Voices of Singapore

84% of their current donors make one-off donations sporadically, and only 16% of their donors make donations on a recurring basis. They need donations to sustain the operations for their impact programmes which are the children’s choir, silver voices and starlight programme. Under the children’s choir, they provide singing classes and performance opportunities to children who are vulnerable or terminally ill. The goal is to develop their character and skillset as a Singaporean children’s choir. They work with stakeholders such as the Children’s Society and Children’s Arch Center to engage them in music-making. 

Silver Voices is a programme targeted to prevent cognitive decline among seniors. It is a free programme for seniors and their caregivers supported by the Majurity Trust’s grant. Lastly, the Starlight programme provides opportunities for children with special needs to sing, perform, hone their skills and engage in music making. It has two components, the Starlight music making programme and the Star light voices.  The starlight music making programme, is an inclusive programme for all to join and is held in person and online. The Star light voices is an auditioned children choir with the goal to give them an opportunity to hone their chorale singing skills so that they can perform for external gigs.

To sustain the operations of these three community programmes in the long run, Voices of Singapore would need the help of their donors. 

• Team Lead and Academic researcher - Eve 
  • Literature research on: 
    • Cultivating donors habit of giving
    • Donors behaviour
    • Relationship marketing
    • Story telling structures and concepts used in marketing with the intention to persuade and motivate the donors to make recurring donations 
    • Case studies on fundraising appeals
  • Ideation for social media marketing strategy 
  • Identified categories for audience segmentation 
  • Crafting the message for starlight programme used in the fundrasing news letter 

• Market Researcher and ideation  - Jady 
  • Literature research on: 
    • Pulling on donors heart strings 
    • Targeting and acquisition 
    • Behavioural aspects of donors and providing platforms suiting their needs 
  • Ideation of family tree and milestones 
  • Developed strategies for Let’s Sing Programme 
  • Created newsletter and FAQ strategy

• Market Researcher and ideation - Rachel 
  • Literature research on:
    • Branding for nonprofit organisations
    • How to craft effective fundraising messages
  • Ideation of internal outreach and progress bar strategies
  • Crafting a message for the Silver Voices programme based on interviews held with their members
  • Designing and development of VoS family tree 
  • Designing and organising of slide decks for weeks 7 and 14

Goals 

For Voices of Singapore to implement effective donor engagement strategies to cultivate a habit of frequent and long-term giving within its current donor base.

Objectives 

• ​​Conduct literature and market research on storytelling, fundraising strategies and case studies on successful fundraising appeal letters by week 6.
• Presentation of research and ideation to Voices of Singapore on week 7. 
• Refine donor engagement strategies and ideas through marketing and literature research by week  12. 
• Selection and confirmation of key ideas and deliverables at week 12 with Voices of Singapore. 
• Data collection for the newsletter in 12 - 13 through interviews and discussions with Gerald. 
• Presentation of overall research and ideas to cultivate long-term and frequent giving among current donors. 

Week 2 | First meeting with supervisor

• Being clear of the deliverables for the project 
• Initial research methods and preparation for first meeting with VoS

Week 3 | First meeting with Voices Of Singapore 

• Re-defining scope of research 
• Beginning literature and market research on keywords: “fundraising”, “Organisations”, “Charities”

Week 4 | Research and Ideation Period 

• Coming up with fundraising strategies that cultivate a habit of giving through donor engagement based on the literature found

Week 5 | On-site visit 

• Attending a sit in for a their community choir programme 
• Consultation with VoS to finalise presentation slides 

Week 6 | Research and Ideation Period 

• Preparation for presentation pitch 

Week 7 | Pitch Ideas to VoS 

• Pitching of donor strategies to the VoS team
• Selecting ideas for final submission

Week 8 - 9 | Narrowing down research 

• Meet with VoS to work on improvements made from the presentation in week 7 
• Narrowing down research for a specific initiative we plan to further develop 

Week 10-11 | Research and Ideation Period 

• Continuation of research from meetings with VoS and supervisor 
• Preparation of slides and visuals for meeting in week 11 

Week 12 | Confirmation of Key KPIs

• Confirming the key KPIs to ensure all deliverables are met with VoS 
• Making major adjustments to the project to suit the clients needs 

Week 13 | Research and Ideation Period 

• Finalising of presentation deck
• Updating of Eduprofile 

Week 14 | Final Submission 

• Presentation of selected proposed fundraising strategies to the VoS board members 
• Submission of proposal deck

Before the team came up with strategies, we collected literature with the following objectives:

• To deepen our understanding of donors behaviour
• To understand donors’ interactions and perspectives of the organisation

We categorised data into four main categories below. They are donor acquisition, donor’s relationship with the organsations, donor behaviour and their perception and attitudes towards their brand. The insights that we have found will be used to implement and inform the strategies we came up with.

Donor Aqusition 

While there is a need to consider the impact relationship marketing has on fundraising strategies, it is also important to consider the factors that come into play when acquiring donors. To develop a habit of giving, VoS has to take into consideration where the donors are in terms of their donors’ journey. 

According to research, the donor journey has three stages (“How The Donor's Journey Can Guide Your Nonprofit Marketing ...”, n.d.)

• Stage one awareness: 

  • It refers to donors’s knowledge about the organsiation which can be culutivated through education and outreach activities 

• Stage two consideration: 

  • It refers the process donors go through to decide which organisation they should give to

  • At this stage organsiations needs to communicate why they should invest in them and how much do they need

  • It is also likely that organsation tend to draw the attention of potential donors 

• Stage three decision: 

  • It refers to where the donor has chosen to donate

  • At this stage organisations have to consider how to turn their donations into a recurring one

At each stage, organisations has to take into account the communication touch points used to transmit information to their donors. The communication channels used will determine the donors experience of the organsiation. He also pointed out that customer’s engagement with the organisation can be categorised into four components:

• Vigour: 
  • Refers to donors mental enthusiasm for an organisation, a strong desire to support its activities, and willingness to invest effort in maintaining a relationship with the organisation, even in the face of difficulties. 

•  Dedication: 
  • Refers to the pride in being associated with an organisation plus a sense of belonging to and strong identification with the organisation. 

• Absorption: 
  • The term absorption refers to a person’s profound interest in an organisation. An absorbed charity donor will be fascinated by the charity’s cause and engrossed in its work.
  • Value alignment 

• Interaction: 
  • Interaction concerns an individual’s inclination to participate in joint activities with an organisations. 
  • In the charity context this could involve volunteering, providing feedback, participating in focus groups and communicating with various stakeholders (Roger. 2013, 203-204).

Donor Behaviour 

The next factor the team looked at was donors engagement and behaviour. Donor engagement refers to the deep, meaningful and enduring connections between an organization and its customers. Engaged donors will: 

• Want to be recognized as a part of the organization (Person values and the organization values is the same. The cause that an organization stands for becomes a part of their identity) 
• More likely to forgive a charity for mistakes 
• More loyal (Less likely to switch and donate to another organization) 
• Be more willing to give feedback to the organizations (Roger. 2013, 201-203)

Relationship Marketing

Relationship Marketing refers to targetted business strategies used to earn customers favours and loyalties by satisfying their needs and wants.It is based on the idea that keeping a client is more desirable than attracting new ones by placing an enphasize on customer rententions and development. Research has shown that customer service is important to ensure the longevity of  the customer relationship with a company (Adrian 2001, 178-179). The quality of the relationship is determined by: 

• The trust and feedback the donors have with the company, knowing that they are using the funds wisely and intentionally solely for the development of the organisation. 
• The level of frequency and openness, the company has with the donors
• The company acknowledgement, appreciation and gratitude they show towards their donors 
• The effectiveness of the company. They have to deliver what they agree with the donors (Adrian 2001, 206). 

By taking into account the value relationship marketing has on customer retention, fundraising strategies should be targeted to: 

• To deal with donors individually, recognizing each donor as unique in terms of giving history, motivation for giving, and overall standard of care expected from charities
• To increase the value of the relationship between donors and the company
• To give donors more flexibility over content, nature and frequency of communication between company and donors. Doing so, fulfil a basic need to feel respected and important according to the Maslow hierarchy of needs   

Framing language when asking for donations 

Yilmaz, 2022 promotes persuasive messaging framing and how changing sentence structure of the same words will spark different audience reactions. An effective method is emphasising on "the loss" that is faced when they do not make a choice to donate. When placed in the context of Voices of Singapore, the information provided on their website can be re-written to create different reactions from viewers. This turns the audience in the direction of recurring donations that VoS hopes to achieve. 

In the case of a non-profit organisation, the evidence from testing suggests framing messages to potential donors by emphasising on things the donor might gain rather than what the organisation would lose from their donation. This method is called “gain-framed” versus “loss-framed” structuring. Additionally, messages with anecdotal evidence were proven to be more effective in attracting new donors. This context can be applied when crafting milestones for each programme in VoS where donors could choose which programme they would like to support. 

Improving effectiveness of fundraising messages

When crafting fundraising messages, a study done in 2008 by Das, Kerkhof, and Kuiper, found that messages are best received when:

• A statistic, or something abstract, is paired with a negative message frame – e.g. There are # of starving children in the world, and without your help, this problem will never be solved
• An anecdotal evidence is paired with a positive message frame – e.g. Person A is living with a condition that affects their daily life, but with your contribution, they will able to continue supporting themselves

Evidence like statistics, narrative reports, facts, and testimonials are important as they make potential donors more knowledgeable about the current situation of the beneficiary. 

They also found that influencing the perceived value of a problem does not equate to increasing donation intention – a persuasive message needs to include information regarding the benefits of donating money. This means that increasing expectations that these donations will not be spent in vain will, most likely, affect donation intentions positively. When there is evidence that there are benefits to donating, potential donors are more likely to donate. 

Raising expectations of the benefits of donating, though, should be done carefully. If members of the public believe that nobody else will help solve a problem, they are unlikely to donate money because without other people donating with them, then the problem will never be solved, and donating themselves would seem futile. On the contrary, if people think that many other donors are already contributing to help solve a problem, then donors are also unlikely to give since they believe that the problem will be solved regardless of whether they choose to contribute.

Therefore, fundraising messages should underline the importance of each individual contribution for reaching a goal, but also explicitly state that others are also already contributing.

Crafting stories of influence using the A.I.D.A model

Choy, 2017 states that telling compelling and convincing stories would influence how the target audience behave. Before a story is formed, we need to consider: 

• How can we make the audience FEEL will determine how they act

• How much they know from hearing our story: 

  • They need to gain something back such as (Knowledge/insider updates that is only known to them form their interaction with you) 

• Ask (Generates interest and curiosity in your story) 

• Act (Does the story inspire actions) 

With those key points in mind, we can then start to craft our stories with the following elements in mind: 

• Structural: A story has a beginning, middle, and end.

• Elemental: A story often has elements including a hero, challenge, journey, resolution, change, and call to action.

• Authentic: A story reveals a genuine part of the teller, which elicits emotion in the audience.

• Strategic: A story sparks an audience’s imagination, causes them to relate to the situation in the story, and motivates them to act.

To make sure that the stories we tell are compelling and persuasive, we will be using the A.I.D.A model below to guide our storytelling (Seager, n.d.).  

• Awareness: How do we make donors more informed about the work VoS has done? What is our What is our outreach strategy? What is our brand awareness campaign? Which tools or platforms do we use? What should the messages be?

• Interest: How will we gain their interest? What is our content strategy? Social proof available to back up our reputation? How do we make this information available and where ? ie. on website, via videos, customer ratings,

• Desire: What makes our product (VoS impact programmes) worthy for people to support? How do we interact personally to make an emotional connection? Online chat? Immediate response to Twitter feed? Share tips and advice?

• Action: What are the call to actions and where do we place them? Is it easy for consumers to connect and where would they expect to find it? Think about which marketing channel/platform you are using and how to engage ie. across emails, website, landing pages, inbound phone calls etc.

• Retention: What is the proposition to retain loyalthy (Recurring donations) ? At what stage do we encourage this online and offline, and how?

Lastly, we will also take certain elements from Mal Warwick book, how to write a successful fundraising letter and incorporate it into our storytelling strategies. He mentions the following as guide lines (Warwick 2008, 73-79): 

• Identify a connection between donors and organisation 
• Use words such “you” and “me” to address the donors
• Paint the donors a picture with your words to connect with the donors emotionally for example by showing them the meaning of the place for its people and its organization 
• Intentionally select meaningful pictures that represents the work the organization do within the community to increase emotional appeal for example the SF conservatory of music used this picture to show the work they do, with a handwritten note beside. 

• Tie the pictures and the words towards it's mission (Ie, the work they do within the community) 
• Organizations can also consider sharing pictures of the people they work with to show donors exactly who they are helping to support (To put a name to the face)
• Appeal on the basis of benefits, not needs: 

• Describe what they will receive in return for their money: 
  • Tap into their motivation to give
  • How their money will help (The tangible and intangible benefits)
• Ask for money not for support 
• Use words that create a sense of urgency by describing to the donors the financial state of their country
• Always take into account what the process of giving is like for the donors

The team collated information about the impact of their respective community programmes to collect impactful, personal and heartfelt stories from their beneficiaries. We intend to weave their stories into our fundraising strategies to inspire and motivate donors to give. However, due to the confidential nature of the Let’s Sing programme, we could only interview beneficiaries and loved ones from the Silver Voices and the Starlight programmes. 

Silver Voices is a programme targeted at seniors aged 50 and above with or without dementia. The programme aims to improve their cognitive function and reduce social isolation through choral singing. During the interview we had with two members of the choir, they mentioned that the programme has not only given them a community and a platform to sing, but have also helped them learn more about music theory. Through these positive experiences, the two emphasised that the programme is a safe space for seniors to come together, learn, and feel empowered through song.

The Starlight programme targets children with disabilities to empower them through music-making and promote inclusivity. We interviewed two caregivers of children with special needs who are part of the star light voices, an auditioned choir. During the interview, they shared that this programme helpe to evelop their child’s artistic abilities, encourage personal growth and promote inclusivity and expanded their soical circle. 
 

Vision: 

Through this project, we hope to find viable solutions to the issues under Voices of Singapore’s current fundraising strategies. The implementation of these strategies will draw new donors and better retain current donors for the organisation. 

Expected Outcomes: 

Currently VoS lacks a consistent donor pool and in order to keep the programmes afloat, the team hopes to attract new donors with recurring donations to sustain the organisation. In order to do so, we have to change their on-going strategy of asking for donations to better suit target audiences and conduct empirical research to better suit how to rephrase the way they ask for donations. Through researching, we hope to learn new terminology and techniques for fundraising opportunities in future. As well as how to work with industry partners, creating and meeting project timelines and adjusting strategies to suit clients needs.

The team aims to utilise various channels of communication to disseminate messages that are custom-crafted for their various programmes in order to meet our desired vision and outcomes. These strategies will be presented in a slide deck that includes:

• A biref literature review and market research section which will help to introduce and justify our strategies
• Segmentation of VoS’ current choral community, who the organisation is targeting to become mass donors
• Introduction of the impact programmes that the team will be focusing on when crafting new messages for fundraising
• Recommended strategies and examples
  • Promoting inter-mingling between choir groups as a form of internal outreach
  • Use of social media to deliver specially crafted messages about the impact programmes
  • Internal heartfelt and informative newsletters to provide updates on the progression of VoS’ impact programmes that include: their milestones, challenges, goals, tangibles and intangible value they provide by supporting them in this journey
  • Addition of a frequently-asked-questions section to their website and Giving.sg page
  • Donation progress bar to flash during every practice for instant and faster updates