A good starting point for the content of your outreach strategy is the analogy of the drowning child presented in Peter Singer’s book The Life You Can Save. There are a number of summaries and videos online describing it (e.g., this short clip). Also consider if there is anything specific to your work environment that can be used in your messaging.

 

As for the means of communication and frequency, it can be helpful to start with a pitch, follow up with some reminder messages or emails, and conclude with a last-call message, followed by a thank you message after the campaign is done. Some key questions here include:

• Venue: Are there already all-hands meetings at which you could pitch the campaign, or do you need to organize something separate? Can you do it during working hours or not?

• Method: How can you promote the campaign? Can you use company email? Do you have an internal chat?

 

In terms of frequency, a message every few days across the 2- to 3-week campaign should be an effective way to keep donating top of mind for your colleagues. Possible message topics include:

• reminders that the campaign is ongoing;

• an in-depth presentation of the different charities being supported;

• update announcements upon reaching certain donation milestones (e.g., 5k USD, 10k, 15k, etc.);

• a last-call announcement that the campaign is about to end;

• etc.

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Prepare impact evaluation

After your campaign is finished, evaluating its impact will allow you to understand if the activity is worthwhile to pursue in the future or whether you should invest your time on something else. Not only is this useful for you, but, if shared, it can also generate useful knowledge for the broader community. Therefore, now is the time to prepare the pieces you’ll need to help you run the impact evaluation after the campaign concludes. 

 

TL;DR

In order to run the impact evaluation after the campaign, you will need:

• an anonymized list of donations, or the total amount donated and the number of donors;

• the amount of time you and your co-organizer(s) spent organizing the campaign (i.e., log your time); and

• any other monetary costs you might incur related to the campaign (usually there are no monetary costs).

If you want more information about impact evaluation, read on. Otherwise, jump to the next section.

 

A useful metric that can be used to evaluate the impact of your campaign is its cost effectiveness. Cost effectiveness is defined as the ratio between the benefits generated and the costs incurred.

 

Benefits

The main benefit generated by the fundraising event is the amount of money donated to effective charities. Depending on how the money is donated, this data can be easier or harder to get. 

 

If the money will be donated directly through payroll giving, you can ask your company if they will provide you with an anonymized list of donation amounts after the campaign ends. Having that data post-campaign will allow you to get a sense of both the distribution of donors and how heavy-tailed the distribution is. If such granular data will not be available, the total donation amount and the number of donors is already a good start.

 

If donations will be made directly by your colleagues or if your company/payroll giving provider is not willing to share the data, you can always create a quick survey (e.g., using a Google form) where you can ask your colleagues to anonymously report their donations. 

 

In fact, regardless of whether or not you’re doing payroll giving, we suggest sharing the Google form with your colleagues from the start and asking them to submit their anonymous donation information via the form when they make their donation. (You may need to remind them of this as part of your ongoing outreach.) That way, you can get a sense of the campaign’s progress along the way rather than only seeing the donation data afterwards.

 

Another important point during the post-campaign evaluation is to try to estimate the counterfactual of those donations by asking the question, “Would the money have been donated anyway even without the fundraising campaign?” If you get anonymized data, you will have to estimate the counterfactual. In general, if donors were not previously aware of EA or effective giving, you could quite confidently claim 100% of their donations as counterfactual. If you are sending out a short survey to your colleagues asking them to report their donations, you can include questions to help you determine the counterfactual. For example:

• Would you have donated anyway without the fundraising event?

• If so, would you have donated to the same charity / another similarly effective charity?

• Before this fundraising event, were you aware of effective giving or Effective Altruism?

 

Costs

The main costs are usually the time needed to organize the event, any monetary costs you may incur, and the corresponding opportunity costs of your time. 

 

If you track your time as you go, it’s pretty straightforward as you’ll be recording that time data along the way. But, if you don’t log your time, it’s usually quite difficult to accurately estimate it after the fact. That’s why we encourage you to log the time you invest across each step of the process, including the Wrap Up phase. (A sample timelog is available here.) From there, you simply need to multiply the amount of time you spent on the campaign by your current equivalent hourly wage in order to arrive at your total time cost.

 

If you incurred any monetary costs related to organizing the campaign, you should add them to the total costs as well. Accounting for such costs should be straightforward if  you keep track of those expenses along the way. 

 

 

Execute Campaign

Once the strategy is set, it’s time to start your campaign. There are only a few required steps. 

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Start campaign with kick-off pitch

Though you could start your campaign any number of ways, we’ve found that a good way to kick it off and build momentum from the start is to give an intro pitch to your colleagues about effective giving. Depending on the company size this can be addressed to your team, your department, or the whole company. If there’s already a team-, department-, or company-wide meeting scheduled, you could ask to have a few minutes to give your presentation. This is usually the ideal way to reach as many people as possible with the least amount of effort required from your colleagues—again, the overarching idea is to minimize friction and barriers between your colleagues and donations. If getting onto the agenda of a pre-set meeting isn’t possible, you’ll need to find a way to get your colleagues involved, potentially by scheduling a pitch meeting.

 

The pitch should be short and to the point and include the nuts and bolts of effective giving, e.g.,

• We are very fortunate to live in a developed country

• A household income of ~45,000 USD and above puts us in the richest 1% of the global population

• The best charities are up to 100x more effective than other charities

• By donating to an effective charity an amount that, to us, is a modest sum, we can do a great deal of good in the world (like saving a life for only ~5000 USD). 

 

This is also a great way to include some of the key factors mentioned below, like leading by example and clearly explaining how people can contribute.

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Enact your outreach strategy

During the campaign, it pays off to keep colleagues’ attention on the fundraising, providing additional details and encouraging people to donate. This is done by regular communication of the kind described in the outreach strategy section above. It’s also effective to reach out to individual people who you think might be interested. It helps to have a mailing list and to allow people to unsubscribe (afterall, there’s nothing more annoying than receiving regular emails about something you’re not interested in).

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Thank everyone at the end of the campaign

When the campaign has finished, it’s important to thank everyone for their participation and contributions, and celebrate the milestones reached. You might also highlight for people what their donations achieved (e.g., the # of lives saved, tons of CO2 averted, etc.).

 

Wrap Up

Congratulations! The campaign is over, and the biggest part is behind you. You’re nearly at the finish line where you can sit down, pat yourself on the back, and relax. There are just three more important final things to do.

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Ensure payment to charities

It may seem like payment to the charities would be straightforward. But, it has happened in the past that the donated funds were returned and didn’t actually reach the target charities. The steps needed will depend on the payment method used; but, regardless, you should make sure the money reaches the intended destination.

 

If you are involved in making the final payment, you will need to get the charities’ payment details (e.g., account #, BIC, etc.) and understand the best payment method with the lowest fee. (If your colleagues have to make their payments themselves, you should communicate to them in advance any information about payment details, preferred payment method(s), and fees.)  For lower amounts, usually credit card payment is the way to go; for bigger amounts, usually a bank transfer, check, or the like is better. If you are using a re-granting organization, check the list provided above. Otherwise, you can check the website of the charities—links to the most common effective charities are provided below. 

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Cause Area: Global Health & Development

• ​Recommended Charities

1. Malaria Consortium’s Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention Program

2. Against Malaria Foundation

Cause Area: Climate Change

• ​Recommended Charities

1. Clean Air Task Force

2. Carbon180

Cause Area: Animal Welfare

• ​Recommended Charities

1. The Humane League

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Second, you want to ensure that the payment reaches the organization. Give the payment information to the accounting department (if done through your company) and ensure that the funds go through by requesting payment confirmation and a confirmation receipt from the charities to which payment was sent.

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Run impact evaluation

If you followed the advice given in the earlier preparation phase, most of the work for this step is already done. Now, you simply need to gather the pertinent data. As you review this section, look back at the Prepare impact evaluation section as needed for more details.

 

As stated above, a useful metric that can be used to evaluate the impact of your campaign is its cost effectiveness, which is defined as the ratio between the benefits generated and the costs incurred. You’ll want to gather the following information to help you evaluate the benefits and costs of your campaign:

 

Benefits

• Donation data

  • If your campaign used payroll giving and your company/payroll giving provider agreed to provide you with an anonymized list of donation amounts, get that list. As stated above, if your company wasn’t able to make available such granular data, get the total donation amount and the number of donors.

  • If donations were made directly by your colleagues or if your company/payroll giving provider is not willing to share the data, gather the data you’ve collected via the Google form your colleagues used to anonymously report their donations to you.

• Counterfactual estimate

  • Keep in mind the need to try to estimate the counterfactual of those donations. The questions you included in your Google form should provide you the information you will need to make that estimate.

 

Costs

• Your time – Your timelog will tell you how much time you spent on the campaign.

• Monetary costs – Refer to any expense tracking you did  for this information (e.g., receipts, spreadsheet, etc.).

 

Having gathered the benefits and costs data, you can calculate your campaign’s impact by simply dividing its benefits by its costs. Hopefully, the benefits far exceed the costs and indicate a highly impactful campaign. Regardless, keep in mind that any donations made to effective charities are a good thing and resulted from your efforts, with the knowledge and experience gained from this campaign informing your approach going forward.

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Retrospective

In the end, success is reached through successive iterations and continuous improvement, so it is essential to maximize what is learned from each of them. When everything with your campaign is said and done, take a step back and reflect on how it went.

• What went well? What didn't go so well? What would you keep moving forward? What can be improved? What are the main lessons learned?

• How much money was raised? Which causes were the most popular? How much time did you spend on the campaign? What was the cost-to-benefit ratio of your time? What could be optimized for the future (i.e., made more cost effective or done more efficiently)?

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