SCIAF: Creating a focused and powerful message
By acknowledging that their messaging needed power and focus SCIAF (the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund) initiated an organization-wide process to overhaul their fundraising communications which would allow the Individual Giving program to flourish.
Creating a New Ambition
Inspired by Trócaire, their fellow Caritas Internationalis member in Ireland, and their message – ‘Until Love Conquers Fear’ – SCIAF set to work on bringing clarity to their own purpose.
Getting a mix of trustees and staff from across the organisation to work with PFI was crucial to SCIAF starting to become a Great Fundraising Organization. We have a new sense of purpose, a new way of thinking and believing, and a new energy, which will get us over the line.
Penelope Blackwell,
Director of Public Engagement
The charity knew that those who faced the greatest levels of global poverty are the worst affected by natural disasters, violent conflict, and political instability. This sentiment needed to be at the heart of their fundraising messaging.
And so, during an intensive seminar SCIAF developed a renewed sense of energy, enthusiasm and purpose behind a new message – ‘We have to reach the poorest people first’.
Driven from within
SCIAF knew that organisational buy-in would be essential to fundraising success. By developing a New Ambition together, teams from across the charity were more engaged with fundraising and understood the importance of spending time and resources on its development. Even to the point of programs team members stepping up to become ambassadors for fundraising in their respective departments.
This gave SCIAF the confidence to devise a new vision to double their fundraising from £25m to £50m over the next five years. An ambition to match the scale of the need.
Opportunity out of crisis
When Covid-19 struck in 2020 they used this as the moment to kick-start their fundraising surge. The virus was not only a new reason for the world’s poorest to suffer but exacerbated the already intolerable conditions of some 115,000,000 people living in the worst state of poverty.
Covid-19 only worsened the ‘Poverty Pandemic.’
Motivated by a new-found purpose, collective buy-in, and a surge of creativity, SCIAF launched their Summer appeal in 2020 and raised over £200,000 – more than double the value of the target they had set.