Charities risk losing our goodwill with aggressive fundraising tactics
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Version 0 of 1. When Britain’s oldest poppy seller, Olive Cooke, threw herself off Bristol’s Avon Gorge last month, the finger was pointed at an unlikely assassin. She was, according to the Express, “overwhelmed” by demands for money from exploitative charities, while the Mirror said she was “hounded to death by charity because of her kindness”. It wasn’t the whole story, as friends and family were quick to explain and as her suicide note confirmed. But the story was readily believed because, as with all good fictions, a truth lies at its core. Cooke’s death provided a dramatic focus for widespread dissatisfaction with the way that charities in the UK raise money. This unease was exacerbated this week by the news that Oxfam has been forced to suspend working with the fundraising company Listen Ltd, after the Mail on Sunday reported that the firm was using aggressive, high-pressure methods. Charities have become increasingly professionalised. This brings many benefits but it also has a major downside Many in the charity world have been irritated by the way Cooke’s death has been misused as a stick to beat them with, and doubtless Oxfam’s situation will be dismissed by many as a little local difficulty that has been blown out of all proportion. But the readiness of the public to believe that charities are behaving badly reflects a serious decline in trust. The core of the problem is that the public image of charities has become dominated by their means, not their ends. When people think of charities today, they tend to think less of the good works they do than of direct mailings, cold calls and preternaturally chirpy young fundraisers accosting them on the street. It’s not difficult to understand how this has happened. Charities do not exist to make people feel the warm glow of altruism but to raise as much money and spend it as effectively as possible. That means they have become increasingly professionalised. This brings many benefits but it also has a major downside. When charities use the same marketing methods as makers of fizzy drinks and fashionable trainers, they become seen as brands selling to us like any other. Cold-calling using the same kinds of scripts as energy suppliers and telecoms providers, for instance, makes receivers bracket them together in the category of nuisances to be resisted. Some now common practices may not be very efficient in any case. Many charities swap mailing lists, for example, on the basis that finding people willing to give to charity is an expensive business and so it saves money to target people you already know are philanthropic. But this might simply lead to people spreading their giving more widely, with the added negative side-effect of increasing people’s sense of being asked to give by too many organisations, too often. Interestingly, there is little evidence that the changes in fundraising practice have had any positive effect on giving. The latest Charities Aid Foundation UK Giving report suggests that, adjusted for inflation, we give considerably less now than we did in 2005. The financial crash does not entirely explain this, since the drop-off postdates it: we gave more in each of the four years from 2008-11 than we have in any since. Ruthless efficiency has not made charities richer or better loved. Charities can be somewhat defensive about their methods, complaining that what they do is called manipulation while in the commercial sector it is simply termed persuasion. There is also sometimes a righteous sense that if fortunate people with money to spare are made to feel guilty by fundraisers, that’s just how it should be. Related: Working with local government is bad business for charities They should be more self-critical. It is only right that we expect more of charities than we do of businesses, which we know exist to make profit. And it is precisely because charities do so much good that they have to be extra vigilant to make sure they don’t also behave unscrupulously. It is a well-known psychological problem that the more you are convinced of your own virtue the less likely you are to spot your own vices. The sector has responded swiftly and vigorously to recent criticisms. The Fundraising Standards Board, the Institute of Fundraising, and Public Fundraising Regulatory Association have committed to introducing more robust standards, with the FSRB due to issue its interim reports on the review this week. This is likely to include measures such as only swapping databases if donors explicitly opt in, rather than if they do not opt out, which is very common at the moment. Welcome though these measures might be, charities have to address deeper cultural issues. Charities may be wise to adopt some business practices, but not to the extent that they behave just like businesses. The bottom line is not measured purely in pounds, shillings and pence, but by social impact. The focus on a sustainable culture of giving requires them to take the long view. For instance, the short-term success of high street “chuggers” getting people to sign up for direct debits is blinding charities to the long-term harm this does to their reputations. It takes a brave chief executive officer to abandon a fundraising technique that appears to be working – but each time a chugger draws from this well it is poisoned a little more. Charities need our goodwill, and they must make sure they are as good at cultivating it as they are at tapping it. |