This comment by one of the fundraising team really summed up a worry for the fundraising department of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Its traditional donor base (recruited and supported by direct marketing methods) often lived many miles from the sea. With their help, the RNLI had grown to be one of the five biggest charities in the UK, able to offer a complete sea rescue service for Britain and Ireland’s 5,000 miles of coastline. However, this comfortable picture hid looming threats to income: the age of the RNLI’s core supporter base indicated a decline in volume, threatening the long-term financial base of the charity itself. What were the fundraising team to do about it?

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution

In 1824, The National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was founded by Sir William Hillary as a voluntarily supported organisation. The folklore of the charity includes the famous story from this time of Grace Darling, a young girl who, on her own, rescued a foundering ship in stormy weather. In 1854 the organisation was renamed the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which remains unchanged to this day.

The RNLI is a registered charity whose mission is simple, but powerfully expressed: ‘to save lives at sea’. It has a legal responsibility to the governments of the UK and Ireland to provide a statutory 24‑hour emergency service, to cover search and rescue requirements up to 50 miles out from the coast in all conditions.

Things have changed a lot for the RNLI since those early days. In 1995, RNLI lifeboats were launched 7,382 times, with a staggering 52 launches every day, on average, during August. Over the past ten years, calls on lifeboats have increased by nearly 50 per cent.
This is due mainly to the numbers of people using the water vastly increasing. There has been an increase in the number of ‘beach rescues’, and also rescues to pleasure craft, commercial power and sail, as well as surfers and swimmers. On average, every day, a lifeboat is launched 16 times in the UK and 4 lives are saved each day. This rescue service costs a great deal of money.

The RNLI now uses the most modern rescue equipment, including 11 different types of lifeboat, ranging from the 50‑foot-long Severn class of boat with a crew of six, capable of 25 knots, to the 16‑foot D‑class inflatable boat, which operates with a crew of three.
Each D‑class now costs over £11,000 to buy and more to run each year. This modern fleet is required to ensure that the RNLI’s future commitment to reach any point 50 miles off the coast within two-and‑a‑half hours is met. With over 400 lifeboats operating in 219 lifeboat stations, the RNLI costs £70 million to run annually, or £194,000 per day. Its fundraising budget is about £7 million p. a. Running costs are used for:

● Operational costs

● A new lifeboat building programme

● Training crews (vital)

● Back‑up and administration (less than 4 per cent of revenue) RNLI funds are raised entirely through voluntary contributions, unlike some charities which get state support as well.....

Questions
1. A description of what programmes will be delivered to whom and when, with justification. In particular:
● Target audiences

● Product/ price offers

● Incentives

● Media

● Tests

● Required target response rates

2. Decisions on other marketing mix elements and an explanation of how they integrate with direct marketing.