Virtual gifts are a great way for donors to show their appreciation and support for a cause they care about

While, at the same time, their act of giving is sharing the charity message within their networks of family and friends, amplifying its effect.

These types of gifts can be a powerful fundraising tool in helping charities engage supporters and reach new audiences, ultimately generating more income to fund vital work.

Here, we explore the benefits to both the charity and the donor, the differences between digital and multichannel platforms and how to promote virtual gifts effectively to leverage them for further impact.

Benefits for the donor

Virtual gifts are not just symbolic gestures. They have real benefits for both the donor and the charity. For the supporter, these include:

• They are impactful and meaningful; donors can support a cause that matters to them and make a difference in the world, while they can be a great way of showing their gratitude and appreciation for someone who has helped or inspired them. Virtual gifts can educate and inspire others about the cause that donors support and the vital impact the charity makes.
• They are convenient and easy to buy. Supporters don’t have to worry about shipping costs, delivery times, or availability. They can buy them anytime, anywhere, with just a few clicks or taps on their device.
• They are customisable and personal. Donors can choose from a variety of options that match their budget, preferences, and values. They can also add a personal message or video to make their gift more significant and memorable.
• They are fun and engaging; donors can have fun browsing through different options and finding the perfect gift for their recipient. They can also enjoy the feedback and recognition they receive from the charity and the recipient. And donors often share their gifts on social media, sharing their compassion and beliefs, and encouraging others to join in supporting the cause.

Benefits for charities – our top five

Offering virtual gifts can offer many advantages for charities through the opportunity to create a great supporter experience for donors, helping to build loyalty to their cause. Our top five benefits, are:

• Increasing donor engagement and retention: Virtual gifts can make donors feel more connected to the cause and the beneficiaries, as they can see how their donation is used and what difference it makes. Virtual gifts can also encourage repeat donations, as donors may want to collect different gifts or support different projects.
• Reaching new audiences: The recipient of a virtual gift has the potential to become a loyal future supporter of the charity themselves. Effectively engaging with virtual gift recipients by highlighting the impact that their gift has had, can transform a one-off experience into an ongoing supporter journey.
• The potential for Gift Aid: Non-physical gifts have the advantage that Gift Aid can potentially be claimed, meaning that charities can currently claim an extra 25p on every £1 donated.
• Reducing costs and environmental impact: Virtual gifts can save charities money and resources that would otherwise be spent on producing, storing, and shipping physical items. Virtual gifts can also reduce the environmental impact of donations, as they avoid generating waste and emissions from transportation and packaging.
• Expanding the donor base and attracting new audiences: Virtual gifts can appeal to different types of donors, such as those who are looking for alternative or ethical gifts, those who want to support specific causes or regions, or those who prefer online transactions. Virtual gifts can also help charities reach new audiences, such as younger generations, social media users, or corporate partners.

What kinds of virtual gifts work best?

Virtual gifts come in many shapes and sizes, from planting a tree or paying for a cup of tea for someone, to sponsoring an animal or contributing to life-saving medical equipment.  Here are some of the factors for charities to consider that can make a virtual gift successful:

• It is relevant and appealing. A virtual gift should match the interests and needs of your target audience. It should also align with your mission and values. It should be something that your audience would want to buy for themselves or for someone else.
• It is tangible and specific. It should have a clear description and image that shows what the gift is and what it does. It should also have a clear value and impact that shows how the gift helps your cause and beneficiaries.
• It is unique and creative. It should stand out from other options and offer something different or special. It should also reflect your brand identity and personality. It should be something that your audience would not find elsewhere.
• It is flexible and adaptable. It should be able to accommodate different budgets, preferences, and occasions. It should also be able to adapt to different platforms, formats, and channels. It should be something that your audience can buy and receive easily.

Fully digital and multichannel options

Virtual gifts can be delivered in various ways, depending on a charity’s resources, capabilities, and goals. Fully digital options are virtual gifts that are delivered entirely online, such as e-cards, e-vouchers, and e-certificates. These are ideal for charities that have limited resources or want to minimise costs and environmental impact. They are also ideal for donor audiences that are tech-savvy or prefer convenience and speed.

Multichannel options combine online and offline elements, such as physical cards, vouchers, certificates, books, courses, etc., that are accompanied by digital components such as emails, videos, and social media posts. These are ideal for organisations that have more resources or want to maximize reach and engagement. They are also ideal for audiences that appreciate variety and personalisation.

Top tips for charities

Virtual gifts need to be promoted effectively to attract attention, interest, and action from your potential donors. Here are some of the strategies charities can consider.

• Use storytelling techniques: Tell stories that showcase the benefits and impact of your virtual gifts. Use emotive storytelling, visuals, testimonials, statistics, etc., to make your gifts compelling and convincing.
• Use segmentation techniques: Segment your audience based on their characteristics, behaviours and preferences, and tailor your messages accordingly.
• Use different channels, and formats to appeal to a variety of audiences.

How Elovate can help

Creating and managing virtual gift pages for your charity can be easy and hassle-free with Elovate’s range of tailored products, backed up by over two decades of experience within the charity sector.  Our Virtual Gifts Page Builder solution guides you through the steps to set up pages for your campaigns, whether they are one-time or recurring. You can also choose to let us manage your pages and take care of the fulfilment aspects of the transaction.

For more information on virtual gifts, click here.

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The rise of hybrid working

Almost half of all working adults worked from home during the Covid pandemic, and many discovered a better work-life balance as a result. Unsurprisingly, once restrictions lifted, working patterns expanded in some workplaces to include home and hybrid working. More flexible options such as these are now standard practice in many organisations, especially those in a competitive workforce market. Hybrid working was not a common term pre-pandemic, but now it is the second highest working location after ‘travelling to work’.

What challenges does hybrid working have for your Direct Debit payments?

Managing and processing Direct Debit payments is a critical function for many organisations, and any delays or errors can be incredibly costly both financially and reputationally. With more and more staff working from home at least some or all of the time, organisations might want to consider any new risk factors that these changes have introduced, and plug any gaps in order protect this vital payment method.

Here are just some of the risks that organisations might want to assess if they have staff working from home or hybrid working and handling Direct Debit payments:

• System Access – can key and authorised staff access key software and be able to sign and submit Bacs payments outside of the office? Do your team have the hardware needed to perform payment tasks and mobile telephone numbers when things go wrong so they can contact for resolution quickly?
• Data Security – What protections are in place to safeguard data and submission when outside of the office? When handling personal and financial information, it is critical that this be kept under constant review and strictly within the organisations Information Security framework.
• People – Do you have enough contingency in place should key members not be able to send, sign or submit Bacs files or deal with Direct Debit reports in a prompt manner? Does your organisation know what critical functions may not be completed if unexpected leave is taken. Is there a deputy or reporting system in place, so that the organisation can respond quickly to emergency or unexplained leave. The people element can be the hardest and most critical factor when staff are no longer in an office environment – what a designated staff member not responding or communicating for whatever reason, is far harder to see, ask, act and resolve as quickly.

There are always many complex layers to organisational systems and processes when it comes to evaluating and managing risk and contingency planning. Whilst many organisations will have evolved their processes considering lessons learned during the pandemic, the workplace is still evolving quickly, bringing fresh new risks. What worked three months ago might present hidden risks that are just not identified until it is too late. The pressure to constantly keep on top of risk when it comes to secure and compliant Direct Debit payments is relentless.

Reduce your risk and get peace of mind?

We know that you are busy focusing on your charity’s impact and that ensuring risk-free Direct Debit payments is just one more headache you could do without. As a fully compliant and secure Bacs Approved Bureau, it is our job to help you manage this risk and take away the strain, so you can focus on your charity’s impact instead.

We have experienced a sharp increase in charitable organisations approaching us to manage their Direct Debit payments recently, this is often when they are closing their physical offices or moving to hybrid working. Outsourcing your Direct Debits to CommittedGiving means you are handing over to charity-experts in payment processing. It is our job to ensure complete compliance and security. It is our job to ensure that our technology keeps us well ahead of the curve, saving you money and time.

To discover more, please contact us for a free 30-minute consultation – no obligation, and we promise no hard sell!

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Elovate passes Bacs Approved Bureau Inspection with flying colours

As a Direct Debit Bureau to the charity sector, we have been a Bacs Approved Bureau for over twenty years; trusted to manage and process donations, memberships and lottery payments.

To be able to process on behalf of our charities, we must be an approved Bacs Bureau by Pay.uk and as such are subject to Inspections to review our processes, systems, structure, security, service levels and financial standing.

On Wednesday, 15th February 2023 we were audited and delighted to confirm we met the highest level of Inspection pass rate.

Trusted to process Direct Debits

For all Elovate Direct Debit charities, this is confirmation of our re-accreditation alongside our ISO 27001 and PCI Compliance to ensure your payments continue to be processed securely, with expert knowledge and confidence.

If you are not using Elovate’s Direct Debit service and keen to know more, please contact us!

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Is your charity’s supporter-response as prompt, proactive, and effective as it could be?

Do your charity’s supporter teams have access to the latest technology and digital innovations? Or do you struggle with resources and could do with some help from charity experts.

In a recent blog we shared 10 classic signs indicating that your charity might want to start thinking about outsourcing its supporter response. If your charity teams are overstretched and it’s starting to affect not only staff morale but the charity’s performance and the supporters’ experience, then it might be time to think about outsourcing.

Here are just some of the benefits of outsourcing:

• More time for managing, planning, forming and delivering robust strategies and campaigns
• Efficient turnaround time of 72 hours from post-in to supporter-communications-out
• Less firefighting, better performance in terms of speed and efficiencies
• More time to manage and support your team, resulting in higher motivation levels
• Flexible resource for your overflow, emergency, and one-off campaigns as well as everyday
• Improved supporter experience, increasing loyalty, retention, and giving rates
• Contingency planning and disaster recovery support when you need it the most
• Wealth of knowledge and experience within the sector, with dedicated Account Managers who will help you thrive
• Industry-leading security, accreditation and compliance
• Access to the latest charity-sector technology to keep you well ahead of the curve, saving you time and costs
• Charity-expert digital innovations on a plate, we will help you modernise and expand your fundraising tool kit

Tannis Madison-Carty, General Manager at Elovate, said:

‘Having worked at Elovate for over 12 years, I have seen for myself how our state-of-the-art solutions have helped charities to turn around their underperforming charity response, taking the charity to a higher level altogether. Being part of a wider company group* also means that we are in a unique position to offer the most comprehensive response solutions to UKs charity sector today.’

Some of the services we offer at Elovate:

• Response handling
• Raffle processing
• Charity Trading Fulfilment
• Head Office Support
• Membership and Sponsorship processing services
• Digital scanning and personalised print on demand
• Direct debit management and payment processing for charities
• Data strategy and insight

If this is ringing bells with you, maybe it’s time to consider outsourcing your charity response. Switching to Elovate as your charity’s partner for outsourced response is easy, quick and painless.

As a company group, Elovate have worked with over 250 charities of all sizes for some 45 years, and we have a team of over 20 IT developers in house, constantly innovating to streamline processes and help you thrive.

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Are you satisfied with the quality and speed of responses that your charity’s supporters are currently receiving?

If your charity responses could be improved and your team is stressed and stretched to breaking point, we get it. As a company group, we have worked with over 250 charities of all sizes for some 45 years*, and recently we have noticed charities being increasingly stretched due to the cost-of-living crisis, a squeezed fundraising pool, and shrinking budgets. This squeeze is confirmed by research, which also suggests that current economic conditions are having even more impact on charities than the covid pandemic. Charity teams, already spread thinly, are now having to multitask across specialist areas that would even challenge the experts.

Outsourcing your response to charity experts could relieve some of these pressures, whilst saving costs and freeing up time, boosting team morale, and helping your charity survive and thrive despite tough economic times.

Read here for the 10 classic signs that your charity might benefit from getting extra help for its supporter response.

1. You have no spare time to spend with your supporter services teams.

Do you spend enough time with your teams, overseeing proper delivery of your supporter response strategy, ensuring your team is not overstretched, and ensuring that supporter communications and responses are dealt with in a proactive and timely fashion?

If you are too busy juggling and multi-tasking yourself to spend quality time with your team, then it could be time to consider getting some extra support.

2. Delays in thanking and sending out wider supporter communications.

A happy donor is a loyal donor. Saying ‘thank you’ promptly should be part of your donor retention strategy. Supporter communications can also be a chance to say so much more than just a ‘thank you’. It’s a chance to share the impact the donation will have, highlight other campaigns, cross-sell other fundraising initiatives, and get supporters signed up to newsletters and other marketing material.

Effective supporter response increases donor retention, amounts donated may increase as well as the likelihood of repeat donations. But if communication is poor or tardy, then it is not likely to be well received.

3. Delayed Royal Mail returns and gone-aways.

Is your mailroom bursting at the seams, with piles of responses, returns and gone-aways constantly building up in the corner? Are your staff constantly stressed, and flooded with complaints from supporters who have not heard anything from you in days or weeks? If your service levels are slipping, leaving your team with no time to process responses in a systematic manner, then it could be time to seek extra support from experts who have the processes, technology, and systems in place to achieve this.

4. Missed supporter calls and delays in responding to supporter queries.

If your team is too busy to talk to supporters on the phone, to answer email queries or to deal thoroughly with other supporter communication, this could signal that it’s time to get some extra help. Our staff are trained to spend as long as it takes with your supporters, to talk to them in your tone of voice, to know your products, services and campaigns like the back of their hand, answer supporter questions in detail, and to follow up with correspondence where needed.

5. No designated or specialist teams to support key processing requirements.

Do your teams try to cover too much ground, even if they have little or no idea how to do the more specialist aspects of the work; or do you have experts dedicated to dealing with specific areas?

At Elovate, we have expert teams dedicated to dealing with highly technical aspects of charity response work, backed by our state-of-the-art technology. This means that when you outsource work to us, it gets done more quickly, saving you time and potentially costs – whilst increasing your donor retention rates.

6. Sudden donation peaks, with no extra resource to handle the response.

From planned seasonal campaigns to emergency crisis appeals, your response workload is likely to swing wildly during the fundraising year, with forecasting peak points being almost impossible.

If you find yourself with an avalanche of responses on a regular basis, but the same number of overstretched staff dealing with it, this could be a sign that you could benefit from outsourcing some of your campaigns and overflow work.

7. No time for growing your supporter bases and expanding your charity’s work.

Are your staff in survival mode, constantly firefighting and with no time to think creatively about wider strategy. By outsourcing some of your work, you could free up some of your experienced staff, giving them time to focus on supporter experience, grow your supporter base, and explore opportunities to expand your charity’s work.

8. No time for full accreditation and compliance, resulting in reduced security standards.

If you are nervously aware that your security standards and accreditations are below par but you don’t have the resources, knowledge or time to fix this, this could be another sign to outsource.

Security, accreditations and compliance are at the core of Elovate’s business and we operate in the most stringent and secure physical and digital environment possible. More than this, our company group standards are so high that we are an industry champion when it comes to security and cyber security.

9. No time to keep up with latest digital innovation.

Your team may not have the time or digital skills to develop solutions which could take your charity’s fundraising to another level. Our company group has a team of 19 charity-expert IT developers, and their job is to constantly develop and deliver digital products that keep our charity clients ahead of the curve. You can book a free 30-minute consultation with us to talk through how we can support you digitally.

10. You dread Mondays.

We’ve all been through extraordinary times recently but feeling overwhelmed and stressed should not be the new normal at work. Not only can our specialist teams take away some of the stress, we can also help your organisation thrive and increase its impact.

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