I am about to be involved in a dramatic reconstruction of the Wannsee Conference.

("Please, sir, what’s that, sir?" "The Wannsee Conference, in 1942, was when the senior state officials of the Third Reich decided, under the direction of Reinhardt Heydrich, on the exact nature of the final solution of 'the Jewish problem'. Now pay attention, Couldry, and stop drawing Messerschmitts on that girl's blouse.")

This prospect made me start thinking about the nature of professionalism. One of the remarkable aspects of the final days of WWII is that, as the Red Army rolled inexorably west, the cattle trucks continued to rattle in vast numbers beneath the wrought iron words 'Arbeit Macht Frei'. Despite the annihillation of exhausted German troops starved of fuel and supplies, Adolf Eichmann continued to perform miracles of organisation to grease the wheels of the extermination machine.

It was a remarkable display of professionalism.

Professionals carry out a brief, as instructed, to the very best of their ability. They use all the skills in which they have been trained, and get paid accordingly. So do the girls who hang around King’s Cross, to whom one should pay equal respect.

But if you're looking for someone to admire, I say save it for the gifted, driven amateur. It is amateurs who change things, who invent things, who are unafraid to argue with the system that is, in favour of the system they believe should be. If that amateur can bring professional skills to the task, so much the better: but the fire in the boiler will always be the amateur's.

And as I was thinking these thoughts, what should pop up in my in email inbox but another endearing collection of homespun wisdom. Sometimes, in all that sugary, tooth-sticking marshmallowyness, there's a nut to bite on:

Remember: the Titanic was built by a large group of highly trained professionals. A lone amateur built the Ark.

The views expressed above are those of the writer, Barry Evans, and not necessarily shared by other Whitewater staff.

Posted by Whitewater Team at 04:25 PM | Permalink

Have you ever played Old English Skittles? There are only a couple of places in London with old-fashioned skittle alleys - we found one in the cellar of a nice gastro-pub, The Freemasons Arms, conveniently located just a short distance from us in Hampstead.

Now I can tell you know that skittles is nothing like ten-pin bowling. You don’t get a bowling ball, you get a flat, wooden disc-shaped implement: the 'cheese'.

The order of play is that you grab your cheese, take two steps, and hurl it (preferably in the direction of the skittles some 21ft away) without bouncing! Thankfully a nice man, Paul, showed us how to throw this dangerous weapon, otherwise I’m sure there could have been serious damage caused!

I can thoroughly recommend a night of skittles to anyone. We had such a hoot! The real ale and wine were flowing, and the noise we made enticed a few punters to nip down and see what we were up to!

The night was just what the doctor ordered - after a few really busy months, it was great to let off some steam. Needless to say, next morning the atmosphere in the office was rather subdued...

Nicky Thomas

Posted by Whitewater Team at 01:46 PM | Permalink

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have appointed charity direct marketing specialists Whitewater to support the development and implementation of their individual donor fundraising strategies.

The brief focuses on two areas:

1. The development and implementation of a legacy marketing strategy for both the London Zoo and Whipsnade sites.

2. The launch of the Zoological Society of London's first supporter appeal: to raise &500,000 for Gorilla Kingdom - the new exhibition will transform the centre of London Zoo, offering a unique view of Gorillas and other forest animals, whilst demonstrating ZSL's associated conservation work, and is due to open at Easter 2007.

Teague Flannery, Development Executive of ZSL said, "This an exciting time for the Society. We know that there is huge potential for ZSL to increase income from individual donors and legators and we look forward to raising awareness of the charity’s need for voluntary income. Whitewater's track record and initial ideas convinced us that they are the right agency to help us on this journey."

Steve Andrews, Whitewater's Managing Director, said, "ZSL are an internationally respected brand with wonderful donor propositions. We feel privileged to have been given this brief."

Posted by Whitewater Team at 09:40 AM | Permalink

Our website is a blog. You probably already know that a blog is an online journal or diary – 'blog' being short for 'web log'. The entries, or posts, are displayed in date order, so when you look at our homepage (or click 'Main' above), what you see are the five most recent posts, newest first.

So when a post disappears from the homepage, where does it go? Is it lost to the mists of time? Oh no. Every time we make a post we assign it to a particular category. That means you can browse all posts by looking through the category links to the right. Some of the categories (like 'Contact') have only one post in them, others have many. Alternatively, you can look at old posts month by month, by using the monthly archives – again, links to the right. Categories or Archives: the content is the same, the only difference is the way they’re organised.

There are two great things about blogs: first, they're really easy to update so there should be new content regularly. Of course, you can bookmark your favourite blogs and visit them once a week to check for new content, but another way to keep track of them is by using 'newsfeed' software (like NetNewsWire), or by using a service like Bloglines. More on this in a future post, which I will link to from here.

The second great thing is that a blog allows dialogue between author(s) and readers. All you need to do is click on the 'Comments' link that you'll find at the bottom of each post, and fill in the form that appears. Your message won't appear on the website straight away - comments are moderated so that inappropriate content can be filtered out - but it will appear as soon as it's been checked, and your message will be forwarded to the relevant person here at Whitewater, so that they can respond.

We don't want to create blog posts just to hear ourselves type: we want to create a site that is useful and interesting to people who read it. You can help us do that by letting us know what we're doing right (and wrong), when you agree (and disagree), what you love (and hate) about our site. Or if there's any particular issue you'd like to hear our thoughts on, we'll do our best to oblige.

Anna Crofton

Posted by Whitewater Team at 02:53 PM | Permalink

Question: How do you get donors to give to a disaster that hasn't happened yet? Or worse, give to a disaster that happens time and time again, and so seems a pointless cause, because nothing can be done to stop the inevitable.

This has been a problem that Chris and I have faced a few times, for clients who had asked us to do disaster-risk-reduction (catchy title, no?) - or DRR - mailings for them. The answer seemed to be: "you can't".

Disaster risk reduction packs had just not worked. So when Christian Aid wanted us to come up with concepts for this type of pack we were a little wary because of knowledge gained from previous attempts.

But we love a challenge, so we took a close look at the lessons learned from DRR packs that hadn't worked before, stripping out anything that might have stopped them working harder. We also looked at traditional emergency mailpacks that had done really well, and applied lessons learned from these. The result, our latest disaster risk reduction donor appeal.

We're really excited about this pack, and feel it has all the right ingredients to do really well.

The bright red outer with the words 'Flood. Drought. Cyclones.' in bold lettering has real emergency presence and begs to be opened. Inside, the letter asks the donor to help poor communities prepare for floods in Bangladesh, drought in Malawi and cyclones in India.

The ask is a monthly/cash gift to help provide three simple solutions that will help protect lives.

To reinforce the need, the lift piece uses a powerful pictorial message. Over thirty black and white disaster images from around the world have been used on one side, with minimal copy which, at a glance, gives the sense that 'enough is enough' - we must act now.

Will it work this time? We'll keep you posted (pardon the pun).

Bee Clarke

Posted by Whitewater Team at 02:51 PM | Permalink

'The most essential gift for any good writer is a built-in, shock proof sh*t detector.'

So wrote Ernest Hemingway.

Keep calm. I know Hemingway's macho attitudes are like a hair on the tongue to most fundraisers. But if the man cared about anything, he cared passionately about the craft of writing. And this quote has a decided point.

Originally published in Professional Fundraising magazine: to read this ad in full download the pdf.

Posted by Whitewater Team at 02:09 PM | Permalink

We think that helping us change the world is a very important job that not everyone can do, so the chances are you're likely to be quite demanding. We think we've put together a good package of benefits for our staff over the years. See what you think and, if you’re tempted, get in touch.

If we're talking hard cash, we'll start by offering a competitive salary. We benchmark our salaries against the industry once a year.

We offer a performance-related bonus, too.

We believe it's important to work hard and play hard too. So we give you five weeks holiday when you start and, because we like to reward good people who hang around, we increase this by an extra day for each year of service up to a maximum of six weeks. Oh, and you also get your birthday off!

And, as far as the more boring but eminently sensible stuff is concerned, we’ve done a lot of the thinking for you.

We offer a 3% contribution to your pension scheme - and of course you can contribute too if you like.

We will have someone come in and draw up your Will for you, free of charge. Our staff particularly liked this one. And we offer a 'death in service' assurance scheme to all employees.

And after three years service, you'll be added to our private healthcare scheme. After five years we'll add cover for your family too.

We have a lot of staff with families and understand the need to be flexible and have a range of benefits, from child-care vouchers to help with the cost of childcare, to flexible working hours.

If you're interested in a job with us, or if you have a general interest or any questions, drop me an email and I'll forward it to the right manager. We’d love to hear from you.

Paula Ryan

Posted by Whitewater Team at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A couple of months ago I spotted an article in New Scientist (bear with me) which reported the results of an interesting experiment carried out at Newcastle University. In the canteen of the Psychology Dept there is a drinks vending machine with an honesty box next to it. The research team placed a poster next to it, detailing the prices of the various drinks. On the poster was a photograph which the team changed periodically, between an image of some flowers and an image of a pair of human eyes. On the days when the poster showing the eyes was displayed, takings in the honesty box increased by 276%.

Another article in New Scientist reported an experiment conducted at Harvard, where 96 volunteers played against each other anonymously in games where they donate money or withhold it. Donating into a communal pot would yield the most money, but only if others donated too. Half made their choices undisturbed at a computer screen, while the others were faced with a photo of a cute robot called Kismet - ostensibly not part of the experiment. The players who gazed at Kismet gave 30 per cent more to the pot than the others. The researchers believe that at some subconscious level they were aware of being watched.

Here’s an idea… let’s test it on a donation form. We could test an image of the need above one donation form, against a close up of one of the recipient’s eyes looking straight at you on another.

Who’s up for it?

Nick Couldry

Posted by Whitewater Team at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)