An innovative new online marketplace specialising in face-to-face fundraising has launched in the UK with the aim of rejuvenating approaches to the field.
Formunauts One is the world’s first marketplace dedicated to the face-to-face community. The ‘one-stop-shop’ empowers charities and agencies to deliver highly effective fundraising campaigns in partnership. In addition, they provide specialist campaign creation and software solutions, from digital pitch decks to contactless donation platforms to help improve face-to-face execution. Formunauts One is now launching in the UK and is inviting charities and agencies to register their interest.
Formunauts One is the UK presence of the formunauts brand, which was founded in Austria by Reinhard Schlossnagel in 2014. Since then, they have helped deliver over 300 campaigns in nine countries globally for some of the biggest charities in the world, including WWF, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Greenpeace.
The company is headed up by Vaughan Thomas, who brings more than seven years’ experience of overseeing successful charity fundraising campaigns on a national level. Vaughan previously held the position of managing director for the agency Personal Fundraising Services, where he led the company to recruit more than 150,000 new donors a year across regular giving, Lottery and sponsorship campaigns.
Vaughan, who as managing director also co-owns formunauts One, said:
“Formunauts One is the future of face-to-face fundraising. We create missions fundraisers love to support, so we’re incredibly excited to introduce this ground-breaking approach to campaign creation and management to the UK charity sector.”
Charities using the platform will be offered expert support from a formunauts One consultant, helping them to create the best possible campaign. The campaign will then be listed on the online marketplace, where pre-vetted agencies can discover and choose the campaign based on their services and capacity. Once a partnership has been agreed, formunauts One will provide any additional support throughout the duration of the campaign, simplifying the process for both parties.
Formunauts One are already in advanced discussions with a number of leading agencies, and are now inviting charitable organisations to get in touch and register their interest. Among the changes formunauts One is introducing, they are seeking to make the market more accessible for charities looking to embark on a face-to-face campaign. This will open up the market to both smaller organisations and larger charities which can use smaller scale campaigns to trial new approaches before investing further in the most successful model.
The launch of the ground-breaking new marketplace comes at a particularly challenging time for the sector. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on charities, with some predicting large scale job lossesand charity bankruptcy due to falls in income of up to 50%. Despite the obvious need for organisations to raise funds to make up for this, fundraisers are often the ones who have been furloughed over the past 12 months.
Social distancing measures, widespread closure of shops and town centres and government guidance on limiting personal travel have also meant the negative impact of coronavirus has been particularly felt with regard to face-to-face fundraising. Many agencies and service providers have either had to halt activities entirely or attempt to innovate with their offering dramatically, with some even pivoting to provide coronavirus outreach services including delivering free home testing.
In comparison, to combat the challenges posed by social distancing measures, the formunauts One software has contactless capability, enabling not only donations but the entire pledge form to be completed without members of the public having to touch the fundraisers’ tablets.
And Vaughan believes the situation at hand provides the perfect opportunity to press the reset button on what he considers outmoded thinking in the fundraising community and explore more innovative, creative solutions. He said:
“For too long face-to-face has been held back by a narrow-minded vision of what constitutes success. Statistically a fundraiser needs to have 100 conversations to convert between two and three people to become donors – a huge waste when the criteria for success is based purely on this number. Thinking like this has to change.
“At formunauts One we enable agencies and charities to make the most of the vast opportunities presented by having face-to-face contact with members of the public. After all, there is so much more to fundraising than conversion alone. Formunauts One is here to unlock that potential.”
As part of their commitment to best practice, formunauts One requires all of its partners – both charities and fundraising agencies – to agree to membership charters. Criteria for membership includes ‘keeping to the Fundraising Regulator’s Code of Fundraising Practice’ and ‘rewarding fundraisers for their efforts by paying the equivalent of the Living Wage as a minimum’.
Vaughan added:
“Partnerships are key to everything we do, which is why our slogan is ‘Together we are One’. We are committed to working with all of our partners to make formunauts One synonymous with the highest quality fundraising practices, and raise vital, much-needed funds in the process.”
