All our yesterdays: the fundraising archive showcase

Help the Aged ‘You have this gift’ direct mail acquisition pack

Breakthrough discovery! New material is unearthed, adding new insight to one of SOFII’s ‘Best of the Best’ campaigns ‘The idea for the pack came when he was taking the opaque plastic lid off a takeaway cup of coffee on the train.’

RCSB Bhopal emergency appeal

Created in less than two hours, this ad went on to raise more than 20 times its total costs in just a few days, to become a classic example of disaster appeal advertising. More than £420,000 was raised and most of it directly attributable to the press advertisements.

The ActionAid inserts with built-in reply mechanism

This promotion raised £millions and won almost every direct marketing award going. It also helped propel a new and little known organisation called ActionAid into the list of Britain's top 20 charities. Action Aid created a new format, which was then copied by dozens, perhaps hundreds of other organisations.

UNICEF: the card that launched UNICEF’s fundraising

UNICEF’s very first ever Christmas card would lead to the multi-million dollar international business that is UNICEF’s cards today.

RSPCA’s pile of dead dogs advertisement

This high impact poster from Britain’s leading animal welfare charity stopped a nation of dog lovers in their tracks. It changed the way many British people felt about one of their most respected, most ‘establishment’ charities.

Oxfam’s press ads from the 1950s and 60s

These press advertisements really did change the course of fundraising in Britain. They helped Oxfam to grow into a substantial international charity. Though they might seem crude and simplistic now, these ads very effectively alerted the post-war British public to considerable humanitarian needs abroad.

Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy continue with letters nine, 10 and 11, from 1948 and 1949.

Reporting back, storytelling and irresistible offers – more fundraising gems from Bruce Barton.

Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: from 1946/47, letters six, seven and eight.

Featured here are letters six, seven and eight from the 21 letters in this SOFII series, three more fine examples of the fundraising letter-writer’s art from an age gone by.

Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy: From 1945, letters three, four and five.

These letters are masterful examples of wrapping up serious information in easy conversational style. Find letters three, four and five here.

Bruce Barton’s fundraising letters for Deerfield Academy, from the 1940s.

Written between 1944 and 1960, the 22 letters in this series reputedly raised over US$2 million. Serious direct mail copywriters will study these letters carefully and will profit accordingly. 

Great Ormond Street Hospital Christmas mailing in 1941

What an achievement for Great Ormond Street Hospital’s fundraisers during the Second World War, someone kept their mailing for 70 years. 

British Red Cross: the £7.7 billion appeal that changed British fundraising forever

The Duke of Gloucester’s Red Cross and St John Appeal Fund is the largest charitable fund in the history of British fundraising, raising the equivalent of £7.7 billion. This monumental exhibit should be read by all.

The RNLI ‘stand behind these men’ press ad

The message is simple and direct – it tells who the RNLI is, what it does, and gets straight to the point by asking what the reader will contribute. It also uses a photograph of a crew member at the top of the page – a tradition that continues today.

Albert Street Methodist Sunday School: the foot of pennies from the 1930s

A small yet colourful part of England’s fundraising heritage had been discovered in a Methodist chapel about to be demolished. As their finder explains, these fun feet of pennies are engagement devices designed to make collecting for charity easy and so to hook neophytes into the habit of giving.

The Bruce Barton letter: the classic long copy letter from 1925 that pulled a 100 per cent response

He sounds like the racy detective hero from a 1930s crime thriller. But Bruce Barton is something else, for sure – a great copywriter and communicator.

RNLI: Britain’s first-ever street collection, 1891

An appalling loss of life in 1886 leads to the invention of a fundraising classic that's still raising millions today. A horrific double tragedy brought about Britain’s first-ever street collection for a charitable cause. It was a significant milestone in the history of voluntary action in the UK and elsewhere.

Dr Barnardo’s Homes: four fundraising greats from the distant past

Dr Thomas Barnardo was one of the Victorian era’s great philanthropists. These archive examples of his personal fundraising style and efforts are a unique treasure for the body of fundraising knowledge and best practice.

The elephant man: a fundraising success story from 1886.

The extraordinary story of how a successful fundraising appeal transformed the final years of one of the most tragic and moving figures of the Victorian age.

Founding of the British Red Cross: a spectacular result from a letter to a national newspaper, 1870.

This is an important piece of fundraising history. It explains how one of the world’s most significant international humanitarian organisations took root in the UK. Also, it records the moment when a brief correspondence in a leading national newspaper of the day showed the British public’s extraordinary capacity to react with inspirational generosity at a time of evident need.

A Dismal Swamp: an extract from Our Mutual Friend showing Charles Dickens’ view of fundraising in Victorian England

Charles Dickens’ perceptive view of fundraising from Our Mutual Friend, 1864. Download this entertaining and instructive insight into fundraising from 150 years ago.

Great Ormond Street Hospital: legacy marketing 1856

Why is it that the giving and receipt of legacies figured strongly in Victorian literature, yet is largely absent today? The announcement in the annual report of The Hospital for Sick Children (later Great Ormond Street Hospital) appeared just four years after the hospital was founded, but it was already obvious that gifts of legacies would be very important to the health and development of the hospital.

The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade: minute regarding the need for fundraising: from 1788

This piece offers a unique insight into how, 220 years ago, funds were raised to help fight one of the greatest social evils of all time.

In its formality, the 114-word single sentence of this solicitation has a distinctly quaint character.

How Harvard University got its name - major gift fundraising in the seventeenth century.

The examples in this exhibit are almost 400 years old, yet it would seem that we are still making the same mistakes today when it comes to major gift fundraising.

Eihei Dogen fundraising letter: from 1235

Sent in the year 1235, this may be the oldest fundraising letter on record. It is also an extraordinarily competent appeal that identifies the different types of people that the writer wishes to address.

Pliny the Younger and the first appeal for matching funds, c. 100 AD.

About 20 years after famously witnessing the eruption of Vesuvius that engulfed Pompeii, Pliny the Younger, perhaps the most generous benefactor of the Roman era, created a matching fund to help the parents in his home town to fund their school.

Paul the apostle motivates his church’s donors – c. 56 AD

This could be the first ever appeal for regular, committed donors. In the early days of the Christian church the missionary Paul asked his supporters in the city of Corinth to set aside a small portion of their income regularly, to sustain victims of a famine and then later to support good works generally.

St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians

This may not be the world’s earliest ever recorded mention of fundraising but it could well be the first ever example of a fundraising director exhorting his troops to achieve their targets. Or, do you know different?

The first ever major donor dinner – c. 970 BC

With a clear target, a list of major prospects, an inspirational lead gift and a fantastic end result, the only thing that’s not ‘state of the art’ about this event is that it happened 3,000 years ago.

Moses raises funds for the tabernacle – c. 1,500 BC

This is now the oldest exhibit on SOFII (and will be, until you tell us different). It’s also a surprisingly instructive fundraising case history. If you look at the detailed notes it becomes quite clear that the prophet Moses was an accomplished fundraiser who both understood his audience and appreciated the nuances of his fundraising proposition and how it would be received.