CMM is a regular poll of journalists to find out what they think about charities, their media activities and their work in general. It is designed to help charities hone their media work and use their limited resources to their full potential.
Many charities understandably focus on journalists as a key target group for their communications in order to get media coverage. Whether it is in fundraising, corporate issues or campaigning, if journalists do not see an issue as newsworthy or interesting it can be much harder to get the coverage a charity wants and needs.
CMM provides direct insight into how effective each participating charity is perceived to be by journalists and how they can improve their performance. Participants can learn which charities are ranked highly by journalists and what journalists see as an effective way to get the message across to them.
Charities already evaluate media output through analysis of press clippings. CMM can also help charities understand why certain stories haven’t been taken up and which hook or angle might have been more effective.
The specific uses of information from CMM include:
- Seeing how well journalists remember an organisation and its issues, campaigns or events they have run
- Understanding which sections of the media (e.g. regional journalists, TV journalists) have a good impression of a particular charity and which have a poor impression
- Discovering the best ways to get a story into the media and the most effective methods of building relationships with journalists
- Understanding the issues which personally concern journalists the most
By being part of a syndicate, joining CMM offers individual charities a far more cost-effective way of getting frequent (twice a year) and detailed information on journalists than would otherwise be possible.
On this page
What do we ask about and when?
The polls take place in Spring and Autumn each year. Questions we ask include:
- Which charities have directly impressed you in the last 6 months?
- Which specific charity events, campaigns or news stories can you recall in the last 6 months?
- Which charity first comes to mind in the following areas of work?
- Have you had contact with the following (named) charities in the last 6 months?
- How effective were they?
- Please tell us the good things that charities can do to get media coverage… And the bad things!
nfpSynergy will automatically record the relevant data about each responding journalist: organisation, job title, type of media, speciality, and region.
Sample and methodology
The Monitor is an online questionnaire which we carry out in-house. We normally receive around 200 completed questionnaires. The survey sample consists of:
- National TV journalists
- Local TV journalists
- National radio journalists
- Local radio journalists
- Broadsheet journalists
- Tabloid journalists
- Local / regional newspapers
- Trade media
- Monthlies
- Freelancers
Who currently subscribes?
Current charities taking part include Cancer Research UK, The Children's Society, Macmillan Cancer Support, Mind and The Salvation Army.
Costs and package
Existing subscribers to the Charity Awareness Monitor (CAM) will be charged £5,450 plus VAT, non-CAM subscribers will be charged £6,450 plus VAT for a year (i.e. two polls). Charity Parliamentary Monitor (CPM) subscribers also receive a discount. Any bespoke questions clients would like to add to the survey will be charged at £500 + VAT each.
Subscribers receive:
CMM Report
For each wave of research you will receive a detailed report that breaks down the results and analyses trends. We will also send you the full set of data tables.
Executive summary
This brings together all the results from the survey
List of verbatim comments
We ask some open-ended questions and provide you with a report detailing journalists' responses word-for-word.
Invitation to regular nfpSynergy Insight events
We hold regular Insight events for all our clients, with presentations on a range of topics relevant to charities.
Each participant is able to nominate journalists they would like to see included in the survey. As well as full analysis and a full set of data tables, each participant can have a tailored set of tables incorporating the responses of journalists that are particularly interesting to them
Participants who sign up now will have access to all past reports and data. If you're interested in taking part, get in touch.
More details
For a briefing pack or more information please email Tim Harrison at CMM@nfpsynergy.net, or call him on 020 7426 8874
Image used under Creative Commons license, thanks to Adrian Short.