Lessons From BSD and Cogapp’s Online Fundraising Seminar for UK Cultural Institutions

Yesterday Blue State Digital and Cogapp hosted an online fundraising seminar for a group of museum representatives at the ICA in London. In the midst of the national debate over the looming cuts in the UK's culture budget, BSD's VP of Strategy Rich Mintz and Cogapp's Managing Director Alex Morrison discussed online strategies that cultural organisations can implement to more effectively engage their supporters and raise more money online.

One point that BSD and Cogapp addressed is the need for an organisation to connect with its supporters in an authentic way, and to focus on smaller donors as well as large donors. As part of this idea, Mintz and Morrison spoke about how communication with supporters should have a more personal and conversational tone, rather than one that is formal and organisational, and also about how some ways that the challenge in shifting this tone can be overcome.

Ben Ferguson wrote a piece on the event and the issues around the government's budget cuts for the New Statesman today. In the piece, Rich Mintz says:

"These institutions know there's an untapped group of people who they can engage with online. This is about reaching out to supporters who they're not in touch with. The organisation's job is to appear humanised so people will find it easy to hand over their email address and take the first step."

Other issues that were debated were the membership vs. donor model for an organisation and how they can feed off of one other to achieve greater results; and how to optimize and test online donation and sign-up forms.

Listen to Rich Mintz discuss these issues and others in this segment from yesterday's Today program on Radio 4.