Testing the hypothesis for lifestyle fundraising
I’ve been learning about how to implement geolocation in chatbots and had an idea about tracking walks, which made me think about Just Walk, a BHF fundarising product, and whether it would be possible get supporters into ‘lifestyle fundraising’ where they don’t have to organise anything special but include their fundraising in their daily routine.
Problem
How do we encourage supporters to enter into long-term small-value recurring fundraising?
Product
Just Walk, a participant-lead fundraising campaign where a supporter commits to walking and gets sponsorship. Usually supporters are encouraged to organise a significant distance walk but short distance walks, e.g. on the way to work, could become fundraising opportunities.
Challenge
Digitaising the Just Walk product to validate the hypothesis that dedicated supporters can collect ongoing small value sponsorship from their sponsors, rather than a one-off fundraising, by integrating their Just Walk activities into their daily routine.
What might it look like
When the supporter registers for Just Walk they are encouraged to download the app or start a conversation with the chatbot or visit a mobile optimsed web page with geolocation functionality. Registration generates a link that they send to their potential sponsors and ask them to register on the website, where they enter they payment details into Stripe/Changebee or some other recurring payments provider.
When a supporter decides to go for a walk they record their start location and when they have finished they record their end location in the app, chatbot or web page, which calculates how many miles they walked and asks them if they’d like to ask their sponsors for the same number of pounds or save the walk to add up for the week. If they say yes, their sponsors receive an email with a link to a pre-populated payment web page where the payment is taken. To prompt them into going for more walks the app could include notifications such as ‘It’s Sunday morning, great time to go for a walk’, a chatbot could do the same with messages, and automated emails could be used for the website.
The sponsor can unregister from the supporters Just Walk at any time and their payment details will be deleted. And supporters can unregister at any time and delete the app/stop the conversation with the chatbot/close their account on the website.
Metrics
I think the metrics around supporters recording their walks would be interesting but most interesting thing will be to see how often a sponsor would pay those small amounts before they stop supporting as this would help tell us what people think about ‘lifestyle fundraising’.
Potential issues
Per transaction costs exceeding the value of the donations.