Fundraising is successful with clear messaging and confident asking.  It is about belief in your organisation, your values, your ability to deliver, but above all your donors willingness to connect with your mission.

To #BuildBackBetter charities need to restore their belief in what they can achieve, and now be prepared to go out and deliver big fundraising campaigns that can make a massive difference.  

2021 is going to be about restoring hope in the future.  Charities make that happen by giving a funnel by which people and organisations can make that happen, through an act of giving.

If you agree that this is the year you want to turn it around, here’s how we can help.

Strategic advice

Deciding on what the next campaign should be or the level of ambition, can be difficult.  Or you may simply have a great idea in mind but just don’t know how to deliver it.  We give strategic support for organisations in this place. 

Fundraising messaging

Need to condense your message into something wonderfully attractive to inspire belief?  We help distil thinking into something which your audience and everyone internally can get behind.  Get this right and you’ll raise the money if you ask enough.

Structured asking

A wonderful idea doesn’t get funded because it is inspirational.  It gets the money because the right people are asked in the right way.  We’ll write fundraising applications for you, will coach major donor fundraisers, and will create mass giving mechanisms to deliver million-pound campaigns.  Get us involved and worry not about hitting your target.

Our consultants have tripled income for organisations, have run million pound fundraising campaigns and support some of the best funding approaches to corporates, trusts, grants and individual major donors.  

Want to learn more – book a non-obligatory meeting with us to discuss. Email Tom on tom@bettercentury.org.

Events have key components including presentations, panel sessions, Q&A, networking and sometimes workshops.  Digital events can replicate all of these very effectively if the right platform is chosen.  However, platforms do have a particular niche.  This blog will save you time by offering simple solutions tailored to your event needs, giving you cost-saving advice, whilst giving important insights on platforms that could be used.

If you like what you read and want some support Better Century helps organisations like Low Carbon Homes deliver amazing events.

Single Stage

Single stage events include presentations, panel sessions, Q&A and networking.   Other considerations should also be about branding and associated sponsorship. 

If you go with zoom (£32 a month for 100 attendees) you face problems around branding and live management of the event such as screen sharing, preparing panel sessions and muting, with there being very little opportunity for networking.  There are more professional platforms that alleviate these problems such as Hopin ($99 (£74) a month for 100 attendees) which offer branding, sponsorship space, networking, multiple rooms, speed networking and even support the use of recorded sessions.

An alternative is to stream your event.  This is done through OBS which allows for a technician to take zoom inputs and place them onto a branding background, and then control what is on screen.  You can even cast directly to a youtube channel or your own website and save money on zoom webinar.  

More sophisticated platforms such as SwapCard, HeySummit, Crowdcomms and Brella use this type of technology alongside networking and Q&A integration.  As you can also stream recorded sessions, you therefore have a virtual green room through zoom, making this the gold standard for single stage events. 

Our recommendation is to properly plan your event and move away from zoom into either a streamed system onto a system like Hopin.  The investment of time will allow you to brand and take away glitches, giving better audience engagement.

Virtual Engagement Spaces

Having a virtual space can make people feel like they’re attending a real event.  Engagements can happen during an event and then you will be disrupted by an activity.  Breaking up presentations and panel sessions and allowing people to have a conversation with one another about the content is natural, and gives events a proper conferencing and networking opportunities in the context of the event topic.

There are platforms that support this type of virtual space whilst also giving a stage for engagement as well.  They all offer uploading of recorded content and the ability to manage speakers behind close doors.  Here’s two platforms which could help you:

Remo is a pricey option at $1,200 per annum but gives great table interactions alongside a good virtual stage and whiteboard function for joint working.  Branding and ability to tailor the platform is amazing, and it even can be integrated into our spaces.

Airmeet is an amazingly low priced option with there even being capacity to use the system for up to 100 attendees without payment, $99 a month is the next step up with up to 1,000 attendees.  We’ve looked into this system and it provides really cool virtual engagement and is very easy to manage, but isn’t quite as brandable.

The alternative to these systems is Zoom, through break-out rooms, but we feel these platforms really offer a step up in terms of engagement and branding.  For little or no additional money your organisation can get a great experience for users!

Need some help in setting up an amazing event?

Look no further – Better Century can help.  We’ve got a great team of consultants that can help you plan, market and deliver your event.  Get in touch with Tom through tom@bettercentury.org to set up a non obligatory meeting.

This blog is for any organisation wishing to become carbon neutral or net zero. You may have made this commitment, now you wish to enact it. We tell you how here.

To become a carbon neutral organisation, the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted by the organisation needs to match the amount absorbed from the atmosphere through carbon sinks.  To achieve this an organisation needs to decide on the scope of GHGs included in the registry of emissions, assess the quantity produced from that scope and then calculate the amount absorbed from any carbon sinks.  

Once this data a trajectory to carbon neutrality needs establishing by considering how GHG emissions may be reduced or mitigated. This assessment and trajectory then needs to be communicated well.

Assessing Scope of Emissions Included

GHG emissions are broken into three scopes:

The only internationally recognised standard for carbon neutrality, from the Carbon Trust, sets a minimum requirement to assess Scope 1 and 2 emissions, with Scope 3 being encouraged.  To achieve ‘net zero’ scope 3 emissions needs to be included. 

Better Century recommends including scope 1 & 2 emissions, as well as scope 3 emissions where they are easily measurable.  Where possible avenues for gathering data around other scope 3 emissions become a means to communicate your commitment to suppliers, creating influence along the value change.  This will be important for consistency within your commitment and public relations.

Assessing Quantity of Emissions

DEFRA releases conversion factors to calculate emissions, and there are standards set for methods to calculate emissions from ISO14064.  Establishing a robust means to calculate emissions will ensure that when the organisation communicates its method to carbon neutral, it is robustly supported in methodology.

The common methods to assess carbon emissions are detailed in the below table, with grey areas showing the difficulty in calculating Scope 3 emissions, which may be addressed through surveys or policy requests, helping influence the supply chain.

Assessing Quantity of Emissions Sequestered

If an organisation owns land it may use standards set by ISO14064, to calculate emissions sequestered from that land holding.  The other means to sequester carbon are carbon offsetting schemes, which are controversial.  If carbon offsetting schemes, with natural sinks, were required by an organisation, we would recommend using gold or woodland carbon code standard.

To calculate emissions sequestered from land holdings, it is necessary to have data on the quantity of different habitats.  Academic data associated with specific habitats is then used to calculate carbon sequestering potential of those land holdings.

Reducing Emissions

The most significant sources of GHG emissions are likely from buildings and transport.  Below details possible mitigations for each of the common sources of carbon emissions.

Improvements on buildings may provide significant cost savings as well as carbon reductions, allowing for a solid financial case to be made for these improvements, which may well attract funding.  Transport may be achieved by moving slowly to electric and by setting policies and targets.

Establishing a trajectory of carbon emissions savings results in commitments to policy or expenditure.  The best method of creating a trajectory is to list possible mitigations and their emissions savings, assess the natural pathway to change (e.g. retiring of vehicle or boiler) and list the cost of the mitigation alongside annual savings, and payback periods.  

Once this business case has been done the organisation can choose when it will make these mitigations, allowing it to set a trajectory to emission reductions, and carbon neutrality.

Communicating Carbon Neutrality

The organisation needs to communicate three things:

• Why the organisation believes achieving carbon neutrality is important
• How it’s carbon footprint has been and will continue to be assessed
• What it will do to achieve carbon neutrality in line with its commitment

It is common for an organisation to create a web page to explain this, so it may be referenced in other pieces of communication.  To offer assurances the organisation should opt to achieve high levels of transparency of scope, methods and results.

To maximise upon the PR benefits of carbon neutrality the organisation should also consider publishing data on its carbon footprint and mitigations put in place in a given year in it’s annual report, as well as celebrating ongoing changes through social media.

Accreditation for Carbon Neutrality is possible to offer alternative assurance, but this comes at considerable cost.  The Carbon Trust holds the only international standard for Carbon Neutrality, the PAS 2060.  They will review the data used for calculations and provide accreditation alongside use of logos, for the cost of £7,000+ (depending on the level of information assessed).

Better Century’s Help to Achieve Carbon Neutrality

Carbon neutrality needs to be in the DNA of the organisation, not an outsourced annoyance.  We therefore help to fill skills and resource gaps, with the aim of empowering internal resources to deliver this work. 

The services we offer are therefore flexible.  We provide the following method (from which organisation can pick and choose):

• Initial consultation to determine scope of assessments and discuss methodology.
• Data sheets for organisations to provide data necessary to deliver the assessment.
• Surveys and questionnaires to engage staff, volunteers and suppliers.
• Assessment of carbon footprint to ISO14064 standards, including quantity of emissions produced and sequestered.
• Site visit to assess buildings energy efficiency and potential for different forms of heating.
• Creation of mitigations sheet detailing business case for adoption, with recommendations for carbon neutral trajectory.
• Work with external bodies to enable accreditation.
• Written piece for website.
• Training of staff and provision of spreadsheets to calculate ongoing carbon footprint.
• Workshops with staff and other stakeholders to identify popular recommendations.

Outside of the Carbon Neutral activities, Better Century can also support the communications team in providing content to encourage organisations staff and customer base to make changes to reduce their own carbon emissions.

To learn more email tom@bettercentury.org or set up a meeting with him here.