Non fundraisers leap to Aussie fundraisers' defence

A great article on Hootville with very specific advice on what charities should do after the silly story in the 'paper yesterday.

"99% of nonprofit CEOs we’ve met fear an unscrupulous, unfair, unexpected media hikacking. Only 1% ever experience such a thing. One such CEO is Fundraising Institute of Australia’s Rob Edwards...

Read the whole article here....Especially if you are an Australian charity worker thinking what to do next; Hootville give you a great guide.

Face to face in the media

Face to face works - hundreds of millions of dollars raised over the last decade in Australia alone - as you can see from my most recent blog.

But journalists keep sniffing around to find a story.  Unfortunately for them, there is not much of a story; from a public point of view it is pretty boring because it is just a bunch of people getting paid to do a job.

They get paid a reasonable amount which is usually based on how well they do their job.  

They are employed by a company who arranges materials, admin, data and organises the whole thing with relevant charities.


As the chart in my previous blog shows, the system works - donors who otherwise would not have donated, donate, and charities get to do more work than they would have done if they had not used this method of fundraising.

Consequently, when there are stories in the press not a lot happens really - from a data point of view.  We don't see a spike in cancellations and it doesn't seem to make things harder for street canvassers (if you are one, please correct me if I am mistaken!)

Sunday Telegraph Journalist Jonathan Marshall decided to go undercover and go through the process of training for a canvasser.

Most of what he found is pretty boring:

- the companies exist to make profit

- canvassers are told if they do really well they can make lots of money

- mining towns are great, because people have too much money, little to do and like chatting to attractive young people

However, one thing gave him his hook - something that would actually make this story interesting enough for editors to run, and to be fair to Jonathan he had invested a lot of time in this and is a well trained journalist.

His hook was that the agency was using an acronym to describe who should not be targeted.  Whilst their targeting is actually socially responsible, it had a totally inappropriate word in it - 'Stupid'.  Canvassers in this company were told to avoid marketing to Poor, Old, Young, Stupid and Non English speaking - they say avoid the POYSN (pronounced Poison).  Of course, it is not in the interests of the charity to sell monthly giving to particularly vulnerable people so the advice is good - but the phrase is disrespectful.  Really, it was just waiting to be exposed.

What we do in fundraising is not wrong - we invest and pay trained professionals to make money for our causes.  But we need to do it in a respectful way - yes we can be cheeky, motivate people from many angles (change the world AND make money is a good incentive for many people) - but assume there is a webcam watching us when we do it.

Jonathan's story was picked up by The Project.  The Video will only work in Australia and you want the 19 Feb episode which should start playing .  Fast forward to about 1:30 after the ad.

Sean

Bad info hurts charities

An article in an Australian newspaper has caused a bit of a media storm with the Fundraising Institute Australia CEO being interviewed on lots of radio and TV stations.

The article, by journalist Dan Flitton in The Sydney Morning Herald Newspaper has a terrible headline "Charities hand over up to 95% to street marketers" and not much better in sister paper, The Age - "Paying to collect the charity dollar".

The body of the article is not incorrect, but it really doesn't give enough information for potential donors to make a decision and the language is terrible: "... Cornucopia takes a cut - a big cut, up to 95 per cent of the total donation collected in the first year..."

Cornucopia are a fundraising firm that recruit and train staff who represent charities on the street. 'takes a cut' is pretty negative language for what is a paid for service. The 95% fees is not all profit - it goes to pay for transport, training, wages, admin, materials and more.

And of course, the donors stay with the charity for years, will upgrade, do other things and some may eventually leave money in their will. The charity gets a great return with total costs probably closer to 25% over the years.

I very much doubt Dan Flitton is a bad person. He would appear to be genuinely curious but hasn't got all the information. I imagine he would be gutted to know that his article has probably cost charities hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why?

Well, he mentions Amnesty International, Red Cross, Oxfam, MSF and Fred Hollows. Five fantastic charities doing amazing work, and raising millions of (net) dollars from F2F that otherwise wouldn't be there.

It is possible that a few donors will cancel - not many I hope, but some may. But more significantly, some staff within charities will call for their organisation to suspend (I can almost hear the 'until the media storm dies down') - or even stop - doing it.

The consequence, however you look at it, will be a huge loss of money. Ironically, some could still have to pay costs for fundraising activity already committed, but cancelled. So they will be paying money out for nothing - much worse than 25% over four years. Less money for crucial services including life-saving work and a direct consequence of this article and headline.

It won't stop there. Boards and CEOs of charities have not usually the time or inclination to really get to understand more about the intricacies of fundraising techniques and will react badly to this media. Professional fundraisers may have spent hourson research, modelling and contract negotiations only to have it vetoed by concerned boards. The consequence - much, much less money for their cause.

I am not an advocate of fundraise at all costs, but F2F is no worse in effectiveness than any other significant strategic technique - it just looks worse because the cost of staff is out-sourced. There are no other strategic methods that deliver such a huge return for charities over the long term at the same volume.

Transparency for charities is important, but the famous Otto von Bismark quote 'Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made' comes to mind. Not because we should hide fundraising costs, but more because it is so complex to explain. As Peter Singer in 'The Life You Can Save' explains, cost effectiveness of fundraising and admin is NOT a good indicator of the effectiveness of a charity's work.

The volunteer that comes on and says 'I have been doing this for free for 20 years' sounds so much nicer than the backpacker getting paid a little over minimum wage. But there are not enough volunteers to go around; volunteer fundraising simply can't add enough money to come anywhere near to meeting the need.

Comments welcome!