Case study: Scottish Book Trust
Background
Scottish Book Trust (SBT) is a national charity that has been bringing the benefits of reading and writing to everyone across Scotland since 1998. Their mission is to ensure people living in Scotland have equal access to books and the many benefits this brings. SBT says that books bring families together, comfort children and help them do well in school. They unlock creativity, support employability and improve mental health and wellbeing. Without books, families are missing out. The charity supports communities across Scotland and runs a number of programmes including universal book gifting programmes Bookbug and Read Write Count, as well as Book Week Scotland and Reading is Caring.
The charity was looking for a programme of research to support a new fundraising campaign.
Purpose
The purpose of the research was to understand more about SBT’s current supporters: their profile and characteristics; their motivations for supporting the charity; their awareness of SBT’s charitable status; awareness of the programmes it delivers; and propensity to support further.
There was also a requirement to benchmark this by testing some of these aspects with the broader Scottish population, who were not engaged with the charity.
Methodology
Scotinform undertook three research strands for SBT:
- A Mosaic Scotland profile of current supporters
- Omnibus questions, asked of a representative sample of residents of Scotland
- An online survey of SBT supporters, shared via social media and by email to SBT databases
The three research strands ran in parallel and overlapped where possible. So, for example, Mosaic Scotland profiling was also built into the Omnibus questions and the Supporter Survey. This enabled Scotinform to produce a ‘SBT Grand Index’, summarising all of the research findings by research method and Mosaic Scotland Group, as well as reporting each aspect separately.
This multi-faceted approach also allowed us to use one research tool to further explain the findings of another. For example, an early finding from the Mosaic reporting was that there was a strong concentration of a particular Mosaic Scotland Group, not usually associated with charitable giving, within current supporters. The survey findings revealed that they were engaged with SBT through a professional link, meaning that the fundraising team could adapt their fundraising priorities accordingly.
Scotinform met regularly with the fundraising team throughout the project, talking through the research findings as they emerged and answering key questions along the way.
Impacts
SBT has used the findings to inform its fundraising strategy and prioritise its key audiences.
“Scottish Book Trust delivers work all over Scotland and has a wide range of audiences. This research project was invaluable to informing our fundraising strategy and Scotinform really felt like part of the team throughout the whole process”
Sarah Bailey, Director of Marketing and Communications, Scottish Book Trust
Why Scotinform?
We offer a full range of research services and we ensure that these ‘talk’ to each other in order to inform the overall project.
We will present the research findings in a way that makes sense to you and best allows you to use the information to make good decisions.
We are as intrigued as you if we find something unexpected – and will work hard to understand what the data is telling us.
We enjoy meeting with you and your team to talk research and will not hold you to a set number of meetings if it means that our reporting can be more effective.