Opinion

Show impact or face endless questions about costs 1

Fundraising | Allan Freeman | 16 Sep 2010

 The failure to demonstrate what they do with donors' money means charities will have to face endless public and media questioning about how much they spend to get the donors, says Allan Freeman.

As the dust settles after the Newsnight programme and their revelation around the cost of face to face supporter acquisition and as the top fifty fundraising charities get their “telling off” letter from Acevo for not defending their charities position, should we just pause to think about all the issues?

I’ve heard some of the experts say that the answer lies in transparency and that we need to explain to the public and our supporters that it’s inevitable that recruiting new donors incurs cost. But this is not just about recruitment this is a much bigger issue including all fundraising activity, campaigning and marketing. And of course let’s not forget the issue of salaries which gets raised every now and again.

Then the alarm bells ring when I hear the sector say it’s quite complex and would the donor really understand whether paying £40 or £100 to recruit a donor is good or bad.

Of course the donor doesn’t and why should they?

But they will have a view, irrespective of whether it is informed or not, in the same way that we all had a view about MP’s expenses. I do recall several MP’s explaining that this was a complex issue, they had merely followed the rules and that they were still good value for money – which is in essence what we are saying!

There is a danger that we’re missing the point - there is a bigger issue here and it relates to trust and fundraising impact.

Can you trust a charity to make best use of your donation and what difference will it really make to beneficiaries?

And the truth is that as a generalisation we are just not very good at demonstrating and dramatising this to supporters. We’re too busy on focussing on the next ask, whether it be for time, money or action.

Yes it happens on occasions, and when it does we marvel at the results, but inspiring donors with hard feedback and real evidence of what donations have achieved is not really currently embedded in the culture of fundraising best practice – apart from the occasional thank you and newsletter.

But this is one of our fundamental challenges, all the research shows this is a key driver of loyalty and future giving – and in my view is one of the guiding principles behind supporter stewardship.

And then there’s a second question – are we really vigilant at stopping fundraising activity that doesn’t generate an acceptable RoI – and what is our measure of acceptable? Is it acceptable to the public or acceptable to the charity?

So yes, of course we need to focus on transparency and explanations to the public but actually if they truly believed that their money made a real difference would they worry less about the costs and focus on the impact instead?

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Directory: Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO)