Background

The ‘Pointe Shoe Appeal’ has been running since at least 2002, but our records do not go back as far as the life of the appeal so it may be even older than this. 

Every year, the Royal Ballet and Opera launches this appeal to raise funds for the Royal Ballet – with the income going towards covering the cost of pointe shoes throughout a performance Season. The company dances through over 6,000 pairs of pointe shoes annually, and while these costs used to be around £39 per pair, over the past few years the price has now risen to an average of £50 per pair. 

Summary / objectives

Historically, this has always been our most successful appeal both in terms of income and the number of donors who give. However, over the years, the total amount raised has fluctuated as the approach to whom we send the appeal has changed. This has been due to both internal decisions and changes in General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation.  

More recently, our focus has been to reduce the number of people we’re contacting while still increasing the appeal’s return on investment (ROI). Ultimately, our fundraising  goal is to be more effective, while continuing to reach a focused and engaged audience of supporters. 

In order to achieve our goal of improving ROI, we’re now taking a multi-channel approach to contacting supporters. This means the appeal typically starts with a direct mail ask – which results in the bulk of our responses coming in via the post. 

Our direct mail packs will introduce the narrative for the appeal that year, which is often tied very closely to particular dancers and their relationship with their pointe shoes. In previous Seasons we have followed principal dancers making their Sugar Plum Fairy debuts and first soloists dancing a variety of fairy roles across the Christmas period. But last Season we followed three of the newer dancers to the company making their debuts as Clara in The Nutcracker. Having the supporters hear from the dancers directly helps us to bring them closer to the art they are supporting and makes the whole thing feel a little more special. Besides, our supporters would much rather be hearing from the artists and creatives than the fundraisers!    

We also supplement this direct mail with additional asks via email (to those we have permission to contact), plus posters and screens throughout the Royal Opera House. We have even done odd bits of social media promoting the Pointe Shoe Appeal. These all build upon the story introduced in the direct mail pack, giving the whole appeal a sense of cohesion regardless of where and how someone interacts with it. 

Special characteristics

The Royal Ballet and Opera are continually trying to leverage data within our appeals so we can create fundraising content that is unique and relevant to the recipient. Last season’s Pointe Shoe Appeal saw us create four different ‘base versions’ of the appeal which we designated to supporters based on information from their ticket buying records. We varied the ask amounts in the letter and the reply device depending on their previous giving history and asked more committed supporters to sign up to give regularly via Direct Debit. 

We also approached a small number of high value supporters with a more bespoke ask to cover the cost of an entire production’s worth of shoes. For this, we had the dancers penning the letter and hand signing copies to give it that extra special personal touch. 

Beyond this, we reference as much unique information as we can within the copy of the letter. We regularly bring in previous giving history and their current membership level. 

Recently, our team have started to explore how we can use ticketing data to personalise letters. It may seem like a small touch, but telling a supporter that you’re looking forward to welcoming them to a specific show on a specific date makes a mass mailing suddenly feel very personal.  

Merits

The Pointe Shoe Appeal not only provides an opportunity for us to raise funds to support the ballet, it’s also a chance to share detailed stories with a more engaged audience. The Royal Ballet are incredibly helpful in this regard, and creating the appeal is a collaborative process between them and the development team. 

We have also created a culture of expectation around the appeal in recent years, running it parallel to our Christmas show, which is typically The Nutcracker. Donors know that they will be hearing from us at this time, which helps to generate that sense of loyalty. 

It is worth mentioning though that this approach does have its drawbacks, and we are wary of the appeal becoming stale or repetitive. Managing the balance between traditional and expectations, as well as the need to keep the appeal fresh, is one of the major challenges we face looking forward.   

Results

Over the past three Seasons (which last from September to August) we have seen our warm, established, supporters contribute an average of £50,000 in donations to the Pointe Shoe Appeal. This appeal generates a higher response rate relative to our other campaigns and we feel those results confirm that our work in developing a specific audience for the appeal has been worthwhile. It also gives us something to budget confidently against, year on year.

Other relevant information

Whilst we have seen significant success with our approach of following the story of one or more of our ballerinas through a particular production, we are aware that the work of the ballet shoe department goes far beyond work on pointes. Of course, many in our audiences may be just as engaged and interested in hearing about the male dancers in the company. Plus, with contemporary works becoming all the more established in our repertoire, we undertake vast amounts of work each Season that does not require pointe shoes at all. 

Therefore, the challenge for us over the coming years is finding a way to tell the story of the Pointe Shoe Appeal in a way that reflects the nature of the company in 2024 as well as the interests of audiences. We want to do this whilst trying to stay close to the origins of the appeal, which has worked so well for over 20 years!

We would love to bring flats and ballet boots into the appeal on a regular basis and really cover the whole company, but we don’t want to change what the appeal is at its core. This season we are exploring the full spectrum of shoes used by the company, and highlighted our season opening show, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, to help tell that story. The response to this so far has been really positive and we’re looking forward to developing this idea with more productions in future. 

We’ve also taken steps to highlight the actions of the shoe room and the company at large are taking to support our global majority dancers, looking at how we are now dyeing shoes and tights to match dancer’s skin tones. We plan to do more in future to use this platform to celebrate the diversity of the company and the organisation’s commitment to this.

Final notes

From a team perspective, the Pointe Shoe Appeal provides a really lovely balance between the certainty of income from our regular audience, but also the challenge of keeping the appeal fresh and finding new stories to tell. It’s a brilliant project to be a part of and hopefully one that will continue long into the future! 

IMAGES: © All images courtesy of the Royal Ballet and Opera, please see credits in captions of individual photos.