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Credit crunch Christmas 1

Fundraising | Andrew Scadding | 3 Dec 2008

Our editor, Tania, has kindly asked me to blog because she knows I have strongly-held views, frequently robustly expressed.  Just between you and me, I think she considers me opinionated.  Since this is our first encounter, I am anxious to engender in you, fellow fundraiser, an altogether more charitable impression. 

So as it's Christmas, the season of goodwill toward all people, and just as excitingly the season of panto, I want to beguile you with a piece linking Tinkerbell, charity donors and – since we are approaching Christmas against the background of truly impressive financial crisis, I thought I would throw in some bankers and securitised investments for good measure.

But first let me tell you about someone I met in late October. A tiny, vivacious lady with the most enchanting Viennese accent which she has retained since 1939, when she arrived in London on the Kindertransport from Austria.  Her family in Austria was murdered by the Nazis. Good foster parents here gave her a great home and a good education.  She has worked – and continues to work – as a teacher.  A few years ago she was held up, waiting for a lecture room, because the previous session overran.  It was an old gentleman recounting tales of his extensive and recent travels.  She asked him how it was that a man of his years could afford to travel so far and so frequently, and he replied ‘It is because I have a pension from the Austrian Government, you see, I came to this country on the Kindertransport.’  Nothing could prevent our friend from claiming her own pension; nothing would induce her to spend a penny of it herself.  All of it is donated to the Prisoners of Conscience Appeal Fund, every penny.  "Blood money," she said.

Will I shock you to the core if I suggest that this generous donor has never asked for a copy of a charity’s accounts, or even been tempted to consult Intelligent Giving? She has supported a charity of her choice loyally and generously for entirely emotional reasons.  Donors like this trust us not just with their money, but with something infinitely more precious – their dreams.  They hope and believe that our future can be better than their past, and they look to our charities to make it so.  

Dummy's Guide to the credit crunch

Now for the bankers.  The credit crunch.  It has been discussed by people much better qualified than me, people who can add up, and do economics.   But ignorance need never be a barrier to opinion, so here’s this Dummy’s Guide to this crisis. 

For some years bankers have been passing around amongst themselves parcels of ‘securitised investments’.  Each time a banker passed on a parcel – praying, presumably, that the music wouldn’t stop until he had done so – he promised it was worth lots of money.  Faster and faster flew the parcels, bigger and bigger grew the promises, until one day the music stopped.  Someone in Lehman Brothers opened their parcel and found it contained nothing but a pair of old socks and an IOU from Robert Maxwell.  And with that, civilisation as we know it came nose to nose with total collapse.  What all the clever people had forgotten was that banking depends on two things.  One is that people do their sums.  The other is that they trust each other.  All the computers in the world, the might of Wall Street and Canary Wharf falter and droop when that one unquantifiable intangible – and unbillable - goes missing.

So in your seat at the panto, when everyone shouts their belief in fairies, passionate to revive little Tinkerbell, consider how closely life imitates panto.  How much banks and big business depend on people to believe in them, and how much they depend on believing in each other. How without that trust, they die like panto fairies.  And that same silver thread runs through our own little world of charities.  Our future depends not on how clever we are, but on generous and selfless supporters believing and trusting in the promises we offer. The message of this crisis, this Christmas to all fundraisers is – work hard to deserve the donors’ trust.  Or we, like Tinkerbell, are toast!

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