Has it really been a whole year since we launched our re-vamped charity benchmarking report, the Metrica Charity Radar? We have seen so many events shape the charity sector over the last twelve months, whether they are global crises, such as the Haiti Earthquake, or UK fundraising events which have captured the imagination, such as Eddie Izzard running an obscene amount in aid of Sport Relief.   

Here at Metrica, we’ve put together an annual version of our Radar report, to be able to see what has driven the news agenda across all the different charity sectors this financial year, and it makes for very interesting reading! 

To begin with, the Haiti earthquake was by far the biggest single event driving coverage, affecting over 20 charities, including Oxfam, the Red Cross and the DEC. This generated sustained coverage throughout January and February, as various organisations offered to help.  

Some stories were slightly smaller, but came back into the public eye throughout the year, such as the case of a policeman who left two police dogs to die in a hot car. The RSPCA were involved in this case when it was first reported, when the trial began and when sentencing occurred, proving that some stories can keep running over a long period of time.  

Political issues often made an appearance in our Radar report, illustrated by the fact that Gordon Brown is far and away the most prolific public figure to feature in charity coverage, being mentioned in over 15,000 articles this year, followed by the ever charitable Gary Barlow with almost 5,000! 

So who emerged top in the annual report? Get in touch to find out! Email the team on charity@metrica.net or give us a call on 020 7922 1670. The Radar report could be a great planning tool for next year’s PR activities, or just a great way to get an overview of all that has happened in your sector over the past 12 months.

A few of us here at Metrica were lucky enough to go to the CIPR Excellence Awards last night and it’s fair to say that they were excellent!  We had a small vested interest, as sponsor, but also as a number of our clients were nominated for the work they have done over the last year.

So we were very pleased to see both the British Heart Foundation awarded for their Christmas Campaign in the Consumer Relations category, as well as the Royal British Legion for their Poppy Appeal Launch from Basra in the Broadcast category.  Congratulations to both of them.  We were also pleased to see other charities picking up awards throughout the night, including Action for Children, Guide Dogs for the Blind and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Given the tough economic conditions, with falling donations and pr budgets under continuing pressure, it is great to see how well the sector is doing in achieving excellence in PR despite restricted budgets.  It goes to show how much can be achieved through creative and innovative pr whatever the circumstances. 

We hope to see even more charities pick up awards next year, as we know how much good work is going on everyday in the sector.  Congratulations again to the winners and to those nominated.

For a corporate organisation a partnership with a charity is expected to bring about many benefits, the main one being more favourable coverage. Looking at some of our own clients this is definitely the case, with charitable partnerships having a very significant impact, and really boosting strongly favourable coverage, and therefore, reputation. Job done!

But what is in it for the charities themselves? Apart from the huge financial rewards of course…. According to nfpSynergy 61% percent of charities they asked said that raising income is the main reason for corporate partnerships.  In the same nfpSynergy survey, 55% said that they use these partnerships to raise their profile. Here on the Govt/Nfp team we have many charity clients who are lucky enough to have a corporate partner, some even have quite a few. After a bit of good old ‘data interrogation’ it seems that these charities benefit just as much as the ‘corporates’ in terms of positive media coverage. But why I hear you ask?

For many smaller charities it can get them high-profile pieces in national publications, which they may never reach on their own. These partnerships can also be a great medium to communicate the key aims and messages of the charity, and be endorsed by a big name. Message delivery is often boosted by stronger spokesperson presence, with representatives from both the charity and its partner widely quoted in coverage. PR-led partnership events provide a great opportunity for a partner to explain their choice of charity, another useful means of driving favourability and message delivery. News of a partnership launch can generate attention-grabbing headlines that mention both company and charity.   

So how do you measure this impact? Metrica was lucky enough to evaluate coverage generated by Tesco’s Charity of the Year Partnership with the British Red Cross, which raised £4,428,000 over 2007, the largest amount generated through a corporate partnership in just one year. An examination of volume and tone of event coverage, rates of message delivery, spokesperson presence, prominence and impact revealed a well directed media campaign. Tracking spikes of coverage over time against hits to the partnership website further demonstrated public engagement with a campaign that reached a good proportion of the UK adult population.   

But choose your partner carefully! The charity's reputation may risk being tarnished by association with particular corporate organisations. A charity promoting labour rights would easily be compromised by a relationship with a company whose manufacturing ethics were subject to investigation. Anti-sweatshop activists criticized the Product Red’s links with Gap, despite Product Red's assurance that its products are not manufactured in sweatshops.   

So the moral of the story is gaining a corporate partner can be a fantastic opportunity for a charity, just make sure it’s the right one!

Unless, you’ve been on the moon for the last 12 months, you'll be aware that the economy is on something of a slow down at the moment and worse, many people are predicting a recession. 

Here on the Government & NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) team at Metrica we wanted to highlight some research that we found interesting and also to give a few tips for controlling costs and improving time efficiencies that many of our clients are successfully implementing. 

First, the research - published by nfpSynergy earlier this week, it indicates that unsurprisingly, donations are closely linked with GDP, and if that drops, so do donations.  However, the research also concluded that there was an average 17 month delay before a drop on GDP had an impact on a charity’s income. This means there is more than enough time to prepare for the worst and begin to turn the ship so it faces any potential crisis head on. 

In our experience, there are some areas that have proven to be of huge value as clients look to extract more benefit and save costs from their media monitoring and evaluation. Whilst these are particularly relevant to the NGO and charity sectors many of the points will also apply to any business or organisation looking to control costs without diminishing the value of reporting.  

So here are five of our main insights ... 

1. First, and maybe most importantly - making sure you get the right message to the right audience is paramount.  This is particularly the case as the exploding world of media (think online, CGM, social media, TV on demand etc) fragments your target audiences ever wider.  It’s never been more important to have a system in place that allows you to check whether you are reaching your target audiences with the right messages.  If you can’t identify whether you’re reaching your target audiences, why bother measuring at all? 

2.  Once you have identified who your core target audiences are and what they’re watching, reading and listening to, focus your efforts, your media monitoring and your PR measurement on these outlets.   

We see a lot of charities who generate an enormous number of cuttings. When the cuttings books roll in, it’s an impressive sight, until you realise that actually, many of the stories just aren’t relevant -  articles about a local cake sake for example.  The bottom line is that nice though it is, these ‘name checks’ won’t make things happen, they won’t drive fundraising and they won’t raise any awareness of your major issues and campaigns.  

That name check is costing you a lot of money.  I don’t need to tell you how much a cutting costs to be sourced, you will already be painfully aware of that.  Add the cost of getting that piece about the local cake sale analysed, and you’ve already blown a fiver in the time it takes for your monitoring agency’s computer to pick out a keyword.  Getting a few hundred of those a month?  Ouch. 

A specialist media evaluation consultancy will be able to advise you on getting the best from your monitoring brief, focussing in on what really matters.  Is a monitoring company going to offer you advice that will cost them money?   

3. Resist spurious measures like AVEs and other mickey mouse measures – do we really need to go there? You know the arguments against them make sense, now stop paying them lip-service and wave them good bye!  PR, the guardian of an organisation's reputation,  will never be taken seriously at boardroom level while low-end evaluation techniques are still put forward to justify a budget or demonstrate success.

4. Do your reports give you exactly what you need?  Think about what is most important to you, and the different members of your team.  Are you getting the information in a timely fashion? Is the report you receive one long tome with large parts of it irrelevant to your role within the organisation?  If you recognise any of these issues, you should consider utilising online media analysis and evaluation portals like our very own MyMetrica.  Many of our clients find that having the ability to access their data 24/7, in real time, and completely customized to each user’s specific requirements gives them the control over their data that they have been missing. 

5. As previously mentioned, target audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented, making reaching them ever harder.  Proper planning has never been more important.  PR planning when done correctly will allow you to understand your target audiences better, their lifestyles and importantly how best to reach them through the media.  The old familiar PR planning tools don’t help you to get close to your target audiences – instead look to learn from the creditable systems that advertising firms use – you could look into TGI lifestyles or ConsumerPulse for example. 

In conclusion, evaluate your success at reaching your target audiences, not how many cuttings are sitting on your desk every morning.  Control your costs by being ruthless about what is important and what is not; make these decisions based on accurate research rather than gut feel.  Avoid the spurious measures of yesterday in your media evaluation, and ensure that you are using the latest time saving tools.  You will find that your time and your budget will go a lot further!