Blog

By Sinead Costello – Client Services Director With charities looking for ways to boost their income as the energy crisis develops, living costs rise, and people’s need for support inevitably grows with it, there is one area where gains could quite easily be made – Gift Aid. Gift Aid is worth more than £1.3 billion annually to UK charities, yet with some £500m (and counting) estimated to go unclaimed each year, many good causes could be benefitting from it a lot more. A recent survey by Charities Aid Foundation found that while the number of supporters using Gift Aid is...

It’s no secret that many charities and NGOs operate on a shoestring. And even those that are better off still rely heavily on the generosity of people wanting to make the world a better place. To foster that generosity takes work, and trust – and this has never been clearer to me than during a campaign undertaken in my previous role at a charity. At the time, we were using telephone fundraising for simple admin-based campaigns such as welcome calls and annual Gift Aid confirmation. So more than a few eyebrows were raised when I asked to spend several thousand...

During the pandemic, the importance of digital communications with supporters has become clearer than ever. But, while Covid and its associated challenges have seen charities of all shapes and sizes ramp up its use, for a significant proportion – 40% in a recent Charity Digital Skills Report– the circumstances have meant it’s happened faster than perhaps they were prepared for. As a result, many are still finding their way. And a big challenge for charities in this position is competing with expectations set by the consumer sector, which has been successfully using digital for some years. Today, people – especially...

One of the questions we ask most often of our charities is “What are you doing with your refusals?” Too often we see that after a telephone campaign most will prioritise their new donors, which makes perfect sense. But so many don’t have anything planned for the people who refused to donate, this time, and simply ditch them. The Problem The problem with this is that refusals are not ‘non-contacts’, they’re people who have had conversations with the fundraising team and most of the time these were fantastic passionate calls with some campaigns having up to 65% of refusals wanting...

We are about to celebrate our fourth birthday and I am so excited to officially relaunch Purity with our new look and new services in Consultancy and Digital to add to the telephone and broaden our support for our charity clients.  Sitting in my home office writing this 15 months after the pandemic began is not something I would have ever imagined – I think we all thought it would blow over within a few months and everything would be back to normal. The reality is so very different, and I know, for us at Purity, things have had to...

As Purity celebrates its 4th birthday, we have the privilege to introduce our new digital team which launches our digital division. The team at Purity have, from the very beginning, been guiding our charity partners with their digital campaigns. But today, we are now managing the whole process from awareness to lead generation to loyalty we are there to help in every way.  A lot of people find the digital aspect of fundraising confusing or complicated. That’s exactly what we want to change. Purity was built on honesty and the aim to be the best not the biggest. We are...

It always seems to me that the popular conception of power is a bit misconstrued. What is true power after all? Usually we associate power with strength, yet true strength is admitting our weaknesses. Power is more often than not associated with wealth and influence, yet historically the people who have made the most difference seek not wealth, but have had the power to change the world for the better…….  Gandhi, Mother Theresa and my Dad spring to mind. I know it probably seems a bit preposterous to place my Dad next to the other two, but in my mind,...

Nearly 4 years since Purity began and we have gone from strength to strength and grown in both size and confidence in that time. On reflection, I’ve been thinking about one word which sums up that which makes us successful in what we do. Not an easy task when there are so many worthy words which clamour for attention. “Dedication” springs to mind and there is no doubt that everyone at Purity is truly dedicated to the cause. “Integrity” is another and whilst the integrity of the entire team could never be questioned, the word itself just doesn’t seem all...

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed our world on so many levels this year, and its impact continues to ripple as we face a second wave and more restrictive measures announced by the Government. What’s more, official figures confirm that the UK has entered a recession, with the International Monetary Fund predicting that the economy will see a 10.2% fall in GDP for 2020. And it’s not just Britain. The IMF is estimating that the entire world economy will shrink by 4.9% this year, making it the worst recession since the 1930s’ Great Depression. There is no doubt that the effect...

Well, here we are during a time the likes of which none of us could ever have imagined, we’re just approaching our third birthday and we’ve now raised over £20million for our charities! I’m proud to be able to say that we met the challenges of the coronavirus lockdown head on, with most of our fundraisers fully equipped to work from home before the first week was out, enabling us to rally for our charities and the sector when it was most needed. And, since that first week, we’ve gone further – almost doubling our size to meet demand with...

I was privileged to be asked to present a policy writing session to one of our valued clients recently. It went very well and was received with appreciation and enthusiasm. It also underlined the importance of having an infrastructure in place which supports, empowers and enables the various areas of a business to work together to achieve a common goal. What it also did for me was to get me thinking about how important it is that all the different aspects of any business come together cohesively to represent that business as a whole. When I associate that thought process...