RNLI Upgrade

Cash to regular giving conversion

We work with the Supporter Development team at the RNLI to help them with retaining and stewarding existing supporters. Our main aim is to enhance the commitment of supporters to protect and grow income.

To meet the need of increasing income, we were asked to develop an upgrade mailing to RNLI’s regular givers. Having already developed a target-beating upgrade pack, we were facing a challenge to meet or beat the performance of the ‘banker’, to achieve this we needed to find a new way of engaging supporters.

We used a map to show the additional scope of the need, and its national spread. This was on the outer to ensure that all recipients could immediately see why the money was needed. However, once they were inside, we made a very small ask. Just an extra £1 per month. Couple this with a clear call to action and the decision to upgrade was made easy.

• As a result of this we have established Shoreworks as a successful fundraising topic and, as it’s an ongoing need, with great success in subsequent activity.
• At Whitewater we are always looking for new ways of engaging supporters, even when we don’t have the benefit of an ‘urgent’ appeal topic. In this instance we worked closely in partnership with the RNLI to gather in-depth country-wide information to develop the lengthy letter copy and case studies to great effect.