Recruit and develop donors

Courtesy delivers success for the RAF Benevolent Fund

• Audience insight: “For me, The Benevolent Fund is an oasis of traditional values in a brutal world.”

In 2006 the RAF Benevolent Fund asked us to help set up their fundraising programme. From scratch.

With little to go on, we sent a survey to people who had been sending in cheques for years. It told us that most had served in the RAF, many others were family members, and almost all were over 70.

But we needed more to understand how to engage ex-RAF people. So we had conversations with as many ex-RAF working in the charity as possible. Bingo! ‘When people leave the RAF, they find civvy street rather brutal in how it treats people,’ said one man. ‘The Ben Fund feels safe, an oasis of traditional values they feel at home in, where people look after each other and are treated decently.’

So treat people courteously and decently is what we do. It’s in our nature, but getting the tone just right has been a pleasure. We don’t ‘make the ask’, we simply present a distinctive opportunity in carefully crafted language and let nature take its course. No prompt amounts. No pushiness. And it has worked a treat.

Direct mail / Donor devlopment / Media planning

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