Talk:2012 Activity Plan

Fundraising

The plan currently shows direct debits being a very small portion of fundraising revenue. I would advise trying to make it a very large portion. It should be the default option when people click "donate" (I would suggest radio buttons for monthly, quarterly, annually and one-off, with monthly being the default). Not everyone will want to set up a direct debit, but you should try your best to get them to. Having a large amount coming in each month from direct debits will give the chapter a lot more stability and security. It will also be less dependant on future fundraisers, making it more independent of the WMF. --Tango 14:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your input as always. Chris is a professional charity fundraiser and is very much on top of this. I trust his estimates, and would rather the error be on the side of underestimating, rather than have "a very large portion" of our income not materialise. MartinPoulter 23:37, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Although you are right to think that DD is an advantage Victuallers 00:27, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you're right the ideal would be to get a higher proportion of Direct Debits, yielding the same total income. The focus on our fundraising testing will be to increase the proportion of DDs without reducing the total income, but it is really difficult to forecast whether we'll end up with 5% of donors on DD or 10% or 50%! So for planning purposes I've made a fairly cautious assumption of about 10% of value being DDs, but we can refine that rather further when we have more evidence. The Land 08:20, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

If we get charitable status 50% ticking the UK taxpayer box strikes me as a very prudent estimate. Nothing wrong in prudence, I just hope that our aspirations are higher. I've seen this well above 50%, and I suspect that our profile is more skewed to UK taxpayers than some UK charities, aside from our age profile we hopefully don't get many nonUK donors as they'd go to the Foundation or other chapters. WereSpielChequers 09:29, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

The sector average is 40%, according to the NCVO/CAF report on UK Giving 2010. The highest I've seen is c.80%. You're right about our donor profile - so we could certainly do better than 50%, but it's difficult to forecast before we actually do it. The Land 10:12, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

The age profile you mention could be important. I suspect we get a lot of donations from students (the donor comments the WMF has got would support that), who don't pay tax. I think 50% is probably a good working estimate, although I certainly hope we can get more. --Tango 15:28, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Events

You currently have money allocated to events under the event manager and to GLAM, which I understand is mostly going to be events. You either need to divide the budget by type of activity (events, partnerships, technology, etc.) or by what it's trying to achieve (education, GLAM, etc.). At the moment, you have a bit of both, which causes double counting. I would suggest dividing things by what it achieves, although that does mean that salaries get split between different budgets if someone works on different things (you could try having an "events" budget a "GLAM" budget and then have intra-company transfers from one to the other, but that's probably best kept to the formal accounts rather than the fundraising literature). --Tango 14:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I understand that dividing things by purpose is a good theoretical idea, but it can make the central role of budgeting - monitoring and controlling costs - quite difficult to do in practice. Most organisations keep salary costs together for this purpose given that they are relatively fixed and controlled primarily through HR processes, rather than those that are controlled through procurement processes. I am proposing we do it this way for 2012. We are looking to develop our systems for monitoring the effectiveness of our activities, but not all of this necessarily sits under the budgeting process. AndrewRT 00:44, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Looks good to me

This looks good to me.

I would like to see a pilot Oral Citations project as part of the World War project - offering some money to other projects which record reminiscences if they let us put the recordings on Commons. That doesn't need a separate heading - there are a number of heading here you could make payments under.

Good Luck--Filceolaire 21:07, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Filceolaire. Oral citations is an interesting area as some of the Global South regard oral citation as a reliable source. The money reserved for this project should be able to include work of this type if we can integrate it into our/the projects. Victuallers 00:30, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Eggs, baskets, bank failures

Reserves of £145k, average cash in hand of £500k.... may I suggest that if you haven't already done so you make sure you have this split between multiple banking groups? Aside from the disruption if our banker folded, I think some of the bank rescues have fallen disproportionately heavily on larger deposits. Concentrating the money would maximise interest earnings, but at a time of low interest rates and high financial insecurity a strategy of prudent diversity is probably better than one of simplicity and revenue maximisation. WereSpielChequers 09:41, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes we have started that already. We are covered by the £85,000 Financial Services Compensation Scheme insurance limit, and aim to split our money so that any exposure about that level is acceptable. AndrewRT 09:51, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm reassured to here that. You might want to put something in your plan to the effect that rather than seeking to maximise interest the charity has a a strategy of prudent diversity in the banking of its funds. WereSpielChequers 16:17, 4 October 2011 (UTC)