Here’s the email thank you I got from Concern. Leaving aside the hiccup with the ‘Dear Salutation’ opening, there’s plenty to admire.
For a start it looks great - well designed, colourful and warm.
There’s a good selection of links for further information on Concern and where your money goes. Prompts for their gift catalogue and treks. And invitations to connect on social networking sites.
Technorati Tags: thank you, mystery shopping, fundraising, charity, concern...
My old friends at Public Communications Institute have released their latest snapshot of legacy income (1999-2004) which you can download here.
No great surprises. The St Vincent de Paul contiune to dominate the legacy landscape, with the big three overseas agencies (Concern, Trócaire and Goal) next in line. The SVP have received almost half of all the legacy income (to the participating charities) over the six years of the study.
The only notable absence from the study is the Irish Cancer Society. I would be very surprised if they didn’t benefit to some extent from charitable bequests, so I can only assume they either declined to participate or didn’t provide complete information. Pity. Let’s hope they get on board for the next one.
Technorati Tags: charity,...
For the last few years, pretty much every charity I’ve spoken to has felt that response rates to direct mail appeals have been declining. People have put it down to over-mailing, emergency-fatigue, greater competition, a more selfish society or a more cynical public.
But I wonder, is it becuase we’ve all been using the wrong typeface?
To explain. I’ve been reading Colin Wheildon’s book, Type and Layout. Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes. It’s a fantastic, empirical study of how typography, design and layout effect reader comprehension. Does you layout make it easier to understand your message, or harder?
One of the most striking findings has to do with the choice of typeface for body copy in printed materials. Wheildon’s study showed...
In
UNICEF,
Oxfam,
Christian Aid,
Comment,
amnesty,
cmrf,
focus ireland,
typography,
direct mail,
serif,
sans,
trocaire,
charity,
fundraising,
Concern
A comment I left on the Irish Blog Awards site (about a charity/non-profit category for next year’s awards) got me thinking about which charities in Ireland are using blogs.
Oxfam had been doing a bit during the war in Lebanon but don’t seem to be doing anything now.
Concern have a blog running from the Democratic Republic of Congo - but disappointingly they don’t allow any commenting, for some reason.
Trócaire have an impressive set of blogs running on their site. Most are either the blogs of staff based in places like Nicaragua, Lebanon and Palestine, or reports from Irish-based staff on trips overseas. Some of them are very good indeed and really capture a sense of what life is like in each of the very different countries Trócaire s working in.
As I’ve...