In this episode of On the Same Landing Page, we speak with Jake Criswick, CEO of Play it Forward, a charity providing education and health activities for young people in Southern Zambia. Jake discusses the amazing work his charity is doing, the challenges that charities are facing and how to find your place in a very crowded industry.
Astra
So hello and welcome to episode 12 of On the Same Landing Page. As always, I’m your host Astra Newton the head of advertising. We’ve got marketing manager Jason here as well. Hello.
Jason
Hello.
Astra
And today we have a very first charity guest on who is Jake Criswick from Play It Forwards. I’m going to move swiftly into our first segment, which is usually called 10 minutes with a marketeer but we have repurposed it for charity and it’s going to be called spilling the charitea. So, Jake, I invite you to spill the charitea. Do you want to set the scene a little bit?
And just in your own words, describe what is the mission of Play It Forward?
Jake
Yeah, sure. Firstly, thanks for having me on. I it’s nice to be the first charity guest on your podcast, so it’s really good to be here. So yeah, on Jake on the CEO of Play It Forward and really kind of our mission is to make sure that young people in Zambia reach their full potential and thrive. And we we do this through a number of mechanisms.
We use football as a way to kind of reach people and attract people. And this gives them something to enjoy, an element of fun. And we can use that to kind of use that to incorporate messages around health and education. And really, this helps young people take control of their lives rather than just giving them something. We we empower them.
And this gives them the skills that they need in school, in work and in life, really. So really, we’re trying to create people who are holistic and aspire and conscientious, and that way they become impactful leaders that ultimately they can get back to their communities.
Astra
Yeah, I think with like play it forward. Most people assume it’s it’s just a charity, but you do so much more than that, right? You do like HIV testing and education, nutrition information, schooling. So what kind of what’s the span of everything that you cover? I know it’s quite big, so feel free to cut some out, but.
Jake
Yeah, that’s right. So you guys often hard to kind of capture it in a in a sentence or something. But yeah, we do focus a lot around health and nutrition activities. So this might be incorporating messages around HIV and sexual health into football drills. We train a network of young people who can then go and deliver these drills into their communities, helping them to understand the risks and how to prevent and get treatment for HIV and AIDS, which is still a major issue in Zambian communities, actually since the pandemic.
Adolescent HIV infections are increasing again. So it is things like this that, you know, we we kind of think that the AIDS pandemic is is kind of a thing of the nineties, but it’s actually increasing again. So we’re working hard with with local charities and treatment centres to overcome this.
Astra
Wow interesting.
Jason
And why did the pandemic effect that do you think? It might be obvious, but I don’t. I wouldn’t know why that would have affected those rates going back up.
Jake
It’s a number of issues really. But I think majorly it’s to do with resources that were directed for prevention and services for HIV were then redirected to COVID centres. And you know, in a way this has happened because COVID was a real threat and globally, but it did mean that the people who were getting treatment were able to get it because they didn’t have the services, weren’t able to get them to them because they were closed in clinics, maybe reprioritizing vaccinations, the COVID over HIV medication.
So yeah, I think that’s one of the challenges. And it also I think it’s just where funding trends go. And unfortunately, I think like I said before, in the nineties, there was a lot of narrative and story around HIV and AIDS and everyone was talking about it and this new disease came through and that probably lasted to the early 2000s.
But now, you know, times have kind of moved on and there’s other things that come to light, whether that’s kind of conflicts in Ukraine and Russia and and whatever, like so many more things that grab people’s attention. So it’s it’s difficult to take of your story and say that, you know, still there is a real issue here. But we’re working with the communities to see how we can overcome that.
Astra
So I guess it’s kind of like we shifted the focus of it then, because obviously you might have concentrated more on like the health side of things before. And HIV was one of the facets you kind of like kind of push that more into the limelight. Now with it raising, is that one of the key things you’re working towards?
Jake
Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, there’s there’s lots of charities in Zambia are doing amazing work. And in a sense, you have to find your niche. You have to find look at the community to do your working with, you know, where is the need. And often that changes. It could be kind of nutrition and access to water and sanitation facilities, which is still huge, hugely important in rural communities, but where we work in more kind of urban communities in Livingstone, particularly, where you’ve got populations with lots of travel and truckers and lorry drivers coming through, unfortunately those kind of transient workers lead to kind of increased HIV and AIDS rates in the communities
So you talked a little bit there about like finding your niche. I kind of got like a two part question, so I’ll start the broader end. But like how did the charity come to form? What was the inspiration there?
Jake
So it was about ten years ago, our chairman, a guy called Oliver Brendon, I think he was on holiday in Zambia at the time and I think he just decided to get a four by four. And you kind of drive off into the rural villages, see what was happening, get get more of a perspective on the real Zambia.
And I think when he got there, he he really kind of realised, you know, that these schools have nothing. A lot of them didn’t even had a borehole, didn’t have access to clean water, they didn’t have toilets. And so he kind of was like, I want to do something about this. And so he came back to the UK and did lots of fundraising and made a promise to one of the head teachers that he met out there that he would come back and build a school and he did that and he went back.
He gave the money to a local charity to help them build that school. And, you know, since since then, we’ve helped with the funding and construction of 18 schools in Zambia, and that’s helped kind of more than 9000 children getting access to clean water education and sanitation. So it’s it’s kind of stemmed from that. And it’s it’s grown and football is maybe a newer element into it, but it’s that kind of ten year period is where we come from, really.
Astra
Wow. That’s like more than one a year, which is very impressive.
Jake
And yeah, it’s, I think a lot of the work is planning these things, budgeting them and then really kind of making sure that the community have ownership over these projects. So making sure that we’re employing local builders, you know, we’re giving people jobs and they can kind of take control of their own futures and make sure that the communities that they live in are supported.
Astra
Yeah, it’s really good that it’s like all encompassing because there’s almost not to use like a phrase that I hate, but there’s almost a lot of feeling. I know in certain African communities where people come over from Western societies and build schools and stuff and then they can kind of be a little bit resentful of it because it’s that whole like white saviour thing.
But by employing local people and making sure that they have the jobs and stuff, obviously you mediate a lot of the concerns that they would have otherwise, I assume.
Jake
Yeah, definitely. I think we’re trying to shift away from that, that culture of total dependency. Yeah. White saviours, which we’ve seen so much narrative around in the last few years especially. And I think, you know, with this movement of Decolonising aid as well, it’s a big one. Yeah. Making sure that the Global South have access and resources because ultimately a lot of funding is is coming from the global north and it’s difficult for the organisation to survive making the biggest impact to actually get these funds.
And so it’s, it’s important that they are empowered and they have the resources and capacity to help to do that.
If I bring it back to the second part of my question, if you have to cast your mind back sort of 5 minutes there were you also said in the onset that there are lots of charities in Zambia doing this kind of thing. And obviously all over Africa, I don’t know if you remember like being younger, but you’d constantly see adverts on the television for like WaterAid in African countries or like malaria, right?
That sort of thing. How do you how easy is it or difficult to differentiate yourself when so many people are sort of operating in the same environment?
Jake
Yeah, it’s a good question. And it does sometimes feel like a crowded space. There’s lots of charities and I think, you know, in the UK alone is I think maybe over 170,000 charities. Yeah, yes, yes. They’re not all working abroad or in Africa. But we are seeing kind of new charities emerging all the time and that is a good thing.
I think there’s so much need in the communities that we work in, but you do have to kind of make sure you’re not treading on somebody else’s toes or, you know, tackling an issue that has already, you know, another charity is already addressing that. And so I think firstly, it’s about making sure that you’ve done a kind of a good scoping exercise of what’s around, making sure that you’ve reached out to any partners or charities, ministries where you’re working to make sure you understand where you would fit in kind of civil society.
And and I think you have to think about, you know, are you targeting a geographical area or are you targeting a specific cause? Yeah. So some some charities have it quite an easy selling point. You know, that they exist to do to eliminate tuberculosis or something. And it’s very obvious is what they do. And I think their marketing, their branding is is relatively easy in that respect.
But I think sometimes when you’re doing something more holistically or targeting a community, there’s lots of different problems that you want to tackle. And I think sometimes we get carried away with saying, I want to do this, I want to help with this. And I think, you know, I’m always thinking, how can we be more focussed and how can we communicate what we do to our donors more effectively?
But um, yeah, I think for us it’s, it is kind of multifaceted. I think we, we look at young people and ultimately they aren’t achieving their full potential that is limited by a number of things, whether that’s getting into schools, whether that’s having three meals on the table every day, whether that’s diseases like HIV, AIDS and also employment opportunities.
Do they have the skills when they come out of school to be able to secure employment and all of those opportunities available in Zambia? So there’s so many different things that we have to kind of put under one umbrella. But ultimately we use football as our kind of tool of doing so.
Jason
Interesting what you said about not wanting to step on eachother’s toes and being aware of what other people are already doing. That’s like the original function of businesses, like companies would be created for a purpose and then they disband after that purpose would be done. So they’d build a bridge and they’d be a company to build the bridge.
And then the company disbanded and those people go on somewhere else and that compares to like some of the other sectors that we work on where, you know, we’ll use terminology like the competitors. And when we’ve talked to charities at work that we’re doing, it’s not like that where it doesn’t work. Like they’re like they’re not competitors. We’re just trying to do the same thing as them and we’re trying to make sure we do the things they can’t do and not the same thing.
Like it’s not if we if it gets done, if the problem gets solved, we’re all happy. It’s not like a case of we want to make money from it or profit from it. So it’s it’s a very it’s a very rewarding kind of approach to kind of achieving an objective via organisations like Yeah.
Jake
I think particularly is quite nice. During the COVID pandemic, one of the good things to come out of it was that we were working with so many more charities in the area and often we didn’t know they existed at all. But I think it all everyone’s together like it did in the UK, it did in Zambia and we, we created this network of charities in the COVID response and we put resources in to fund kind of soap and masks and digging new boreholes to make sure people had clean water and this kind of network of charities formed, which we’d never had before. And it was really nice to hear about what other people were doing and, you know, we would work together and go to a community and deliver information about COVID and also distributing resources. And so I think, you know, we weren’t at all stepping on each other’s toes, but we agreed, you know, we have to come together.
And by coming together, we were stronger, a more more effective and more impactful.
Well, that’s really cool, I guess as well. Like I know digitally speaking, lots of charities share skills amongst each other as well and kind of like pay it forward if you like. Got it. And so it’s nice to see that people do that so often, particularly in our field. You know, we’ve done a lot of B2B stuff. There’s a lot of like clashing of horns.
So it’s nice to see that charities kind of like open arms welcoming into the in terms of in terms of the fundraising. So you’ve spoken a lot about the pandemic then. I mean, obviously, it’s still very fresh in everybody’s minds. But how did it affect your fundraising efforts? Did you like most of the world? I think a lot of it had to go online and. But did it increase that it decreased? Did your activities change?
Jake
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it was a difficult period. I think there’s no way around it. It was tough with a huge drop in our income, you know, almost 50% for that year.
Astra
Wow.
Jake
And I think, you know, that highlights it to us that, you know, we didn’t have a good diverse revenue. And I think I’ll be the first to admit that is that we were quite reliant on a few donors, a few major donors, and I think often that is the case with a number of charities. So I think the diversification element became really apparent that, you know, we can’t survive by relying on one person.
And so I think we we had to adapt. We were in a position where we almost went into our reserves and, you know, it seems quite alarming when you’re in that moment and you think, goodness, like what the end to this, like how long will this go on? But it also took some comfort from the trustees and from all kind of conversations that, you know, this is what reserves are for this is why we have them for situation like this.
And there was a lot of kind of very negative narrative kind of at the start of the pandemic, and quite rightly so. No one knew what was ahead of us. I think the Charities Aid Foundation even said, you know, one in four charities would need to use their reserves to help them through the pandemic. And I think another stat from Bond, who are kind of an international charity network, said that kind of two in five charities wouldn’t actually make it through the pandemic.
Yeah. And when you hear these things, it kind of plugs in the back of your mind and you’re thinking, goodness, am I going to be two of those five charities? And so you’re thinking, what can we do? Quickly to try and make sure that we’re not just a statistic like that? And and I think we we definitely did move things online over the last few years.
We’ve invested a lot more into kind of social media. We’ve we’ve looked to kind of marketing agencies and looking at kind of SEO in our website and in PPC. And I think we had to stop all of our events, so we had no choice. But the only way we could raise was to do online campaigns and we we’re kind of very new to this space too.
And being a small charity, unfortunately, we don’t have the resources or the capacity to kind of run big campaigns, but we were definitely and we still are really in the exploration phase of, you know, what’s working well for us. You know, all these campaigns working. How do all donors best respond to these? And so I think we have to change that completely.
And also looking at diversifying our income stream, we were very reliant on corporate giving from companies in the travel industry. And as they had challenges of their own.
They weren’t in a position to give to us. And so yeah, it’s a difficult time.
Just to just jump in there on some of the SEO, some, some be, some people listening might not know what it stands for and what it means and PPC as well. So pay per click is PPC and it’s anything where you pay per click or even impressions really. But that’s the term we use for mostly Google ads, search ads, things like that, where people go into Google, search for something, click on ads and be led to your website.
SEO is search engine optimisation, which is how high you rank in search engines from the same journey, same user journey. So they type in green giraffe and then you’ve got loads of content on green giraffe and they come to the Greengiraffe.com website, which would be yours if that’s what you that’s what your chairty helps. So that just demands things.
Astra
The now-extinct Green giraffe, didn’t get a charity in time.
Jake
Yeah, I think, I mean I didn’t know these terms were due to until two years ago really myself. So yeah, I think they do need explaining. I think a lot of charities are kind of scared of these terms, as was I. So I think, you know, it just took a little bit of research, a few conversations with people to understand how could they help a charity.
And, you know, I’m no expert by any means now, but I kind of understand what they do in a loose sense and experimenting with them. So, yeah.
Astra
Would you say that most of your fundraising now has remained digital or have you kind of like crept back into the physical events kind of space? What’s kind of like the biggest portion of the pie, which is a horribly corporate term?
I’m sorry, I regret it. Yeah well, it’s nearly lunch so…
Jake
Yeah, I think we’ve We’ve definitely going back to fundraising events and it’s something that you can’t really replace with kind of in-person fundraising events. And, you know, it brings people together, it gives you the opportunity to have kind of meaningful conversations with people who are attending, you know, whether it’s a marathon fundraiser where you kind of all got a marathon together and at the end you convene and, you know, people can share their stories.
And it’s a really nice way of engaging people. And so we’re definitely moving back to that. We’re scheduling for next year a lot of in-person fundraising events, I think, A, because the engagement this brings but also I think in terms of the the income generation it does for us bring in a lot more income at the moment. I think we still haven’t got to the point where we can rely on our digital fundraising.
We don’t have a team that catered to that. Unfortunately, it’s just myself in the UK I’m responsible for it. But doing this as well as a lot of other things. And so I think it might be in the future that we kind of increasingly every year relying more and more on digital. And I think that’s probably the way that we should go, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a replacement for the in-person fundraising events.
Astra
I think, yeah, it’s it’s not everyone kind of thought after the pandemic that everything would stay online, but that you’re right, even outside of charities, there’s just something that you can’t it’s not quite the same as it, you know, like lots of people run like virtual marathons in the back garden, but they’re not like kind of like team spirit to cheer you on. Yeah, exactly.
Jason
Did you know that Jake did the same thing?
Astra
No, I did not know.
I’m sure I did do I did a marathon, I did the Virtual London Marathon, but it was in a park that parks around London. So I yeah. Mapped be around on the same day of the London Marathon and I decided to raise money for one of the football players who had lost his leg on a pretty bad kind of trekking incident where he stepped on a piece of metal and got gangrene and to have the leg amputated, which is just a really horrible story to hear.
And I decided to to help him with that and get a get a leg and an amputation. And, yeah, he’s now back on two feet, as it were, moving around. And he’s even kind of back on the pitch coaching football. So oh yeah, it’s really nice to kind of do these things and have a really kind of tangible result from your your fundraising is stories like that that keep us going.
Astra
Yeah, I’ll most of you all this might be ignorant, but like, obviously football is like a mechanism for you to deliver your mission in Zambia. Does that mean most of your fundraisers end up being kind of like sports related, like marathons, football games, that kind of thing?
Jake
Yeah, to an extent. I think I’m I’m very sporty myself. I love participating in lots of sports and football or cycling or running, and I kind of understand that it’s not for everyone as well. So we make sure that we don’t involve every event around sports. I think if it was my way, we’d be doing kind of Tough Mudders marathons and cycling and yeah.
Yeah. We even had someone walk the London Marathon this year and so we can block out alternatives like that. But we’re one of our biggest fundraising events is actually a charity quiz, an auction. So quite the opposite. People come, they drink lots of beer and wine, have a lot of fun in the pub. And then we have an auction as well where we’ve managed to get any surprises.
The holidays and flights and things. And yeah, we do that every year and it’s going to be again in February 2023.
Astra
Oh, cool. So what does kind of like round up this segment and I’m aware we’ve talked a lot about the negatives of the pandemic. What does the big picture look like for play it forward going forward in the next year? You’ve mentioned the events and stuff, but for you as the CEO, what will you be spending most of your time on?
Jake
Yeah, so definitely a lot of events. I think more than ever. We have to think about fundraising all the time now. I think there’s so much competition from other charities, the cost of living crisis, where people are kind of maybe not giving as much or maybe giving to charities at home. And so we have to we can’t do what we do without an income and knowing, you know, in a year, we’re going to have this much to continue these programs and so I think more and more my job and the growth of play it forward has to be based around fundraising and marketing strategy.
So we made a decision next year to actually probably hire someone to come on board and do that full time. We think that’s kind of the natural growth in as a small charity as it’s just something that I can’t possibly do alone. The more I learn about it, the more I realise how much there is to it. And you know, whether that’s engaging new donors or retaining them and keeping them warm and contacting and reaching out to them, there’s huge amounts of work that goes into that.
And so I think someone who’s a marketing professional or fundraising professional would really help that. So that’s planned for next year along with quite a few fundraising events. So definitely kind of focussing on that side, more of it them.
Astra
So this last part of the segment is a set of questions that we ask to every guest. Jason, do you want to run through this one? I’ve talked for a while.
Jason
Yeah, yeah. So we tweaked them slightly. I, I think we’re going to keep the same.
Astra
Same.
Jason
Same, same approach. So we always ask people what the, their view is on their marketing strategy and also to rank these marketing channels from 1 to 4 in terms of effectiveness, effectiveness based on their experience. So the four that we have to for you to kind of review are pay per click, which you mentioned earlier, advertising, so social media, so that could be organic or paid as anything on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter and the rest of email marketing is it’s the third one and search engine optimisation, which we explained earlier.
So which of those is your if you had to focus all of your energy into one of those is a marketing, digital marketing. What would be what would you go for.
It’s a tough one this isn’t it. I think it’s still would probably have to be email marketing is number one. I know it’s been around for a long time and there’s lots of new things that come about. But I think, you know, we can update donors and give them newsletters and keep them warm by a simple email. So for us it’s email marketing of one.
Jason
Is that email marketing for a database you already have other than cold emails? Yeah.
Jake
So yes, exactly. So we’ve got a content management system that we put all of our donor information on and kind of track things like when the last email was sent and their address and events attended and things. And this helps us to kind of keep track of this. So we might send out particular kind of emails to particular groups of people depending on their previous donations that I think about that.
So yeah, I think that’s what it covers. And then probably social media at the moment and we tend to get quite good engagement across a few kind of like Facebook, especially with our donors. And so I think we’re always kind of doing posts, you know, two or three a week trying to find ways that our audiences can learn more, can donate or get involved.
And then yeah, probably SEO is three and then PPC four. I don’t think this is because they’re not as important, but it’s just an area that I don’t I still haven’t really seen huge kind of results in, partly because I haven’t had the time to analyse what it’s doing. I think it’s more of a long term strategy. I think we’ll probably see the results of SEO and PPC over kind of the next year, but I think at the moment we’re still very much focussed around kind of email and social media, but I think it’s an area that I definitely want to explore more and I realised that it has huge potential.
Jason
Yeah, it’s a shame that I astra’s key kind of service is often number four. We tried to change the industry. We have people asking.
Astra
That’s all right. Because you know, basically I’m getting fired at the end of the year.
Jason
I think there are good answers and I’m interested in your social media posts because I just noticed today that you’ve got a TikTok account. I don’t know if that’s live, but I didn’t get to go on to it. But what’s the how do you come up with the ideas for content and stuff like that?
Jake
So yeah, I mean, we do have a TikTok account. It’s something that I think I created probably a couple of months ago now we still haven’t posted, I must confess, we’re still I’m still looking at to see what other charities are doing. And there’s not a huge amount on their content with, with kind of particularly international development charities, but it’s the accounts there.
So it’s something for maybe 2023 for me to explore a bit more. But yeah, with social media, we, we try and tell stories, we, we get our team in Zambia to kind of look at their kind of projects and find out what’s been the results, the changes. And, you know, this 12 year old girl who’s in our programmes and finding out how that’s affected her life, maybe putting that into a blog and then sharing that on social media.
So it’s a not it’s not always a plug for donate, donate, donate. I think particularly as a small charity, we have to think around our branding and building trust with our donors for bigger charities. They’ve really got that. They know whether it’s kind of shelter or crisis. They see the logo they trust them and they’re happy to donate with us.
We have to reach those audiences. We have to engage them. We have to build trust. And then convince them to donate to a cause. So I don’t think you could do you can’t skip those steps. And so I think we’re trying to do a lot of work around branding and educating people on the issues that we are trying to tackle in Zambia.
You know, a lot of people don’t know that adolescent HIV infections are going up. So it’s things like that that, you know, is difficult for charity. Not only do we have to kind of sell the cause, but we also have to inform people of what we’re doing as well.
Astra
That’s the first time someone has, oh, the adolescent rate of HIV is going up. They also have to have that there’s like a little barrier between them donating and then believing it. They have to kind of sit on it research and so a bit of a longer journey for them I suppose
Jason
Can I ask you as well, on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident you are in your overall marketing strategy.
Jake
Not overly confident. I would probably put it at a conservative six. I think it’s it’s an area where we are exploring at the moment. Know my job involves a lot of things from kind of project management to creating budgets and finance and things. And so, you know, typically in the past or kind of marketing strategy hasn’t been a priority for us.
But I think as kind of the years have gone on and I’ve realised kind of how I can really make the most impact in the UK for the charity. I think we’re now trying to kind of plan a bit of a longer scale about what we’re doing in marketing. So I think we’re in a kind of a testing phase where we’re trying different things, seeing whether they work, and then I think I’ll need to spend some time analysing, you know, which, which method, which channel is actually working most for us.
And so I’m hoping by, you know, in a year’s time I’ll come back and say, oh, our marketing strategy is a confident eight out of ten. But at the moment I would say it’s probably around six.
Jason
So it’s a good answer and answer the next question I have, which was What can you do to improve, improve that score? You always feel like with marketing because it’s so wide, there’s always something more you can do that you never feel like you’ve ticked every box and tried everything. It’s most of our strategy meetings are, Oh, can we do this?
Can we do this? Followed by, okay, what are those things? What are we actually most likely going to work? And it’s a difficult it’s often the the and it’s always like into like spinning plates and just just trying to keep your head above water. Like lots of quite scary anxiety inducing analogies to basically just trying to make sure that you’ve got a good channel of people coming in and to donate.
So yeah, I think that’s a that’s a good response. I think everyone a lot of people feel that’s where they’re between six and eight. And we’re going to go into segment two now and Astra any other thoughts on section one?
Astra
Yeah just obviously I know you rate PPC at four Jake but so I mean it just came over me. But you have recently taken advantage of Google ads grants. So I just want to do a little, little bit of a sneaky plug to say that Google can be really profitable for charities and they you can get up to the GBP equivalent of $120,000 a year in funding from Google ad grants, which is fees usually to an agency, but not from Google.
So all that pay those clicks that you’d normally have to pay for you don’t have to pay for and you can drive traffic to your site to help increase fundraising, awareness, recruitment, anything like that. And so that’s my plug. Jake, what was your experience with ad grants? I know you’re kind of like, as you said, testing in the beginning phases.
Jake
Yeah, I think it’s it’s something, as I said, that we’ve kind of only started in the last few months really. So we would say we’re yet to see the real results of that, how it’s working. I think it’s a great scheme and I think every charity should explore it and sign up to it and I think a lot of charities don’t treat themselves as as businesses, but they should take a more kind of business minded approach in their fundraising.
And we can’t just rely organically on people donating and generosity. We have to try and reach new audiences and to do it in a way that’s driven by data and digital is is the way forward. So we have to adapt and I think a lot of small charities aren’t, but I would definitely encourage them to take the same approach, try out, see what happens.
It doesn’t really cost much at all and it’s amazing. It’s free money. You’d be silly to turn it down, in a way.
Astra
Perfect. Thank you for a perfect plug there.
Jason
Okay. So now we’re going to have a little bit more fun with the segment two. So so we’re just going to what we normally do is fake facts. We’ve kind of taken it into a charity area to make it more more specific. So for the first time, we’re doing a mini presentation, but it’s not going to be death by powerpoint.
It’s it’s going to be a little quiz. I think I’m going to go.
Astra
With visual stimulation. But remember, this is a podcast, so let’s do audio description also.
Jason
Here we go. Can you see my screen?
Astra
Yes.
Jake
Yeah.
Jason
Let’s go to full screen on this. So can you order these charity events from the highest amount raise to the lowest since their start date?
Astra
I’m trying to think in terms of age, which one’s the oldest?
Jason
Oh, and I’m assuming. No, someone is watching. They are soccer.
I mean, I, I’m I’m new to the radio game. SocerAid, Macmillan Coffee Morning, Race for Life and Christmas Jumper Day.
Astra
So my logic here is that all of them, apart from the Macmillan coffee mornings, happen, if I’m not mistaken, once a year. So for that reason, I think Macmillan Coffee Morning happens more regularly, so I’m going to put that one at the top. What do you think, Jake?
Jake
Yeah, I was I was going to say say I. I know that this event has been running for years and years and years. And yeah, like you said, it happens all throughout the year. So yeah, I would definitely put that number one.
Astra
And then maybe second, I think SoccerAid, just because it’s like televised, maybe that’s bias.
Jason
So it uses a lot of influences from all over the world, like famous footballers.
Jake
I mean it might be SoccerAid but I might be tempted to say race for life here. Um, I just can’t remember when soccer aid started, but I feel like it’s a more.
Jason
Recent.
Jake
More recent development. So I’m going to say Race for life, maybe it’s wrong.
Astra
Yeah, I think I would put that one third, so I don’t know. I didn’t even know Christmas Jumper Day was a charitable thing.
Jake
It’s next week, isn’t it? Maybe on the sixth or 7th of December or something.
Astra
I’m just going to put mine on for the whole of December.
Jason
Let’s have a look at the answers then. So number one was Race for Life.
Yeah, that’s £547 million raised since the start date. Number two, Macmillan Coffee morning.
Astra
Which is what we went for.
Jason
Yeah, that’s 290 million raised for Macmillan Coffee morning since it’s stars day and third is soccer aid with 75 million, which means that Christmas Jumper Day has raised 30 million, which is maybe because we don’t really associate that there is charity that you are meant to be giving to.
Jake
I couldn’t tell you which charity it is.
Jason
Some work on my awareness of that either. No, no, no, no. I’ll do the next. The next bit is how much you think Movember has raised since it started in 2004.
Astra
Oh, that’s a toughie.
Jason
I even kept my moustache on for this segment because I know we are past the 30th November.
Jake
I’m going to say 120 million.
Astra
And so it started in 2004. I feel like Christmas Jumper Day was around the same and that raised 30 million. This is all absolutely baseless, by the way. It’s just what I think. I think less I think like 90 mil. Maybe I guess it’s worldwide though. I’mbacktracking. I’m going to say 90.
Jason
And 100. And what did you say, Jake?
Jake
I’m actually 120.
Astra
698 million. Last name is five times the amount. And that’s it, you know. Wow. How much have you raised with your moustache, Jason?
Jason
Oh, I’ll be honest. I’m still working on it.
Jake
Waiting for the big result.
Jason
I guess it’s meant to be over, but I’m. I’m running late, so I donated £42 which is the most I’m in Instagram would let me donate to someone else’s set of my own campaign using their link. Kind of botched it. And so I will eventually raise a bit than that.
Jason
It’s it’s really not but thank you anyway.
Astra
Will see you also. I’m pretty sure you started growing the moustache in October so you had like a big head start. Maybe you’ll do better on Christmas jumper day ay?.
Jason
Yeah, maybe that’s what I can do is raise awareness for is for and take money at the door of every person I see. Yeah.
I third and final segment is a new one called marketing gripes. So there’s a lot of advertising on TV at the moment. And now when you think of marketing, you normally think of TV advertising. I think that’s why I kind of used to think of before I was involved in it. And there were things that grind people the wrong way, I think for sure. Definitely. I can think of some things I should probably too, but I’ll be interested to know what it is that annoys you or or a question you have about why is it done like that. And when it comes to marketing in general.
Jake
there’s still a tendency for charities to kind of go down this route of what could be perceived as maybe poverty shaming. And it’s it’s going to play a video, very emotional, kind of very, very sad music and it kind of portrays it portrays the beneficiaries as somewhat helpless, and they have to have our support, I think. And I hope that the kind of narrative is changing and we’re trying to kind of use this approach of the saying, actually, you know, we’re going to go to Zambia.
Most people are quite happy. It’s not the case that everyone is crying because they’re so poor. And that’s not to say that there are a lot of problems, but I think, you know, we can present it in a way that is happier. And, you know, I think people are now starting to buy into campaigns that show enjoyment and show the impacts that the charity is having.
And that’s clearly there’s still some very successful charities who are using that kind of old school approach and maybe it’s working for them, too. But I’m yeah, I just get confused as to what the rate of we should be portraying in our campaigns.
Astra
Yeah, yeah. I think as well. I like the psychological study on those things and because they were huge in the nineties, I remember seeing so many of the text to donate and sign up. But I think after seeing it three times, you becomes like 70% less reactive. Like the initial one is like, Oh my God, that’s awful. I should get my money, but then you just become desensitised.
So I didn’t feel like it would be super effective, especially in this day and age when we’re kind of more aware of what it is they’re trying to do and psychologically so on. The definitely seems to be a trend across charities and just generally unlike TV ads, like you said, Jason, it’s like empowerment. Like I’m thinking about this girl can it’s the charity obviously trying to encourage women into sports and stuff but it’s not like oh they can’t they can’t play football, they can’t play hockey.It’s like a really empowering message about what women can do that they’ve been told they can’t. And I just think we I think that’s the way the way to go. But again, I’m not professional.
Jason
Yeah, I would say add to that as well is a case of like campaigns that work have a little bit of reflection on society and what we know and educated on. So if those campaigns that depict poverty all the time in association with those countries are doing the work part of it will be because well, part of it, it’s emotionally pulling on your heartstrings.
But part of it is because that’s the way that that scene and it’s it works when it’s seen that way than it does when it’s seen in a more positive way. Perhaps this is such an education piece that has to do. And if you put two campaigns up against each other where one educates them on the good and everything, the positive, and the other one just focuses on the negative so that you can get action from me and and the latter wins and gets more money.
That’s the one that people go with, even though one of those things does a much better longer term effect in terms of the whole thing. So it’s it’s a really difficult one, isn’t it? It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario of like actually improves people’s understanding of the problems and the complexity and which ones maybe take more money but actually make the situation worse because they provide this like picture that’s inaccurate of and also of the like.
It’s not good for the when you’re from that country. So to hear that people think that way about your country like it harms it is quite harmful in terms of how aid is then is given out, isn’t it? So yes, it’s a difficult one has to give one good, good answer.
Astra
I have two short but sweet marketing gripes which kind of like pull on what you said that the best one is the use of the word suffering, which is kind of what you’re saying when people say, oh, they’re suffering from it’s like you don’t even know that they’re suffering. Secondly, and I noticed it yesterday and I’m going to call out the company that it was I was on the northern rail train yesterday. The lack of person-first language, like they still use signs. It’s like this area is for disabled people. It’s like widely accepted that it’s people with disabilities. And I couldn’t believe I looked at 10 minutes and I was like, I can’t believe we’re still talking about people like this. So, sort it out northern rail. I know you’re listening.
Do you have a marketing gripe Jason? I’m off my soapbox now.
Jason
You just triggered one actually, just because you talked about rail it’s. It’s a very easy win. Really easy. I can’t think of the word, but that’s an easy target I guess. But national is it? Trainline were trying to get me to join the campaign of using railway instead of driving so that I can save the planet and so on and so forth. And it’s just like that.
The timing and everything, it all just feels so out of touch with what the bill like really with the way that we the way we use the railway is. It’s a necessary not I wouldn’t say necessary evil, but we use it because we need to get from A to B and every year they put the prices up and every year there’s some grumble with regards to how much they pay their staff, which don’t seem to get any more money, even though the prices go up every year and they make record profits. So to then them to say that, to try and appeal to this like, you know, join the cause, it’s just like applying a cause to things like that. I get the idea, I get all of the, the whole context behind. But sometimes you have to know when it’s going to land or the opposite piss people off because I was trying to book a train that I had four minutes to book.
This is very personal now you can see it’s triggered me., you know, the book, this train went onto the app and it was like, sign the call to sign a petition. I was like, I’ve got 3 minutes. I don’t have time to be reading about, you know, about this. And also I just don’t believe in it. I don’t believe that by doing this, I’m going to that’s going to solve the problem which the problem they’re trying to sell me is the environment.
I don’t believe they care about that. I just don’t. I think they’re just using it as a way to commit you to a life of spending money. It’s like, take it on and read. Yeah, essentially. Yeah. And that’s my biggest my biggest gripe and but I know and I understand why the team would have put that together. Maybe if I was in that team I would have done the same thing too. But now I’m on the other side. And as a user, as a customer, I just really wound me up.
Jake
So I need to write a strongly worded complaint letter and yeah.
Astra
Tweet them, tweet them, tweet them!
Jason
I’ve done that before. You know.
Astra
It’s just screaming into the echochamber.
Jason
I guess what I need to do is do a better campaign so that we win jobs like that. And we, you know, as a non profit PPC agency, we produce better campaigns. That’s what we really need to do. It’s easy to criticise and not so easy to do to.
Astra
Do our thing.
Jason
Things outstanding and thank you so much. I think that closes most of the conversation, I feel like we could talk for a lot longer.
Astra
Yeah, there’s more we could unpick.
Jason
But it’s been really good because there’s so much, there’s so much I’ve learnt about how the different ways in which you fundraise Jake at play it forward and the work you do. And there’s some interesting things that come out about I was interested what your scores actually on each of those channels I thought didn’t it didn’t expect that so much and and the gripes were fun I think that’s a new good segment.
Jason
Any final thoughts Astra and Jake?
Astra
And I just I’ve done my Google ads grant plugs. Jake, is there anything that you want to tell listeners about your charity, personal things, whatever you might want to say?
Jake
No. Yeah. Firstly, just thank you again for having me on. It’s yeah it’s nice to have the opportunity to kind of vocalise kind of some of the issues that we have around fundraising and marketing. And I think, yeah, particularly small charities which, which we are one, we have a lot of challenges around this and I think, you know, when you only have one or two members of staff, it’s it’s hard to prioritise.
And so I think, yeah, charity, you just need to think more digital and explore these things because they, they are rewarding and you know, if you don’t adapt, you’re not going to survive. Unfortunately, we’re in a place at the moment where it is incredibly difficult for everyone, including charities. So yeah, get on it, get those ad grants.
Astra
Thank you very much and thank you for coming on. It’s been a pleasure. You’ve been a fantastic first charity guest
Jake
No worries, thank you for having me.
Astra
So we’ll round up there. Bye from the team here at Web Presence.
