Give Cash: A New Approach to Humanitarian Funding

Give Cash was a test by the British Red Cross raising money specifically for cash and voucher assistance (CVA). Give Cash aimed to leverage the position of the Red Cross as innovative leaders in CVA to engage a new audience of “effective altruists”, who want to donate to the most efficient organisations.

The Fundraising Innovation team at British Red Cross exists to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the organisation by developing innovative, insight-led fundraising products to engage new audiences in the work of the Red Cross. 

The team saw an opportunity to reach an audience of people who follow the principles of “effective altruism”, an approach aiming to use data to calculate which interventions make the most positive impact. This audience is analytical, make decisions based on evidence, and want their donations to be used in the most cost-effective way to create the most impact. They are interested in how tech can be leveraged to solve global issues and like to see innovative solutions. They are affluent, with strong giving behaviours (stat), but do not largely give to the British Red Cross as they do not perceive it to be aligned with the abovementioned values.

Meanwhile, cash and voucher assistance is being mainstreamed across the RCM as it can be deployed quickly and efficiently, enables people to buy what they need most, and is backed by extensive evidence. 

The Fundraising Innovation team saw an opportunity to engage this audience with an ask to donate to CVA, highlighting its cost-effectiveness, its proven impact, and how it enables people to make their own choices about what they need. Since the main organisations targeting this audience, for example Givewell and Give Directly, are more established in the US, there was a gap in the market for an organisation to target effective altruists based in the UK.

The proposition:

A regular gift to its CVA programmes, so money goes directly to people in crisis rather than overheads.

It created a set of design principles to inform how to communicate the benefits of CVA:

Effective: Statistics to back this up
Impact: Cuts out middle man, gets people what they need
Human: People have dignity; quotes from people receiving cash
Tangible: Cash becomes food, medicine, shelter

How it meets audience need:

This approach aligns with its audience’s values of efficiency, data-informed action, agency for people being supported, and tangible impact. It used terminology around “cash transfers” to help people immediately understand how CVA works.

It led with striking statistics—for example, 4 in 5 people in crisis prefer receiving cash to aid parcels, so they can buy what they really need—and signposted to a page of research documents backing these claims up.

Fund allocation:

In order to restrict donations to CVA, finance coding infrastructure meant it had to choose a specific CVA programme. It originally restricted all donations to a CVA programme in Poland supporting people affected by the crisis in Ukraine, then later broadened this to all countries affected by the Ukraine crisis. This was selected due to the high audience interest and media coverage around this emergency.

As this is a regular giving product, it included messaging that the monthly gift could support CVA programmes in other countries and crises over time, giving it the ability to change the fund allocation if needed.

Reaching its audience:

It tested recruiting for Give Cash between Oct 2022-Oct 2023 on digital channels including paid search, Meta, and Reddit. Paid search performed best, benefiting from high search traffic related to the Ukraine crisis. However, on Meta and Reddit, many audience-related keywords were too niche to target or Subreddit audiences were small in number, meaning it struggled to reach effective altruists. It also leveraged a celebrity endorsement from broadcaster and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett, who had seen the positive impacts of its CVA first-hand.

Overall, it recruited 88 regular givers at a CPA of £485. This was higher than forecast but lower than other regular giving tests on digital channels in a similar period.

Long-term engagement:

Its average gift and attrition rate both exceeded targets, showing potential for long-term engagement. Supporters gave on average £17 per month before Gift Aid, with 33% attrition in year 1. These results mean a projected ROI of 1.71 by Year 5.

Messaging:

Feedback was very positive, and supporters were enthusiastic about the benefits of CVA. “The messaging of direct help really resonated with me, and the sense of cash payments being more respectful of people’s individual circumstances,” said one Give Cash supporter.

It surveyed all supporters on the post-donation page using Hotjar and found that 72% of respondents matched its intended audience.

Its audience responded well to ads that used infographics and memes, demonstrating the benefits of CVA in creative ways that stood out from typical charity ads.

Internal feasibility:

There is no single finance code for CVA, meaning a complicated and manual back-end process to allocate funds. This prevented it from being more agile with its messaging and talking about cash in a wider variety of emergencies.

It would be a stronger proposition if it were able to say, “Donate £10 and someone in crisis will receive £10.” However, the huge variations in operational costs, such as transfer fees, make this incredibly complicated, so it was not able to make this claim.

Its strategic focus is to mainstream CVA as a default mode of aid, not treated as a separate service, which may be at odds with raising restricted funds for CVA only.

Future:

As of Oct 2024, Give Cash is in a backlog, with approximately 50 donors still giving monthly. It will be included in a wider portfolio review at the end of 2024 to determine whether to continue or end the project.