The Scottish Conference and Awards return to Glasgow this September, celebrating innovation and impact in fundraising. We hear from Paul Thompson, whose team won the 2023 Best Use of Fundraising for Community Initiative award for their work with Doddie Aid - a volunteer-led campaign that combines fun, inclusivity, and community spirit to raise awareness and vital funds for MND.
At its core, Doddie Aid is a community-driven, volunteer-developed initiative that is wholly inclusive, easy to take part in and fun. The core concept, people logging their exercise miles each new year, is by no means groundbreaking, but since day one it has been a perfect fit. We have found that ‘It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.'
Supporters regularly tell us they feel part of something. We work extremely carefully on social media and well-planned events but it’s very much because of how Doddie himself made people feel. We have to make sure we don’t ever lose that feeling at any stage, in anything we do.
In the case of Doddie Aid, this has been very simple for the first few years as it was invented and driven entirely, by Doddie’s close friend and former Scotland teammate Rob Wainwright, plus friend Ian Fraser. It was quite a simple concept – logging personal exercise miles as part of a wider region to see which region wins. A suggested donation of £20 drives a significant amount of the income and then participants are encouraged to do their own fundraising. It was initially driven virally via social media, particularly by sporting celebrities posting videos asking people to take part. Both the concept and the contacts came heavily from Rob. Having such a significant volunteer, with a huge passion for this cause and such a personal link gave us a real head start.
The volunteer origin has been crucial. Rob and Ian began with a blank sheet of paper, very few preconceptions of what would or wouldn’t work and a very clear focus on what they wanted to achieve. They weren’t bound by past internal experiences or excessive red tape. Had we tried to establish the campaign ourselves, it would not have had anywhere near the same level of engagement. I know how hard it is to get mass participation volunteer fundraising campaigns off the ground, to the point where they become self-sustaining. We undoubtedly have advantages, like Rob’s relentless passion and people’s love for Doddie, but we made the most of others, like lockdown, to grow the campaign. The potential is definitely there if we are careful in how we grow it and respect why it has been so successful in the first place.
Over the past 18 months we’ve gradually been taking management in house, to help grow the campaign and because it was unsustainable for our volunteers to keep going at the same rate. Our challenge now is to make sure we keep the core values of fun, irreverence and inclusivity at its heart, and not make Doddie Aid feel like it has sold its soul. We brought all our stakeholders together for the first time for planning days and did substantially more comprehensive participant analysis to understand what has made it work. This year we will also be making some changes to reflect our two year partnership with the British and Irish Lions Foundation: having nations instead of regions and structuring our app along the lines of fantasy football, by increasing the importance of competitive leagues among friends.
Each of our campaigns this year and last have seen significant growth in income and awareness for the charity. A lot of that success comes down to being clear who our audiences are and the type of messaging that appeals to each. Taking time to refine our approach to segmentation, and being meticulous and robust in analysis, has allowed us to keep on improving each element of our campaigns. You need to keep testing and learning, and I am grateful to CHAS for creating a culture that is conducive to that. Being able to work collaboratively across the organisation is also very important – everyone has a role to play in making our fundraising campaigns a success. Our frontline colleagues are especially vital to not only be ambassadors for our campaigns, but in working alongside fundraising colleagues to tell the stories of how donations from our supporters make such an impact for the children and families that we serve.
We certainly haven’t got everything right. At times it seemed unwieldy and confusing. There has been a need to streamline and simplify and get ahead of planning. We’ve had to be comfortable with not having control of every aspect of our most valuable campaign, but trusting our key volunteers has been easy given how successful they have been. The challenge now is to take the campaign to the next level. I am very confident that if we are careful, the growth could be substantial. We are still a small team so we need to prioritise – something we are not always great at - but we don’t want to put any limits on how big either Doddie Aid, or the Foundation can be.
Having worked at much larger charities before this role, it’s been exciting being able to influence an agile team with limited bureaucracy. My job is to make us sustainable in the long term and this is about putting in structure where it is needed, understanding our strengths and playing to them. We have gradually grown the team and introduced policies over the past two years as any new charity needs to do, but always try to do so from first principles in a way that works for us. Our brand identity is extremely important to us and staying authentic to why we were established is crucial. Doddie wanted us to shine a spotlight on MND and create a much greater urgency and demand for progress. We’ll keep doing that as long as it takes.
