First of all, an apology: if you supported our campaign and have not received in the last two weeks an individualised report and thank-you from us, please click this link and just send us the email that pops up. Our UK payments provider, Justgiving, has made it impossible for us to thank you directly. We need to rebuild our database with your email addresses. Apologies, and we will try to do better with our suppliers next time. Now for the report itself on what was a very successful matching-funds campaign.
Find out who donated here
See what they said here
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There is a saying for it in the Scots language: A wheen o'mickle maks a muckle. In the Oxfam shops of English country towns you can still hear the Anglo-Saxon equivalent, "many a mickle makes a muckle".
Literally, it means an accumulation of little things adds up to a lot. This was the ancient idea behind openDemocracy's matching-funds campaign. In our case it was also part of the novel reshaping of openDemocracy under the leadership of Tony Curzon Price, our new chief executive.
We launched the campaign on 12 January and closed it at the end of February. We set a target of £40,000. The campaign became marooned on its midway mark. But warning messages that it could end by missing its target led to a rush of donations and we made it. Best of all, over 800 of you gave. From what we gather at least another 800 intended, sometimes even tried to give. Don't worry, I am sure we will be back because we have started to create an openDemocracy network.
We are extremely grateful to everyone who supported the campaign and are now assessing the lessons.
Here are some highlights of what happened.
It began when Tony Curzon Price and I met with David and Elaine Potter, and Angela Seay the director of their charitable trust. Tony explained how he intends to transform openDemocracy, building on its editorial achievement to create a more participative community. The Potters were supportive but sceptical and the idea emerged that we would seek to match any grant they made, to start the process of community-building. They gave £25,000 to the Open Trust where it was ring-fenced to be released only when matched by small contributions.
John le Carré heard about this and he and his wife offered a further £5,000 to the amount to be matched; then the Open Trust itself offered a further £10,000, making a healthy matching total.
We launched with what is called a "segmented ask", with separate emails to our authors, to those who had already given over the past five years, and to those who filled in our 2006 readers and users survey and added their emails.
We told the latter group they could see a summary of what they had told us about "who we are" in a special pdf. Here is the link.
Two general emails from Isabel Hilton followed and were published on the site, the first launched the campaign, the second announced John le Carré's support - and summarised his far-sighted article warning against the folly of invading Iraq that published in openDemocracy in January 2003.
Le Carré's generous endorsement of our work lifted the campaign but the Iraq message did not have as great an impact in terms of generating interest in the United States as we had hoped. After a pause, Tony decided to set out the full stall of how openDemocracy has been funded and the direction he wants to take it. If you have not read it, I recommend it.
We learned that very short emails had almost as much impact as long ones. Now that we had set out our case and everyone was aware of it, we started to issue brief reminders. But as we struggled to get past £25,000, it still looked as if we'd fall well short of the target.
Tony Curzon Price's explanation of the thinking behind openDemocracy's appeal for financial support is here:
"Who pays for openDemocracy?" (February 2007)
There is nothing worse than an appeal that drags on and on - or a thermometer that barely moves. We decided that we would end the campaign and let everyone know. Katherine Hudson sent the warning email. There was an instant response. It seems that many had thought to themselves that they will, should or must send something....later.
There is no "later" on the internet. The deadline spurred action; ninety-six people gave nearly £4,000 on 19 March alone. The target came into view and a small number of personal appeals took us over the top, just in time. Thank you again to all who made it possible.
I have been struck by the new character of internet campaigning compared with the pre-internet era, when I first built the organisation around Charter 88. In Britain, much has stayed the same: the key to building an effective organisation is to try to have a real relationship with everyone who participates. But much has changed too: the timescales of internet campaigning, the immediate feedback available. We will now be building on the matching-funds campaign. We will try new ways of offering readers forms of involvement and support to create an influential openDemocracy network. We will be asking for your help in this. All suggestions are welcome.
And, once more, thank you to everyone who made the matching-funds campaign a great success.
