Introduction
We are often asked by clients what the relationship is between the various different
measures of awareness, such as prompted awareness, spontaneous awareness and
understanding of which cause a charity works in, and their other real world measures,
like total or voluntary income and media spend.
This query suggests broader questions. What do you have to do or spend to improve
your brand? How much of a connection is there between being well-known and raising
funds? What kind of an impact on income can you expect from growing your awareness
and vice versa? What are the strategies for growing awareness? How important are
other brand measures like understanding, engagement and potential support?
This five part report looks at some of the questions and analyses two areas in detail:
the relationship between awareness and income, and that between awareness and
media spend. We did this by taking a sample of nearly 60 of the UKs best-known
charities, ranging in size from tens of million to hundreds of million, and analysing
nfpSynergy data on them alongside their accounts and media spend over the last five
years.
Part 1 - Awareness - where does it come from and why is it important?
This part examines the sources of awareness, and why it might matter for a charity.
Part 2: Analysing two of the sources of awareness: paid media spend and
levels of income
This part looks at the top level relationship between different variables, i.e. how is
income correlated with awareness?
Part 3: Changes in awareness, media spend and income over time
This part explores the interaction of these variables over time. How much have charities
spent on raising their awareness over the past few years? What is the most important
factor in increasing your brands profile?
Part 4: Evidence from case studies for and against media spend or income
driving awareness
This part shares some specific examples of charities that have either raised their profile
or income, or both, in recent years. Are there clues as to how they did it? What can be
learned from their track records?
Part 5: Towards a strategy for raising awareness
This part looks at the stepping stones and approaches that underpin how awareness
might be turned into income. It pulls together a number of threads to see how a charity
can successfully develop and put into action an awareness-building or brand strategy.
Somebody reads their local newspaper and its articles about the work of charities. The
list of possible ways that somebody hears about a charity locally is huge, and most is
driven by volunteer time and commitment. All of that should raise awareness.
Extensive fundraising activities
The big brother of awareness through community activities is a broad-based range of
fundraising activities. Those charities that do an extensive amount of fundraising
particularly individual and community fundraising raise awareness through the
frequent contact people may have with direct mail and door-drops, newspapers inserts
and ads, posters requesting a text donation and internet banner ads with click-through
options. Face-to-face fundraisers on the high street also drive awareness, as do national
and local events. The less common yet equally powerful community activities are those
where some charities campaign to change government or corporate policies, or to
change peoples behaviour.
Charity shops and charity services
There are few who would disagree that charity shop chains raise awareness. The idea of
a permanent presence on the high street continuously raising awareness is compelling.
Yet our public research would indicate that it is probably only the market leaders, most
notably Oxfam, who gain much in awareness from a charity shop chain. This awareness
has taken years to build and given the decline in high street retail, it is unlikely that any
new entrant could use a charity retail chain to raise awareness today, at least not at a
national level.
Iconic events
There are a limited number of events at a national level, or sometimes a local level,
which effectively provide a platform to raise awareness of a charity. Perhaps the bestknown is the Poppy Appeal by the Royal British Legion. Marie Curie has been doing its
best to raise the profile of its Great Daffodil Appeal, while Christian Aid Week remains a
high profile fundraising event even without a flower behind it.
There have been attempts to create new iconic events. The most recent (and successful)
is probably Movember, and before that Race for Life. While both are fundraising events,
they also raise awareness. The challenge all iconic events struggle with is linking the
event with the cause or the organisation. Is there any more to Movember than the fun
of growing a moustache? Which charity is it that runs the poppy appeal?
Market and brand position
It may seem strange to categorise brand or market position as a source of awareness.
The reason we include it in this part of the report is that the right positioning translates
the inputs (i.e. the sources mentioned above) into awareness more efficiently. If a
charity is more memorable, more distinctive or more compelling, then a member of the
public who has contact with it is more likely to remember it later. It is probably no
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coincidence, for example, that three of the UKs best-known charities, Oxfam, NSPCC
and RSPCA, all have unique and memorable names (despite being acronyms). Many
other charities that feature prominently in public awareness have distinctive niches (e.g.
RNLI) or occupy market positions of deep concern to the public (e.g. Cancer Research
UK). All of the inputs that create awareness work more effectively if the charity adopts
the right brand strategy and positioning.
80%
p < .001
R = 0.33
Prompted
Awareness 60%
40%
20%
0%
0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
Total income in thousands (100,000 = 100 million)
500,000
Generally speaking, the higher an organisations total income, the higher its awareness
(or vice-versa), though above around the 200 million mark, most charities are already
household names, have 90%-plus awareness and cant actually go any higher.
Looking at the pattern, there are also several charities considerably below the trend line.
This suggests that their awareness is considerably lower than might be expected for
their income profile. This tends to reflect organisations that receive a higher proportion
of their income from non-fundraised sources. We can see this reflected in Chart 1 above
and then in Chart 2 below, which looks at the correlation between prompted awareness
and voluntary income only.
Again, we find similar levels of correlation between prompted awareness and voluntary
income, with an r2 implying that 31% of the variation in one can be explained by the
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other. There is a similar shape to the graph, with an initial steep rise in awareness
between 10m and 100m, then a levelling off afterwards as organisations reach
household name status.
p < .001
80%
R = 0.31
Prompted
Awareness
60%
40%
20%
0%
0
100,000
200,000
Voluntary income (k)
300,000
400,000
Source: Charity Commission, Charity Financials and Charity Awareness Monitor. Note x axis goes to 400 million
As noted previously, there are fewer organisations below the line, suggesting that there
is almost a minimum level of prompted awareness required to reach a given voluntary
income. While there are a few exceptions, most organisations are just above or near the
line.
It is important to note that with all these findings, correlation does not imply causation.
In other words, just because theres a relationship between awareness and income, it
doesnt necessarily mean that awareness drives income. It could be income that drives
awareness. Even if we could establish or guess at causation, it is difficult to know which
direction the relationship runs in. For example, on the one hand higher awareness could
lead to more successful fundraising, and thus higher voluntary and total income.
Alternatively, growing income could free up more money for fundraising and
communications work which grows an organisations brand. In reality of course, it is
likely to be a bit of both factors, combining in a cycle of growth for both awareness and
income.
charities that come to mind. Again, with this awareness measure we see a strong
relationship with voluntary income (and the same is true for total income) in Chart 3.
R = 0.58
40%
Spontaneous
Awareness 30%
20%
10%
0%
0
200,000
Voluntary income (k)
400,000
Source: Charity Commission, Charity Financials and Charity Awareness Monitor Note x axis goes to 400 million
While the r values show high levels of association (the r value is .49 for total income,
though not shown in a chart, and .58 for voluntary income in Chart 3), it is also
interesting to note that there appear to be fewer outliers and organisations not matching
the trend when it comes to spontaneous, awareness. This perhaps suggests that
changes in spontaneous awareness may be more closely linked to income than they
were for prompted awareness. There is also a reasonably linear relationship (straight
line), especially for smaller organisations, suggesting the association is more direct than
with prompted awareness. It may also be a result of the fact that there is not the same
ceiling while many charities have prompted awareness of 95%, there are none who
have spontaneous awareness over 50%, and the vast majority are substantially below
that level.
Our conclusion is that as charities grow their income (and particularly their voluntary
income), they increase their spontaneous awareness, and vice versa. The real difficulty
is to answer the question of which comes first income or awareness. The best answer
we can give at this stage is that the relationship is interdependent; awareness boosts
income and income boosts awareness as a cycle. Equally importantly, any boost in
awareness decays or decreases over time, so a boost in awareness from an advertising
campaign will probably have returned to pre-advertising levels within a year based on
our experience.
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40%
p <0.001
Spontaneous
Awareness 30%
R = 0.39
20%
10%
0%
0
5,000
10,000
Total media spend (k)
15,000
20,000
Chart 6 cuts out awareness, the middle-man so to speak, and shows a strong
relationship between media spend and voluntary income, with an r2 of 0.52. Its worth
pointing out, however, that this could simply mean that charities with large amounts of
money can afford to spend it on media.
80%
Prompted
Awareness
60%
p <0.001
R = 0.22
40%
20%
0%
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
400,000
350,000
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
p <0.001
100,000
R = 0.52
50,000
0
0
5,000
10,000
Total media spend (k)
15,000
20,000
Source: Charity Commission, Charity Financials and Charity Awareness Monitor. This chart is especially for Vicky.
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14
Prompted Awareness
Spontaneous Awareness
10
11
26
16
20
7
3
As Chart 7 shows, charities awareness does fluctuate. For spontaneous awareness, the
most common change over the time in our analysis is to see a slight increase in
awareness or for it to remain static. For prompted awareness, the spread of changes in
Chart 7 is more broadly based with a substantial number of charities showing an
increase in their awareness, but a significant minority showing a decrease.
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It is easy to spend money on media in a way that does not increase prompted
awareness - too much clever awareness advertising, poor targeting of media
spend
Charities that spend on media may not be primarily using it to grow their brand.
Fundraising, campaigning and communications with specific groups may all be
more important motivations than growing awareness of the brand
Media spend alone may not be enough to grow prompted awareness, or it may
be the wrong strategy for some organisations. As we explore in Part 5, an
effective strategy for growing awareness is a critical success factor in building
understanding and knowledge of an organisation
Prompted awareness may simply be more difficult to achieve these days. As
brand awareness tends to be highly static and the number of charities is everincreasing, space for them in peoples minds may simply be more limited
All of this suggests two things. Firstly, to say it one more time, spending money on
media does not guarantee an increase in prompted awareness; the investment in
advertising needs to be spent in the right way. Secondly, as we have explored in the
previous section, there are other ways to increase prompted awareness other than
media spend.
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p <0.001
R = 0.19
0%
-5,000
5,000
10,000
Change in media spend (k)
-5%
Although the relationship only accounts for 20% of the variation between the two, it still
seems a reasonable rule of thumb that increasing a media budget will increase
spontaneous awareness, while decreasing it leads to an awareness decrease. Of
charities that increased their media spend, 52% saw an increase in spontaneous
awareness, compared to just 33% that saw an increase despite only maintaining
spending.
On average, those that increased their spontaneous awareness increased their media
spend by 1.7 million over the five years. Those who only maintained spontaneous
awareness increased spending by 290,000 per annum (at rate card prices), while those
whose spontaneous awareness dropped had decreased their spend by an average of
233,000.
Its tempting to want these figures as percentages of existing media spend. However, for
an organisation to get traction with its media spend, its the absolute amount that
matters, rather than any percentage.
Using the relationship between spontaneous awareness and media spend, we can then
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create an estimate for the cost of one point of spontaneous awareness1. Based on the
charities in our survey, an average charity would need to increase its media spend
budget by several million over five years (at rate card prices, so perhaps half that after
negotiation) to achieve an increase of one percentage point of spontaneous awareness.
This is likely to further overestimate the cost of raising spontaneous awareness, because
the sample includes organisations that will have spent money on paid advertising
without the intention of raising spontaneous awareness. It does, however, give an
indication of the uphill struggle faced by organisations that are aiming to increase it.
We conclude that while media spend does increase spontaneous awareness, it is best
suited to those organisations with both deep pockets and a focused, long-term brand
strategy.
This is by necessity based on quite a small sample size, so the figure should be taken with a good pinch of
salt. These figures are also based on rate card prices in the real world, charities receive substantial
discounts on these prices, suggesting that the actual cost may be lower. Its the media activity rather than
the media cost that really matters.
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8%
R = 0.05
6%
4%
2%
0%
-40,000
-20,000
20,000
-2%
40,000
60,000
80,000
-4%
-6%
Source: Charity Commission, Charity Financials and Charity Awareness Monitor
Increased awareness may be driven by other factors that we arent measuring here,
such as more campaigning, increased services or a higher media profile. Alternatively, it
may be that the fundraising and communications teams arent working closely together.
As shocking as it may sound, we do know a few charities where fundraising and
communications dont work well together!
These charts suggest that increasing fundraised income is not necessarily the same
process as increasing a charitys brand profile and there is no simple relationship
between the two activities. Indeed, we would go one step further and say that any
charity which believes that increasing awareness on its own will lead to increased
income without them having to do anything else will probably be disappointed.
Increased awareness can only possibly lead to increased income if a charity has all its
brand, communications and fundraising ducks in a row. We explore what this means in
practice in Part 5.
Having looked at the situation for charities en masse, it may now be useful to see
examples of some individual charities that have seen an increase or decrease in their
prompted awareness over this period.
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21%
11%
Statistical analysis of r2 = .586 shows that we are quite keen on evidence and statistics at
nfpSynergy, even if the results are on occasions not as clear-cut as we might like.
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This has followed a consistent growth in media spend, as shown below in Chart 11. Over
the same period, however, income has also grown. Voluntary income grew from 95m in
2009 to a peak of 130m in 2011, before declining to 109m in 2012, but then rising
again to 128 million in 2013. While BRCs income is always likely to be variable
depending on the number and scale of emergency appeals in a given year, the result is
still consistent with our findings that increased media spend can increase spontaneous
awareness, as can fundraised income. The case for BRC seems to be a virtuous circle
with income, spontaneous awareness and media spend all increasing between 2009 and
2013, even if not consistently
14,000
13,198
Voluntary Income
Media Spend
135,000
12,000
120,000
10,000
105,000
Media Spend
Voluntary income
128,300
8,000
7,546
95,600
90,000
6,000
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
19
8%
8%
Sep-11 Feb-12
Jul-12
8,000
169,510
Voluntary income
7,500
Media spend
7,000
6,773
6,500
6,000
5,500
Media Spend
Voluntary Income
160,000
150,000
5,000
145,500
4,832
4,500
140,000
4,000
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
20
48%
44%
Sep-11
44%
Dec-11
Mar-12
Jun-12
Sep-12
Dec-12
Mar-13
Jun-13
Sep-13
However, its voluntary income has shrunk over the last few years from 133 million in
2009 to 118 million in 2013, as Chart 15 shows. Its media spend has yo-yoed over the
same period and is relatively low at around 4-5 million. By way of comparison, British
Red Cross spends over 13 million for a roughly similar level of voluntary income.
4,677
4,620
4,500
Voluntary Income
133,900
130,000
4,000
120,000
Voluntary income
Media Spend
140,000
5,000
118,300
Media spend
3,500
110,000
100,000
3,000
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
21
45%
Jul-12
Without knowing more about WaterAids communications and fundraising strategy, its
impossible to know exactly what it has been doing right, but its clearly something. Our
guess is that its about having a clear, focused set of brand messages, a compelling
cause and some very talented staff to make it happen.
Voluntary income
43,441
Media spend
5,984
40,000
7,000
6,000
5,000
30,000
Media Spend
Voluntary Income
50,000
4,000
29,393
3,000
2,602
20,000
2,000
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
22
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The sequence of events is quite different where a donor is aware of a charity and where
she isnt. Clearly in neither case is there a guarantee of an outcome though. A donor
may be aware of a charity and not give, be it because they have just given, they are
feeling hard-up or for a host of other reasons.
Similarly, lack of awareness doesnt make a donation impossible. Somebody may give
because of a friend they trust, or a street fundraiser they fancy asked them, or because
it is a cause they are passionate about. In either scenario, awareness only increases the
likelihood that somebody will go on to make a donation.
Chart 19 shows the same process from the charitys point of view. The sequence of
events is fairly similar. With awareness, the number of people who are likely to give is
increased. Although giving isnt guaranteed, the percentage that moves forward to each
stepping stone is increased. Chart 19 also shows how increased fundraising can lead to
increased awareness.
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The crucial point in both these charts is a charity needs to be managing each stepping
stone. Simply increasing awareness does not lead to income; each step in the process
needs to be completed by hundreds or thousands of donors.
how some charities are very well-known, but when you ask people what it does they are
altogether less clear.
3. Decide who are the key audiences for high awareness
While some charities will want the UK general public to be aware of them, in many cases
the audience for a charitys work is, or should be, more focused. There is a law of
inverse effort with the audiences for communications and fundraising work; the bigger
the audience, the more resources needed to influence them, and the less change in their
awareness will be for any unit of resource. So, if a charity wants to influence five million
members of the public (about 10% of the total adult population), any effort will go
further than if the effort is directed at all over 45s (over 20 million adults), but not
nearly as far as if 650 MPs or 10,000 GP practices are targeted. The key point is to make
sure target audiences are an appropriate size for the available resources with which they
are to be targeted.
4. Work out how you can best communicate with key audiences
An integral part of targeting any audience for brand, awareness, communications or
fundraising activities is the ability to reach that audience. In other words, a
communications channel or route is needed. To use an analogy, an audience without a
means of talking to them is like picking a holiday destination which nobody flies to and
cant easily be reached. For some audiences, the communication channel may be a
database, others a particular type of magazine or TV programme, and for some a
purchased list of names and addresses. Matching an audience with a communication
channel can be time-consuming and expensive to deliver, but its a critical part of any
awareness or brand strategy.
5. Which of your activities would make somebody aware of you?
The great management guru Tom Peters talks about how the management of many
companies undertake management programmes and believe that one or two internal
communications, among the hundreds or thousands or other messages in an employees
inbox, will get staff on board. The same mistake can be made with awareness-building
activities; among the thousands of messages a charity can put out, its all too easy to
believe that a few well-placed ads or straplines will do the business. If a charity wants to
raise awareness as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible, then every email, every
job ad, every tweet, every volunteer and every service needs to be corralled into the
service of awareness-raising.
6. Develop your own stepping stones for translating awareness into income,
and income into awareness
Perhaps all were saying in the previous few paragraphs is that every charity needs to
have its own stepping stones that turn its activities into awareness and income. The
better those stepping stones are mapped out, the easier it will be to channel the
resources and turn strategy into reality (and the easier it will be to work out when
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Other brand tracking services are available and we are always happy to do a proposal for you.
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Conclusion
Were sorry to those who wanted a nice straight-forward story about raising awareness
and how it drives up fundraising income directly, simply and incontrovertibly. Sadly, the
data did not show such simple relationships. To go back to one of our earlier
comparisons with revision for exams, not every child who revises hard does well in
exams, and not every child who does well in exams revises hard. Its important to
remember, though, that the majority do, and the same is true for awareness and
income. There are few well-known charities that dont have a substantial voluntary
income, and there are very few charities with a substantial income that arent wellknown. However, neither is a guarantee of the other.
The right response to this is not to despair, or conclude that awareness doesnt matter.
We think that the right response to our data and our report is to be more strategic, not
less. Brand strategies need to focus on the awareness element, i.e. the quantity of
people who know about a charitys brand, as much as they focus on the quality of
peoples brand knowledge.
We hope that this report will help branding and communications professionals in
charities to persuade their colleagues to become more focused, more disciplined and
more organised.
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Methodology
We sampled 59 charities from Caritas Datas top 100 fundraising charities. These were
the charities that we have awareness data on from our Charity Awareness Monitor and
therefore the sample does not include organisations that are technically charities but
receive most of their funding from statutory sources or earned income. The annual
income of these charities ranged from 1m to 500m, with voluntary incomes of
between 0.5m and 370m.
Financial data was collected from Caritas Datas Charity Financials website, which uses
official Charity Commission accounts. The data covers the years from 2009 to 2013, so
for some charts in the topline section, each charity will be represented five times - once
for each set of annual accounts.
Media spend figures were provided by Nielsen and represent rate card prices. While in
reality most charities will pay below this price for their media, this method provides the
only way of comparing media spend across different organisations with different
accounting practices. Annual media spend for the charities analysed in this report ranged
from 0 to 20m.
The data was collected by Leila Royle-Davies from CharityComms and Kate CranstonTurner from nfpSynergy, while the analysis was carried out by Cian Murphy of
nfpSynergy. The opinion and didactic polemic is from Joe Saxton. We are happy to share
the list of charities in the sample with those who are interested.
Contact cian.murphy@nfpsynergy.net for more information on any aspect of this project.
Statistical terms
Correlation A correlation is a statistical relationship between two variables or two sets
of data while it can establish that two things are related, it does not
automatically follow that one causes the other.
Regression Regression is a technique closely related to correlation which can model
the relationship between two variables. In this report, we have used
linear regression (a straight line relationship) and log-transformed
regression (to model a logarithmic relationship these can be identified
by the curved lines).
r
This is a figure which measures the strength of the relationship between
two variables. The r score indicates what proportion of the variation in
one variable is attributable to the relationship between the two, with the
strength of the relationship increasing as the figure gets closer to 1.
p
This score determines whether two variables are significantly correlated
or not. If p is less than 0.05, we can say that a relationship is significant
at the 95% confidence level.
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About nfpSynergy
nfpSynergy is a research consultancy that aims to provide the ideas, the insights and the
information to help non-profits thrive.
We have over a decade of experience working exclusively with charities, helping them
develop evidence-based strategies and get the best for their beneficiaries. The
organisations we work with represent all sizes and areas of the sector and we have
worked with 40 of the top 50 fundraising charities in the UK.
We run cost effective, syndicated tracking surveys of stakeholder attitudes towards
charities and non-profit organisations. The audiences we reach include the general
public, young people, journalists, politicians and health professionals. We also work with
charities on bespoke projects, providing quantitative, qualitative and desk research
services.
In addition, we work to benefit the wider sector by creating and distributing regular free
reports, presentations and research on the issues that charities face.
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