Wakeup Call to charities? @KMPR

Ken McEwen recently posted on an article by Jane Simms from the Director Magazine entitled “A wake-up call to charities” with the by-line "The third sector must be more businesslike to survive in an era of austerity, spending cuts and donor fatigue".

 

She’s not the first to say the third sector needs to be more ‘business-like’, and she certainly won’t be the last.  She’s right and she’s wrong.

 

In her article, she points out precisely the two conflicting views that she shares with many people that lead to charities being less effective than they could be.  Firstly, she says she wants charities to become more business-like, but then she says “we don't want charities to behave as businesses”.

 

Charities face this pressure all the time – on the one hand people want them to behave more ‘professionally’, on the other they wouldn’t like to see, for example, charity directors receiving higher pay, or spending ‘too much’ on ‘admin costs’ like advertising or training.  At the moment, a CEO moving from the private sector to a similar sized organisation in the third sector is looking at about an 80% pay cut.

 

Charities investing this year for long term gain are judged by the effect on this year’s “admin cost” figures.  Charities need to feel able to make the best long term decisions, without worrying that they’ll end up in the papers under the headline “charity wastes 40% of its money on admin in economic recession”.  A headline like that could more than wipe out the gains they’d expected from say investing in a new computer system this year so they can better monitor their work and communicate better with supporters (which would create long term efficiencies and savings),  This is despite the fact that admin costs are a rubbish way of judging how good a charity is – New Philanthropy Capital have more to say on this, and I’m not going to get too hung up on that old debate, if you want to look into it, check out Dan Pallotta (here or here) , or NPC here, or even better here. 

 

Jane gave the example of her father getting direct mail asking for donations to old people’s charities – well it depends on the ask.  I’ll bet he also gets direct mail asking about stairlifts and shoes for back pain, statistically older people donate to charity more than younger people– much the same as they buy stair-lifts more.  Like businesses, charities segment their supporter markets, although I agree it could be done better.

 

Better understanding of your donors, your supporters and potential supporters does take time.  And money.  Jane’s right in that charities do need to spend more time in connecting with their donors, but all too often, it’s cheaper (in the short run) to hope that your direct mails are going to the right people, and trust that they’ll contact you if they don’t want to hear from you. 

 

But the fault doesn’t lie entirely with ‘charities’.   It’s with all of us.  It goes a bit deeper into society than Jane suggests...  As she closes, she says that “people want to give, but the easier and more enjoyable it is to give, the more we’ll do it”.  I think the second part is true.

 

There are steps forward being made in making it easier to give.  Everyclick – the charity search engine have recently launched the “Give as You Live” application.  Brilliantly simple, trying to tap into the growing area of changing behaviour slightly to give to charity while doing much the same.  Justgiving, as she mentioned has boosted sponsorship income making it easier to gather and claim the gift aid on it.  Interestingly, both of these innovations have been made by private companies – companies willing and able to invest the money into something knowing there’d be a long term return.

 

Jane says that people want to give, but I’m not so sure.  Giving, although slightly increasing in the long term, has remained fairly stagnant as a percentage of GDP since the 60s, at about 1.5% in the UK, 2.5% in the US. 

 

Personally, I no longer believe that people want to give to charity.  They want to try to solve problems and change the world, and they do this by giving to a charity that they think can.

 

There’s a third factor she’s missed.  People need to be asked.  People don’t tend to give to charity unless they’re asked.  It might be a personal ask, or asking through an ad or a piece of direct mail.

 

I don’t entirely disagree with much of the sentiment Jane’s expressed, but I wouldn’t call it a wake-up call.  Charities have been working to find more innovative ways to connect with their supporters since well before I was a fundraiser.  Charities have been aware that continuing to do the same thing yields slightly worse results.  Face to face fundraising was innovative when it started – now not only do many people dislike it, it’s becoming less effective (it still works rather well, it must be said).

 

When I first read the article, something jumped out at me, which was the reason I started to write this now lengthy post.

 

“I'm all for helping worthy causes, but feel uncomfortable asking people to sponsor me to do things that I will thoroughly enjoy and will give me an enormous sense of achievement. So I will fund my adventures myself and/or make a donation to charity”

 

I think this illustrates where the relationship between the charity and the supporter has gone wrong.

 

If Jane believes in the work that the charity is doing, then why does she feel uncomfortable asking people to donate to it?  Is it because, maybe due to the nature of the challenges –it seems (to her) as if she’s receiving the money, not the charity?

 

 

I think the charity in question has slipped up here – and perhaps it just comes back to scarce resources.  I wonder, what do they know about Jane?

 

Do they she feels uncomfortable asking people for sponsorship to do things she’ll enjoy?

Do they know why she supports them?

Do they know her background, roles, and skills?

 

In Jane, they have the potential for a powerful advocate, and I can only see two reasons she isn’t already.  First, she isn’t engaged enough, she can’t tell the story of why she gives.  The most effective fundraisers (and I don’t just mean paid staff, I mean people who fundraise), have a fire in their belly or a bee in their bonnet and an utter conviction for what they’re doing.

 

If Jane’s not engaged enough, she won’t have that – she’ll probably believe that it’s a worthy cause, and will tell people so if asked, but she won’t enjoy telling people about this great organisation she knows

 

The second reason might be that the charity hasn’t given her ‘permission’.  They haven’t spoken to her, kindled this flame, stirred her soul and given her the tools to go out and start evangelising.

 

It would take time and effort to do this for every donor, for every marathon runner and every Icelandic trekker, but the charities that are spending the time and money doing it, are the ones that are inspiring people to change the world a bit by working with them.

 

I think the real wakeup call is to the specific charity that has Jane on their Iceland trek list, which can see that she’s not nearly as engaged as she could be.

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