It was about a year ago that Rally was born. And what a year it’s been.
When we set Rally up we didn’t want to label it a fundraising agency as that didn’t feel quite right. So right from the beginning we’ve talked about ‘mobilisation’.
MOBILISATION ‘The action of organising and encouraging a group of people to take collective action in pursuit of a particular objective’.
And that really sums up what Rally is all about.
We passionately believe a changing world needs a fresh approach to attracting the public’s support. We want to develop attraction strategies that put our clients values up front and centre to act as a magnet for those who want to achieve the same level of change. And once people are with us, we want to put them to work to deliver on our shared values - sure that means their financial support, but equally we want them to turn up and speak up too.
Our first 12 months have seen us work with a wide array of amazing organisations to do just that.
Our first client was Peace Direct and we’re working with them on their first cross organisational digital engagement strategy. We’re so grateful that the Peace Direct team gave us our first major project.
We’ve worked with The Children’s Society to help them take a new approach to delivering activity to support and validate their thinking around their new supporter engagement strategy.
The team at The British Red Cross asked us to run some workshops to establish a program that would deliver a refreshed and improved experience for emergency appeal donors that would inspire them to deepen their connection with the charity.
We’re helping Teenage Cancer Trust with their mobile fundraising planning for their awesome Royal Albert Hall music events.
We’ve started working with Plan UK to develop new approaches to attract the public at scale and move them to act based on identifying and amplifying shared values.
Refuge have asked us to help them work out how to harness the power and energy of the feminist movement to grow their support from the public. A dream brief.
We’ve spent some time in Dublin working on a digital strategy for the Irish Labour Party. A project that we collaborated on with the awesome people at Ask Direct in Dublin.
We’re also working with SolarAid to set the framework for their digital strategy and we’re helping The Brooke and WWF on work that we’ll talk about later in the year.
When we set up, we didn’t want to attach the fundraising label, nor did we want to refer to ourselves as an agency. We like to think of ourselves as a ‘hub’ or ‘collective’. And we’ve made this a reality through some fantastic collaborations with incredible partners.
We can’t list them all as there are too many*.
But a special mention to Forward Action, who are quite frankly the smartest, most results driven, creative and innovative digital agency we have ever worked with.
And special special mention to Charly at Studio Nowhere, when we set up, Charly created our logo and visual ID. When we wanted to troll Trump she designed amazing posters, when we went on strike for the climate she did the same. She did amazing work for our screening of Knock Down The House and when we wanted to mark International Women’s Day she delivered work we are very proud of - work that was probably the moment we realised we’d 100% done the right thing in making Rally a reality.
So a massive thank you to all of our incredible clients, all the amazing people we’ve collaborated with and everyone who has supported us or given us advice. We love you all.
Next year we'll bake a cake.
Oh. You should watch your postbox… And if you don’t get something from us in the post and want some Rally swag, email us a postal address and we’ll get something over to you.**
**While stocks last.
Onwards.
*Actually, we will mention them all. Because they are all so awesome…
Forward Action: See above!
Ask Direct: We’ve mentioned them already. They are superb.
Studio Nowhere: See above!
Lauren White: Lauren has one of the sharpest digital brains we’ve ever come across and working with her on the British Red Cross project was an utter joy.
Rachel Collinson: Rachel is the undisputed champion of email. We brought her in to deliver email copywriting training for one of our clients and the impact was immediate.
Chris Savor: Chris is the type of person we all need in our working lives. An absolute genius in helping clients maximise their use of the Google Grant. Again someone who had an immediate impact for several of our clients.
Hanna Thomas: Hanna is a legend. If you don’t want to take our word for it. Read this.
Jean O’Brien: Jean is incredible. And she’s a provider of amazing training for our clients in how to use the Facebook network to drive actual, measurable and meaningful engagement.
Jon Lloyd: A huge digital brain and amazing skills.
Hanna Henshall and the team at If Not Now Digital: We’ve only worked on one project. And it was incredible to work with such a progressive and innovative bunch of people. If this is the first you’ve heard of them, we promise it won’t be the last.
Header Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash