Case Study

CHALLENGE

The Salvation Army recruit large volumes of volunteer doorknockers through a telephone campaign to collect funds as part of their Annual Red Shield Appeal. Unfortunately, many do not proceed to collect funds and those that do collect don’t raise as much as they could. The challenge was how to get more registered volunteers fundraising. 

APPROACH

We used targeted survey interventions to gain insight as to why people register but do not fundraise. The first survey assessed their commitment to the cause and confidence in collecting.

The results showed the best predictor of fundraising success was a volunteer’s confidence collecting. Helping moderately confident volunteers become more confident would have the biggest impact.

A second survey was sent to identify barriers to confidence. We then provided tailored content to improve confidence through tips on what to say, how to collect funds, and how to make the occasion more enjoyable.

We also applied principles from behavioural economics to anchor expectations of success and increase the length of time people collected for through social norming. 

To improve retention we sent a final survey to understand how volunteers felt about their experience collecting. This provided indicators to The Salvation Army for how to identify high value fundraisers the following year, prior to the collection. Those volunteers that didn’t collect were asked about barriers and invited to support the campaign.

RESULTS

• Reduced volume of recruited volunteers from 20,000 to 14,000
• Increased net return by 5%
• Increased average raised 15% comparing control to journey
• Improved completion rates by 14% to 56% completion
• Increased overall average raised by 21%
• ROI 7:1 for coaching journey