Back from the Brink: Building a New Advancement Strategy

About Rape Crisis

• Welfare services to survivors of rape: a 24 hour telephone helpline and a face to face counselling service

• Services in collaboration with health services and courts: 24 hour crisis containment and court support at five regional courts

• Public education: peer education programme, talks and workshops to civic groups about rape and prevention

• Advocacy: policy and law reform as part of campaign coalitions with NGO partners across South Africa

• A Board of seven external and three internal Trustees that meet quarterly

• A staff compliment of 14 full time staff - Three managers - Eight programme coordinators - Three administrative staff

• A volunteer corps of 60 – 80 volunteers

• Three offices serving different demographics in Observatory, Athlone and Khayelitsha

• Staff and volunteer representation on the Board

The perfect storm

• Over four years we lost R4 million in international grant money that we could not replace

• We lost our National Lottery funding

• Local CSI were unable to increase their grant

• Government underestimated the volume and the costs relating to violence against women and set unrealistically low targets

• Media coverage a double edged sword – we gained donors but lost clients

• We used our reserve funds to fund the shortfall in programme funds

Yet the need for our services was greater than ever.

We were at a complete loss.

Business analysis

• Planning was focused on programmes and programme finances – nothing else

• They felt helpless and morale was low as staff had all been retrenched and volunteers were on fewer shifts

• They had no idea of positioning and communication targeted at stakeholders

• They were looking for a long term plan not low hanging fruit but they had no clear sense of how to build a new advancement strategy for these difficult times

Planning Model:

Everything else…

Programmes and

programme finances

A business and marketing orientation

• Principles of business and marketing in NPOs are exactly the same as in the business sector

• The tasks are the same: develop a mission, set objectives and continuously plan, implement and evaluate all activities including fundraising

• Marketing has not been widely accepted by NPO organisations and is sometimes perceived as being opportunistic

• Multiple stakeholders require different messaging, programmes and outcomes – there is no one message for all

A business and marketing orientation

•A marketing orientation drives the NPO’s resources towards satisfying the needs of all NPOs stakeholders • It needs to be a total, integrated approach including:

⁻ Programme activities based on client needs; ⁻ Placing a high value on stakeholder or client satisfaction; ⁻ Paying attention to the user-friendliness of everything

the organisation does; ⁻ Providing information and ongoing education to the staff

on the value of a marketing approach ⁻ Maintaining a focus on positioning

Positioning For Profit: The place an organisation’s brand, service or product offering occupies in consumer’s or stakeholders minds relative to competing offerings…Think BMW vs Mercedes vs Audi

Non Profit: This is what your stakeholders really think of your total offering and your organisation - as opposed to what you would like them to think.

What your stakeholders say about your service and your organisation after you have left the room. It is the distinct place that the organisation occupies in the mind of the stakeholder compared to a competing organisation.

It includes your product, service, image and people.

Consolidating insights for Rape Crisis

• We saw how a can do approach can make things happen and gain commitment from staff and volunteers

• We embraced the idea of positioning ourselves in the NPO sector to attract investors and different messages for different target audiences

• We aligned all of our planning to the five pillars of the new advancement strategy and filtered it through to everything from job descriptions to meeting agendas

• Metrics – there is no implementation now without measuring our performance

• We accepted and followed expert advice

Rape Crisis potential

• There was great opportunity and potential in this organisation

• They were enthusiastic about taking up business principles and moving forward

• They acted fast, ran a short term social media campaign and made some quick wins

• They transformed traditional day to day fundraising into a set of interlinking strategies that were short, medium and long term focused

• They moved from crisis to containment to sustainability

New Planning Model:

Governance

Programmes

Communications Finance Fundraising Human

Resources

Wins

• We ran the 8 March Women’s Day bus campaign aimed at service users and number went up right away

• We got sponsored or pro bono consultants in each of the five areas

• Lobbied government and won an increase in our main grant

• Individual giving poured in as we kept up the media exposure

• We made a paradigm shift from welfare services to change making

• We kept three months operating costs in a reserve fund

Challenges

• Staff are still taking a 20 percent salary sacrifice

• We have a fundraising strategy that would take a full team to implement – we don’t have that team

• We are still chasing a large shortfall in current funds in spite of having a three month reserve

• There is a drop in public outrage since the Anene Booysen case

• The Board still lack a complete understanding of the new advancement strategy

Way forward

• Build a stronger Board

• Full time fundraising position

• Fundraising specifically for the implementation of a focused communication strategy including constant brand awareness and exposure

• Continuous cycle of integrated planning, implementation and evaluation

• Affinity groups not just volunteers or donors

• Maintain staff commitment to their role in our advancement

Thank you

For more information see: www.rcctt.com

Kathleen Dey, the Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust, kath@rapecrisis.org.za

Laurence Beder, WITS Business School, bederjhb@gmail.com