Summary


This guide is to help you on your quest for recruiting new and engaged good causes. This
should be your primary focus in the running of your lotter as it is the easiest and most
efficient way to grow your lottery. We appreciate that there are often resource and budget
issues associated with the running of your lottery and often the focus can be steered in
other directions. Now, let's get back on track!


Do you remember why your lottery was started?
Do you think it could do more to help raise vital funds in the local community?
Does it need a bit of a kickstart to becoming a more sustainable model for ongoing
growth of your Community Fund Pot….?


If you’ve answered yes to all or any of these then please, keep on reading.

Model: Good Causes are multipliers by promoting the lottery to their supporters

 

The model for growing your lottery is simple! Keep recruiting new engaged good causes! In
turn their marketing efforts drive your lotteries growth as each new good cause agrees to
selling at least 20 tickets in their first 4 weeks.
Considering that the average cause sells 20 or more tickets a week you can start to
understand the value of a good cause. The table below shows annual funds raised based
on good cause count.

 

 

Plan how to reach out to new causes:
Set a target for the year, quantify this to what revenue it would drive to the community fund
and overall, for good causes for the year.


For example;
50 good causes with 20 tickets each = £31,200 raised for good causes


This means you’d be looking to recruit at least four to five good causes a month. To help
you reach your targets and create effective marketing strategies we have analysed the data
from over 6000 good causes in our database.

 

 

By looking at the ‘How did you hear about us’ data from the registration form across the
database the top three channels for promotion are email, word of mouth (friend) and
Facebook. Twitter is not hugely influential nor are search engines, at present. By far the
most popular option for this is ‘other’. They may have seen specific marketing that is not
listed in the options such as council website, bus advertisements, bin lorry’s, events etc.
Don’t forget you can ask your account manager to add to these options if you are running a
specific campaign and would like to track this, we just need at least 2 weeks’ notice.

 

Key Causes
We have also identified popular causes from our database that typically generate the most
support so you know where to concentrate your marketing efforts.

 

Internal Good Cause Recruitment Campaign
(Plan to run this quarterly)


How many employees work at the council? How many of these have children and know of a
PTA or are associated with sports clubs, maybe they are part of a club themselves or know
of a local charity that could really benefit from using your lottery to raise vital funds?


Internal comms
We know that this requires very little budget and can go a very long way in terms of
recruitment for good causes.


Link in with your comms team to deliver a good cause recruitment campaign to include:


• Intranet - Update the staff intranet with a headline banner advert promoting the
benefits of your lottery to local good causes with a link to further info that colleagues
can share with organisations they think may be interested. Perhaps you could
incentivise this with a claim code campaign.
• Email all staff - With a promotion around Good Cause recruitment with links to the
registration page etc ‘Click here to see available asset’
• Screens - Use council screens for an advert for Good Cause Recruitment. Are there
service centres and/or receptions areas with screens, any other screens? You can
make your own or ask Gatherwell, just provide the file type and screen size required
and we’ll give you something like this: https://vimeo.com/425884599

  • Newsletter - Does your council have an internal newsletter or a News page on the
    website? Ask the team that administers it if they would publish an article about the
    lottery, encouraging local good causes to sign up and add a link to your lottery
    website. ‘Click here to see available asset’
  • Nominations - Encourage co-workers to get involved. Many people may volunteer
    or support local good causes that would be perfect for the platform. Ask them to
    nominate causes for you to contact and send out further information. Causes will be
    delighted to know someone has considered them for support! ‘Click here for asset’

 

Councillors
Are your councillors aware of and promoting the benefits of being a good cause on your
community lottery? Councillors are community ambassadors they understand the pressure
points and the good causes on the front line and are often asked by good causes for
fundraising solutions.


• Democratic Services - Speak to the Democratic Services team to circulate an email
to the councillors ‘Click here for asset to use’
• Word of mouth - Are your elected members promoting the lottery? Why not try to
get on the agenda of the next council meeting (or similar) and remind them to get out
into their constituencies and tell local groups to sign-up to the lottery. Don’t forget to
share this information with new members when they are elected – they can be the
most enthusiastic advocates.

 

Council Resources
What resources do you have within your council?


• Officers - Do you have community development officers and Sports Development
Officers who come into contact with community groups? Why not ask them to tell the
groups they come into contact with about the benefits of joining the lottery? Sending
them an email to forward with a case study on a similar cause from your lottery can
really help perspective causes visualise the benefits of signing up. ‘Click here for
asset to use’


• Community Groups - Does your council maintain a list of community groups in the
area? If so, we can provide you with an email to send them promoting the benefits of
signing up their cause. ‘Click here for asset to use’


• Grant applicants - Does the council provide funding for community groups (either
through the lottery or through other grants/contracts) if so, encourage all supported
groups to sign-up to the lottery. You could even add it as a question on the grant
application form.


• Customer Support Centres - Does your council have a customer support centre?
Make sure you have leaflets available to the public. Also ensure that customer-facing
staff are aware of the lottery so they can mention it to people involved in groups.


• Websites - Place an advert with a link to your good cause registration page on all
council and partner websites the council has access to.


• Posters - With testimonials from other good causes in doctors
surgeries/libraries/local coffee shops 


CVS
• Your local CVS are connected to so many local good causes. If you have not already
done so reach out to your local CVS and/or voluntary sector forum to develop a
relationship with them to support the community lottery. Ask them if they can
promote the lottery to good causes as great way to raise ongoing funds. For
example, can they put it in their newsletter, on their website, on the agenda of an
event or meeting? You may wish to use assets from this guide to help support
them in informing causes of the opportunity.


Social media
Your lottery is an online fundraising solution so it makes sense that you effectively utilise
every online marketing solution that you have access to. Link in with your comms team to
ask them to support you with this.


• Council Social Media - Utilise the council’s main Facebook and Twitter pages. Ask
the team that maintains it to do posts such as “Calling all local good causes – did
you know you can raise year-round funds by joining XXX Lottery etc.”
• Your lottery social media accounts - Also, post welcome posts when a good
cause joins the lottery to your Lottery Facebook page and ask the managers of the
council pages to ‘like’ and ‘share’ these posts, it’s a great way to start building a
relationship with your causes. Don't forget to ‘mention’ them in your post so they can
see it. This may encourage them to share on their own platforms, which will help
spread the message of the lottery too.


Events
• Keep an eye on forthcoming events in your area. If you see a suitable community
event, print off some of the lottery resources we provide and ask the organisers to
distribute them at the event. Better still attend the event with a stall/pop up banner
and speak to people in person, perhaps you could invite one of your top performing
good causes along to help with promoting this to other good causes? Share these
stories on social media before and after the events.

 

External Good Cause Recruitment


Research how many potential good causes there are in your region and map the key areas
to target. We know schools, animal welfare and sporting clubs and associations are
amongst the top performers, so, these could be a good starting point. The idea is to focus
on the key causes that will generate the most support. You may also wish to look into the
areas that have higher levels of giving as causes associated with these areas are more
likely to perform better on your lottery.


Channels:
• List of school Governors - Write a letter to the school to promote the lottery to their
PTA and follow this up after a week or so with the school/PTA
• Facebook - Consider running a PTA (or other specific category of good cause)
recruitment campaign on your council Facebook account
• Chairs of sporting associations - Who plays in the local football league and coordinates all of the games? Do you or anyone at the council know this kind of contact? Could they link you in with them for you to provide information on the funds
they could raise with your lottery?
• Charities register - Looking at the charities register, locate and contact local
charities. Cross reference this against contact details you hold or can find. Find a
way to contact them to inform about the opportunity.
Write out to a volume of CEOs via a letter from a counsellor. and follow this up with a
direct mail to the charity.
• Social media - Campaign this could be planned in line with a special bolt-on draw.
Could you utilise budget to provide a prize to incentivise good causes to sign up and
current good cases to sell tickets? We know there is more ticket sale conversion with
the site through Facebook over twitter for supporters BUT causes are more active
on Twitter over Facebook.
Don’t forget about Linkedin – create relevant posts for causes and get colleagues to
like and post it too.
• Local bloggers with large followings are also worth reaching out to and asking if
they would mind giving the local community lottery a mention in their next blog.

• GC roadshow - Attend local libraries meet causes and public and encourage
participation. You could invite a top performing good cause along to help with the
promotion and in return offer free PR in the form of press release/social media
mentions. I strong communications/marketing plan before, during and after is
required for this to be effective.
• External newsletters – Reach out and connect with regional and local news outlets,
newspapers and online with good news stories about local cause and the lottery
within the community with a steer to driving more good cause sign ups.
• Hyper local press – Parish and village newsletters, town and village websites,
Lifestyle magazines – print and online. These all are digested by the local community
and are a great way to draw the attention of those grass roots causes.
• Affiliated channels – Charity newsletters, community organisations, business
organisations and their websites
• PR for Press and Radio - encourage local press/radio to do a feature on local good
causes, has your good cause signed up? Press release (establish a relationship with
local press)


If you are considering any of the above ideas please speak to your account
manager to see where we may be able to add any value.