Building engagement when it really counts

Artiklen er en udvidelse af Paul Ferris' bidrag til ISOBRO Fundraising Indsigt 2024 publiceret januar 2024.

From 2012 to 2022, the proportion of people living under autocratic regimes has risen from 46% to 72% (Democracy Report 2023). Meanwhile, far-right parties are growing in strength in traditional bastions of liberal democracy. Look no further than the Dutch elections in 2023, won by Geert Wilders in an historic breakthrough. If you don’t think this has huge implications for your organisation and your issues – think again. 

And just when it’s needed most, traditional forms of civic engagement are disappearing, with commitment to NGOs on the decline. Instead, people now engage directly, often sporadically and largely online with the causes they care about. 

These shifts require civil society to ask hard (and long overdue) questions in 2024.

From marketing to mobilisation 

To succeed in 2024, organisations will have to stop treating supporters as cash cows – and instead foster a deeper and broader engagement with their communities. This means shifting from a marketing approach, which centers on promoting and selling a product, to a mobilisation strategy, which instead focuses on building a community for collective action (as well as raising funds).  

A small case in point is Naturskyddsföreningen in Sweden. Following national elections in 2022, the organisation was challenged with a politically motivated demand from the far-right Sweden Democrats for a list of all donors and supporters. Naturskyddsföreningen quickly mobilised its supporters to speak up. By putting the focus on a community taking collective action, a strong and unified response was made – and the money rolled in. 

Important – and interesting 

In 2024, organisations will need to be better at engaging people to stay relevant. This means that in addition to having something important to say, more organisations will experiment with having something interesting to say. 

Take Civil Rights Defenders, again in Sweden. Long focused on defending democracies abroad, the rise of the far-right has forced them to deploy their toolkit at home. It’s important work – but that’s not always enough. To spark interest, the organisation chose to communicate the threat through a humorous (and deadly serious) board game called “Dictator of Sweden”. This approach, combined with organising supporters into Facebook groups to work together in defence of democracy, led to unprecedented brand and fundraising success – and tangible impact. 

What exactly is our strategy for realising our mission in the world? And just as importantly – what exactly IS the role of our supporters in that strategy? 

Growing beyond our base 

And to really start to shift the current state of play, organisations will need to figure out how to grow beyond their existing base. The constant search for the lowest-cost conversion means that most energy goes to poaching supporters from each other – rather than doing the hard work of reaching and persuading new audiences and communities.

This will have to change. And in tandem, more organisations will have to develop specific metrics of (digital) engagement and mobilisation, to ensure their work is driving more than just revenue – but also other impactful actions and long-term influence and power.  

Get all that right, and your mission (and revenue) may just be on track in 2024.

Om forfatteren

Paul is head of campaigns and fundraising strategist at Reform Society (previously Reform Act) in Sweden – an agency that works with its clients to move people, raise money and build communities to change the world. He grew up in Australia, worked for many years in the US, and has for the last 10 years been based in the Nordics. In recent years, he’s helped the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation grow by record numbers and break fundraising records, guided the European Greens to an historic election result in 2019, and mobilised 10% of the Swedish population to pick up trash with Keep Sweden Tidy.