This NFP Tweetup included sessions on PPC, Oxfam’s digital fundraising work – and app – and Cancer Research UK’s digital transformation. Lots of great ideas were shared – I’ve tried to pull out 10 of the very best tweets to summarise the event.

The Case for Investing in Adwords – Kate Sanger, Head of Communications at Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust

They worked with a paid search agency, but with the explicit upfront aim of upskilling the in-house team.

The agency audited and restructured their ad copy. Incorporated call out and phone extensions. Refined keyword matching so it wasn’t just ‘broad match’. Set up an information flow between analytics data and PPC performance data. Added ‘do you need adwords?’ question to the comms brief that the digital team receives.

“Do you need AdWords?” – this should be on a brief from teams looking to use digital. Good point. Should definitely do this #nfptweetup — Joe Freeman (@JosephFreeman) May 17, 2017

The My Oxfam app and more – Matt Jerwood, Head of Digital Fundraising at Oxfam UK

The Oxfam App displays content for the period during which you’ve been a regular giver. The idea is to show the impact of your donation. The app displays third party news, to increase credibility.

It shows your gift history, and displays income generated from items you’ve sold in Oxfam charity shops. It lets you manage your direct debit level in-app, moving it up or down.

“The My Oxfam app shows your gift history and displays income generated from items you’ve sold in Oxfam charity shops.” #nfptweetup — Joe Freeman (@JosephFreeman) May 17, 2017

There isn’t currently a designed journey for people who dial down their direct debit – e.g. prompts or encouragement to increase it after a period of time. Again, the app is very much about the soft cell.

I bet the CRM integration was really complicated. But for the user, the experience is simple. That’s the way it should be.

“No firm evidence of success yet, but initial results suggest that it improves retention.” #nfptweetup — Joe Freeman (@JosephFreeman) May 17, 2017

They’ve improved the single donation experience too. They added Apple Pay and PayPal payment options, massively reducing the time needed to make payment.

“We didn’t get stats on the impact on the donation value or reduction in dropoff at the payment page.” #nfptweetup — Joe Freeman (@JosephFreeman) May 17, 2017

From dinosaurs to digital masters: our mission to change our DNA at CRUK – Kate Simmons, Head of Customer Experiences at Cancer Research UK

Cancer Research UK surveyed people’s experiences of working with the digital team.

People felt that digital was something done to them, rather than something they had control over.

They produced a word cloud and the biggest word was ‘patronising’.

“The CRUK team survey relationships with other teams every 2 weeks.” #nfptweetup — Joe Freeman (@JosephFreeman) May 17, 2017

You need to recognise that people go through a change curve. It’ll get emotionally difficult before it gets better. You need to look after your digital team and build their resilience to help them with this element of their work:

“Great to hear @katecsimmons talking about the Change Curve in reference to digital change. Very important to acknowledge impact #NFPtweetup” pic.twitter.com/qvb1sS3IIV — Joe Freeman (@JosephFreeman) May 17, 2017

Interesting lessons from advanced hub-spoke model: people feeling out of place and leaving

”#NFPtweetup Unexpected outcome- after exciting ‘spoke’ projects people tended to leave and take their new skills and approaches elsewhere.” — Jess Day (@day_jess) May 17, 2017

So empower people to make change in their own teams after you’ve upskilled them through cross-team digital working. And if they don’t feel part of the digital team, but don’t feel part of their original team either, help craft a third identity for them.

Cancer Research UK avoid the words: “digital”, “agile” and “ways of working”. They set up a Modern Marketing Academy.

Aside: Cancer Research UK made the case for improving findability on their intranet by working out how much time was being wasted by the poor user experience, and what the resultant cost was.

“Do read this later if you also found @katecsimmons’ #NFPtweetup talk fascinating https://t.co/CVSPghlBwL ‘Building digital confidence’” — Joe Freeman (@JosephFreeman) May 17, 2017