspiring fundraising means less funding for good work.
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FEEDBACK Let people within your organisation know when this stuff has made a difference. You might even want to provide feedback to those people whose stories have featured in your fundraising communications.
Derek Humphries Derek is Creative Strategist/ Director at the DTV Group. He is an advisory panel member at Rogare, a fundraising think tank that is delivering a project around the ethics of imagery in fundraising. If you have views on these issues, contact him at derek.humphries@dtvgroup.co.uk.
Then drop a line to plain talking, fluent in fundraising DTV. Email info@dtvgroup.asia to speak with Alex, Lauren, Kerri, Derek or Peter. Or find out more at www.dtvgroup.asia