With my colleagues in =mc consulting I’ve spent almost 20 years clarifying what are the key skills and frameworks that ensure success in making major donor solicitations. We’ve worked with UNHCR teams in the Gulf to help them secure $350M in a year from Islamic donors, with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to persuade Ted Turner to hand over $1M in 15 minutes, and with Paisley Museum on put together £45M for a rebuild over two years.
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In this section we offer personal opinions and insights from our team, or partners we know and trust, on issues of the hour or ones that have caught our attention. If you’re keen to know the latest thinking from the =mc consulting team, sign up below for our opinions on emerging issues.
The latest from mc=consulting
In this blog Bernard Ross, director of the decision science team at =mc consulting explain how Birmingham Museums Trust (BMT), led by two of the most exciting figures in the UK museum world, Sara Wajid and Zak Mensah, invested in a series of behavioral experiments to increase unrestricted income from visitors to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG).
In this blog Bernard Ross and Celia Brady explore how a behavioural science project pivoted to drive an extraordinary increase in donor income at Edinburgh Zoo — from £20K to £1.3M in a 14-month period.
Bernard Ross, =mc consulting and decisionscience director, is leading the key masterclass at the prestigious International Fundraising Congress in Holland 18th-19th October 2022. This masterclass is essential for anyone who wants to learn more about the application of the latest thinking in decision science, neuroscience and cognitive psychology to fundraising, communications, advocacy, and campaigning.
Fundraisers are an emotional bunch. They care a lot about the bad stuff that’s happening in the world. And they desperately want everyone to care about it as much as they do. And they’re sensitive. So they spend a lot of time and effort listening to donors and supporters. Unfortunately, this leads them to think the way to understand donors is to listen to them. My thesis here is that if you listen too much to donors you’ll be at best disappointed, and at worst very distracted. Instead you need to study what they actually do.
There’s a lot of discussion in the charity sector about the importance of impact analysis and reporting as a way to persuade donors and supporters to do more. Annual reports are now often rebranded as impact reports. Does this work? And if it works how does it work? In this blog =mc consulting director Bernard Ross explores the importance of social proof in persuasion and argues that this ‘softer’ approach can be more powerful than facts and figures, even beautifully presented ones.
Bernard Ross gives you 7 key considerations if you’re thinking about developing an earned income or commercialisation strategy. This =mcinsight draws on =mc’s commercial awareness and income generation consulting work with national and local charities – from the National Theatre to the RSPCA and from NSPCC to East Lindsey District Council.
Authors
- Bernard Ross (17)
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