The future of collecting

Abstract

This thesis discusses the graduation project for KWF Kankerbestrijding. This is a large charity that raises funds for cancer research in The Netherlands. Fundraising is done via a lot of different channels, one of which is door-to-door collection in the collection week. The annual KWF collection week is held in the first week of September and each year, KWF raises around 6 million euros. Yearly the efforts of the team behind all volunteers, ‘Team Volunteers’, increase, but still the total amount raised decreases.

The goal of this graduation project is to increase the revenue of the door-to-door collection by (re)designing a product or system that decreases the barrier for donating. The project follows a design approach consisting of 3 main phases; exploration, creation & reflection and implementation.

The exploration phase starts with the internal research, which shows that KWF has extensive collection activities, and that the most important one, door-to-door collection takes up a lot of effort from almost 80,000 volunteers. Over the past years however, the collection revenue decreases. After looking closer at the numbers of the collection, it is found that remarkable differences can be found between different department sizes. This finding is the base of the differentiation of the departments on a demographic level that is made during the project.

The qualitative volunteer research adds to the internal research findings that every volunteer experiences collecting differently. Again, big differences are found between collectors on a demographic level. Smaller villages and big cities differ a lot. This leads to the conclusion that ‘location’ is a very important factor. The internal research also shows that more factors are important during collecting, namely organisation, social pressure, behaviour and approach.

The external research looks into a lot of different stakeholders and factors that have to do with the collection. First, the competition analysis shows that the ‘collection industry’ is very saturated and also quite competitive, while on the other side, charities work together on developing new collection products and share information. The most important stakeholder that is analysed is the donator. Psychological research shows that a lot of different factors play a role for people when deciding whether to donate or not. Some of the factors that play a role are the approach of the charity (or the collection method), the number of times people are addressed and the information that is provided. These are important factors that can be influenced by KWF directly, because factors like religion, age, work and income cannot be directly influenced. However, they can be used for targeting people with a certain message or a collection method.
The analysis phase concludes that people can be targeted on a more personal level and demographic characteristics need to be used for this. The creation & reflection phase starts with this subject and a new department classification for the volunteer departments of KWF is developed. Finally, five department types are created and the ‘large city’ type is selected for the design of a new collection method for KWF.

A new collection location in the large cities is chosen as a design focus for a new collection method. ‘On the streets’ is the new design location and several opportunity fields are chosen as design directions. Six design elements are found that need to be designed for. These are location, communication, behaviour, product, organisation and training. The new collection method will address all these elements. Finally, a list of requirements and wishes is established providing the outlines for the design.

Concept development is done after this. The final design of the new ‘street collection system’ is based on two different studies, a concept questionnaire and a real-life test.
The new street collection system describes how to organise the street collection and which volunteers are needed for this. The volunteers receive the street collection package. In this package, information and physical material is provided for the perfect organisation and execution of the street collection. The message that is conveyed by the outfits of the collectors is: ‘I am a volunteer for KWF’. This message is based on the concept questionnaire and it adds to the integrity and trustworthiness of the volunteers. The volunteers also know how to communicate and behave and where to stand thanks to information cards and an instruction video.

To make sure the new street collection system is implemented is the right way, an implementation plan is provided. This plan explains which phases to follow and what to do to improve the system. The report closes with a roadmap for the future of the collection of KWF. In the future, KWF will change its organisation and collection products in several ways in order to have a more successful collection. Several collection products need to be improved and provided in the form of collection packages. And all changes need to fit the different department types. The organisation and collection packages are tailored to the different target groups.

The street collection system marks the start of many organisational and product changes for Team Volunteers. This new approach will allow KWF to increase the revenue and modernise the collection of the future.