A solid digital presence could help faith-based organisations spread the message. Fundraiser editor Jenny Ramage explores what can be learned from those religious organisations with an already strong online offering

In part one of our focus on religious charities, we explored some of the reasons faith-based organisations find it difficult to implement digital – in spite of the increasing pressure for them to do so. In this follow-on piece, we look at what some of the more forward-thinking religious charities are doing in the digital sphere, and ask what those lagging behind can do to start catching up.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, some of the inherent strengths of faith-based charities actually lend themselves very well to digital. Michael Dixon, a consultant with Think Digital Solutions who is working with Christian Aid’s individual giving and digital acceleration teams, says religious organisations “have more engaging social networks and great stewardship models”. This is surely a great basis from which to start thinking about how digital can add to your organisation’s message – not to mention the abundance of evidence to support digital from those faith-based groups who are already doing it well.

Faith-based pioneers

Christian evangelical organisations were among the earliest adopters of tech in the religious third sector to help spread their message further afield. Digital trendsetters can be found in other areas of the faith-based market too, with Islamic Relief being something of a pioneer in this field, having launched its digital marketing programme in 2008 and enjoying phenomenal growth since then. The charity’s digital media specialist, Hassan Imtiazi, says innovation is at the core of the charity’s digital strategy: “Each year we have tried something new; ideas such as rich media creative that interacts with the donor, or trialling Google beta products. This has enabled us to be ahead of the game.”

Indeed, Islamic Relief was the first charity in the Muslim sector to launch a mobile-specific website, allowing the charity to take donations via mobile phones with a seamless user experience. In 2011, it used heat map technology on display campaigns to find out how the donor interacts with creative, and today the organisation works closely with Google’s own team on various projects to create its future digital strategy.

“This is part of our organisational culture now, to test and try new product and services which can give us a strong competitive advantage”, says Hassan.

Christian Aid is another strong example of a charity that is working hard to embed digital thinking across the organisation, under the remit of its digital acceleration team. An organisation that isn’t afraid to test things out, it’s experimenting with crowdfunding and lots of mobile initiatives; for example it was an early adopter of Powatag which, in a world first, it used in its TV advert during Christian Aid Week this year to call a mobile payment app.

The charity is extremely strong in the social media sphere too, where it is about to trial a Facebook community for a particular product “to encourage dialogue in place of broadcast mentality”, according to the charity’s church fundraising manager, Anna Couper.

Sparking conversation

Jewish mental health charity JAMI is another charity that recently started taking a more dialogue-based approach – and already it’s reaping the benefits. In May it launched Think Ahead, an image-led campaign that introduces issues around mental health and the stigma that surrounds it, particularly for the Jewish community. “It’s really sparking conversation”, says Liz Jessel, head of development at the charity. “It’s enabling us to have much more of a debate and discussion over social media than we’ve seen before.”

Indeed, Liz feels digital provides more opportunity for dialogue than anything that can be achieved offline. "We’re not going to get that dialogue as easily through the more traditional methods of approaching people via direct mail.”

As the charity has seen the number of retweets and shares on Facebook steadily increase, so too has it witnessed a big rise in the number of referral to the charity’s services team – an increase of 140%, no less.

Will all this result in more donations, though? “We’ve just started the next stage of the campaign, where the fundraising ask has kicked in much more heavily”, says Liz. “The messaging is turning to the need for more funds to support more service users, and getting income in from whatever channels we possibly can will be a major contributor to that, including digital. If the level of increase we’ve seen in referrals can be mirrored onto income I’d be absolutely ecstatic. The next stage for us is going to be really key and interesting to watch.”

Poignantly, and in answer to concerns about religious charities failing to engage younger audiences, the Think Ahead campaign has also seen the average age of people coming to JAMI for help drop. “We are making the assumption that this is a reflection of the fact we are going out across a range of media for the first time, and people are seeing those messages in new places”, says Liz.

Getting started

While the evidence for ‘going digital’ is stacking up, if your organisation hasn’t yet taken the plunge, where do you even begin? With the huge range of digital products on the market, a charity with no digital specialists could feel at sea with it all. It’s worth considering, though, that even JAMI started very small with its digital strategy: “We used whatever free tools were available to us when we first started – Facebook and Twitter, mainly”, Liz explains.

Digital isn’t just the remit of multimillion-pound organisations either; smaller faith-based charities are finding ways to innovate with digital too. For Manchester-based Christian homeless charity Barnabus, which has an annual income of around £350k, social media has been key to getting its digital strategy underway. “Facebook and Twitter are essential basics if you want to keep up with your supporters”, says Carol Price, the charity’s development and fundraising manager.

The charity also has a “high-performing” website, and is embracing many of the giving platforms including Charity Choice, JustGiving and Virgin Giving for online and text giving.

Carol explains that with very limited internal resources, the charity has been reliant on pro bono work to get its digital strategy to the level it's at today. “Thanks to pro bono support from companies and designers, we've had integrated campaigns with Tumblr pages, large outdoor digital media and even our own TV ad – all produced free of charge to support our work.”

Reaching out for help

Carol’s advice to other faith-based organisations is: “Don’t be afraid of asking for help. There are local businesses and people literally on your doorstep who, when approached, will gift you with pro bono support, volunteering their skills part time. Universities, for example, have exchange programs for students who are studying social media and digital marketing and want short-term, meaningful work experience within the charity sector.”

Many of the fundamental digital tools that charities have at their disposal don’t require huge resources, though. Jewish education charity Langdon UK used an external web design agency to build a bespoke fundraising platform, called MyLangdon – but the charity's director of marketing, communications & strategy Duncan Stroud says charities can embrace digital fundraising whatever the size and shape of their resources. “There are ways to do it fairly simply and straightforwardly, and it’s not as intimidating as people might think”, he says. “These things are designed to be simple, and some of the digital platforms are very cheap to implement and run.”

Digital fundamentals

An obvious first step in any online strategy is to establish your own website, complete with donation facility. For Karen Toftera, digital manager at CAFOD, this is most important element of any digital strategy. “You need to have an up-to-date website that really shows off exactly what you do, and how supporters can help. Your website needs to make it really easy for anyone who wants to support to do that – so make sure there is an easy way to donate, and an easy way to get involved.”

She stresses that for both younger and older audiences, usability is key. “People are getting more and more impatient online and they give up quickly. There are so many alternatives for them, so if you want to compete you have to make sure it’s easy for them.”

It’s crucial to also ensure your website is mobile friendly, says Hassan, stressing that “this is very important from a search ranking point of view”. It should be SEO friendly, too: “I have noticed that many charities’ web pages don’t follow simple Google guidelines like having proper URL formation. Looking into these minor mistakes and ensuring regular content updates is a simple step worth taking”, he says.

Another vital element is content, and the tone and language you adopt as part of this. But as Colin Kemp, head of individual participation at Christian Aid points out, “good web content is not dependent on lots of money – or lots of content!” In fact, less is often more – particularly for mobile, where “one message per page” is the aim, according to Karen. And for real impact, video is a good choice – so showcase your work where you can with video stories embedded in your site (or at least linked to a YouTube account).

Social media

If you have a website, you will also need ways to drive people to it. Hassan says charities need to have a “clear strategy” for social media to increase audience engagement. While this requires little in the way of technical expertise – Facebook and Twitter are extremely easy to set up – some charities hesitate because they’re unsure how to communicate successfully on these platforms. Indeed it’s something of a skill and it takes time to master, but fundamentally, it’s about clarity and consistency of messaging.

“Keep it simple, and keep it clear” is Liz’s advice. This is based on recent experience: “When I first joined JAMI six months ago, it seemed everyone had logins to our social media accounts and they were posting lots of random things as they came across them. To coordinate our messages and make them more consistent, we needed to limit the number of admins. In this way, whether people heard something about JAMI on Twitter or Facebook, it reflected what was going out on email that week, or what we were talking about in the press, so that we could drive that clarity of messaging much more effectively. That seemed to make a big difference; people weren’t confused about what JAMI was trying to say that week.”

So, appoint one or two trusted people with responsibility for populating your social media pages and keeping it up to date. As Carol Price says, “as long as it's someone who upholds your charities values and posts appropriately, it’s a wonderful platform for keeping up with your supporters, celebrating fundraisers’ achievements, posting events, or sending a tweet about something you or others have done."

Quite simply, she concludes, “it all helps raise your profile and support” – and in an increasingly competitive market, this has to be the aim of the game.

Jenny Ramage is editor of The Fundraiser