Customer case
How Amnesty International Australia ensures the success of their fundraisers with real-time insights, feedback and ethical fundraising
This is
Amnesty fundraising – It’s safe to say that most people are inherently good. They want to do good things and take care of the people around them. However, it’s also safe to say that there is an awful lot of injustice in this world.
Most who read this article will only be confronted with harsh injustice through media channels. This distance between societal issues and people who are willing to fight them is why it’s often hard to battle injustice. And it’s why the world needs organizations like Amnesty International.
Amnesty International is the largest human rights movement in the world. It mobilizes over 10 million people to help fight abuses of human rights globally, bring torturers to justice, change oppressive laws, and free people jailed just for voicing their opinion.
Challenge
Ensuring continuous performance of 50 fundraisers across the continent of Australia, while monitoring their adherence to Amnesty’s ethical code of conduct.
Solution
Live team tracking allows Amnesty International Australia to respond to real-time insights and provide real-time feedback to all fundraisers. B+W Field app makes it easy to comply with fundraising regulations and guidance.
“It used to take up to 10 days for fundraising agencies to report back to me. That made it virtually impossible to optimise the performance of our teams, but now I can follow our teams’ activities in real-time.”
Charlotte Johnson
F2F fundraising coordinator
Amnesty International Australia
Balancing well-being and performance
Charlotte Johnson is the face-to-face fundraising coordinator for Amnesty International Australia. She leads fundraising activities by overseeing some 50 fundraisers across the continent. This distance and Australia’s dangerous climate pose unique challenges for her and for Briggs+Walker.
How does Australia’s climate influence Charlotte’s work? “When we have an unfolding or ongoing bushfire or flood crisis, we don’t know if fundraisers are safe”. In 2019/2020 Australia went through a huge bushfire event “Before the B+W Field app, I needed to take someone else’s word for it that our fundraisers were safe. Through B+W location manager we can connect directly with the fundraisers to alert them to any potential dangers or places to avoid in their area by sending a message straight to them. This gives me confidence in knowing that I am protecting our fundraisers as best as I can.”
Speeding up the feedback loop for fundraising at Amnesty International Australia
Besides fundraisers’ well-being, Charlotte shares how a direct connection with her fundraisers helps her in another way.“The best way of optimizing performance, is to give live feedback to fundraisers. This is a challenge in a continent as vast as Australia”. It used to take up to 10 days for fundraising agencies to report back to me. That made it virtually impossible to optimize the performance of our teams,” says Charlotte. “Now I can follow our teams’ activities in real-time. I can literally see how certain streets, cities, and areas perform in a live feed through the location planner. I have a way better feel of what’s going on in the streets now.”
Facilitating ánd motivating fundraisers to become more effective
Charlotte shares how B+W software helps her to solve the disconnect between her and her fundraisers.
Fundraising work oftentimes revolves around output; shift conversions and new sign-ups. But these leading metrics (shift conversions, daily sign-ups) can give a skewed image of individual effort and performance. Charlotte: “We know how hard fundraisers work and how frustrating a bad day can be for them. I want to be able to motivate fundraisers to keep it up, even on the bad days.”
“We know how hard fundraisers work. I want to be able to motivate our teams to keep up the good work, even on the bad days”
Performance statistics help to motivate Amnesty International Australia fundraisers
“What helps fundraisers is that they can now see the ground that they have covered in the B+W Field app; how many doors have I knocked, how do I perform against my colleagues (this spurs some healthy competition)? This gives them a better view of their performance. What’s more is that I can monitor their performance from my desk, and give them a pat on the shoulder or a little motivational text when they need it the most.”
“So the app works in both ways. Fundraisers love that they can see where they’ve been and how hard they’ve worked and I can actually quantify performance on an individual level. Instead of congratulating the team on the outcome metrics, I can now say, “John, you did an amazing job.”
The essence of keeping data secure and private
Lately Australia has been prone to some large data leaks which has caused major problems in different industries. Amnesty International Australia works with sensitive and personal donor data like name and address details, email, bank and credit card details. “The last thing on our mind would be to worry about a security hack or a data breach. For us it’s important that Briggs+Walker is ISO 270001 certified and upholds the highest standard in keeping data secure and encrypted.”
Protecting citizens through ethical fundraising
Certain people in Australia (i.e. low-income) are being protected from aggressive face-to-face sales strategies by regulation.
However, even the fundraiser with the best intentions can accidentally knock on a door of a protected person. Simply because the address information is not readily available for her during her work. Fundraising agencies used to work with printed lists of blocked addresses. But in the chaos of the day-to-day, small mistakes like missing one of these addresses are inevitable. With Briggs+Walker software, addresses can be blocked from canvassing areas, preventing the fundraiser to sign addresses up.
“Before, we trusted that the fundraisers follow the rules themselves. Now they cannot make a mistake anymore. This gives our Amnesty International Australia fundraiser the confidence that she’s not knocking on an address that is blocked. But it also shows that we take responsibility for professional and ethical fundraising, together with our agency partners. I know there is no other software able to tackle this issue in Australia”
“It shows that we take responsibility for professional and ethical fundraising, together with our agency partners. In Australia, nothing like this is available”
Creating a sustainable learning curve in fundraising activities
In the long run, Charlotte wants to build out the face-to-face fundraising channel for Amnesty International Australia. At Briggs+Walker we know that the best way to do this is by leveraging data to optimize your work every day. Charlotte shares how Amnesty International Australia approaches this.
“At the moment we know where people said ‘no’ or ‘yes’. But over time, we’ll be able to analyze which streets we want to go to. We are already combining the data that we collect through the B+W platform with third-party strategy providers’ data. By connecting the dots between the data, and by continuously analyzing our performance, we will be able to better predict our success in the future.”
”At the moment we know where people said ‘no’ or ‘yes’. But over time, we’ll be able to analyze which streets and spots we want to go to.”
