NSPCC to stop pestering for legacy pledges

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 4 Apr 2008

NSPCC donors will no longer be asked to tell the charity when they leave it a gift in their will, as part of new approach that will see staff measure the conversations they have with supporters.

Under the new approach, which stems from focus group research conducted with direct marketing agency Whitewater, the charity will no longer put pledge tick-boxes on any of its legacy marketing, and will not pester donors to ask if they have left a gift.

The charity has introduced an eight-step major gift model to measure the number and quality of conversations with supporters and will train every member of staff to use their judgement in order to record how far supporters are along the model after each interaction.

Stephen George, development director of legacy fundraising at NSPCC, said the new strategy would free it from “the tyranny of the pledge”. He denied it would cause problems modelling the charity’s income.

“Everyone’s obsession with measuring future value based on people who’ve told us they’ve left a gift is pretty nonsense,” he said. “We think we will get just as many people tell us using this approach.”

The NSPCC brings in £20m a year, a fifth of its annual income, from legacies.

Who's Who: Gemma Ware

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.