Hey look. After more than two years, Society Diary has a new standfirst. The old one was dull, frankly. Anyway, this week we've got a new bunch of nonsense.
Including, but not limited to, a hole which achieved nothing, and a charities minister who, after his evidence session to the Lords Select Committee on charities, is arguably in the same position.
Well, it's a big hole
You think fundraising is tough? Well, the nihilistic card games company Cards Against Humanity would beg to differ. It raised more than $100,000 in no time flat to dig a totally purposeless hole in the ground. Donors coughed up $5 a time to make the digger go for three seconds. They’re idiots, in Diary’s view. But there sure are a lot of them.
Diary’s a week late on this story but what the hell do you care, you obviously didn’t know about it, or you wouldn’t be reading this now.
Anyway, now there’s a hole in a field. Cards Against Humanity offered one of the world’s most inspired Q&As of all time.
What do I get for contributing money to the hole?
A deeper hole. What else are you going to buy, an iPod?
How deep can you make this sucker?
Great question. As long as you keep spending, we’ll keep digging. We’ll find out together how deep this thing goes.
Is the hole bad for the environment?
No, this was just a bunch of empty land. Now there’s a hole there. That’s life.
Why aren’t you giving all this money to charity?
Why aren’t YOU giving all this money to charity? It’s your money.
Anyway, that’s nihilism in the post-truth era. Or some similar nonsense which means nothing really but makes Diary sound clever.
Shut up! I'm trying to navigate.
Diary always thought a 360 review was looking at your bum in a mirror. But no, not so, it appears. It means asking not just your boss but your staff what they think of you.
Joe Saxton, driver of ideas at consultancy nfpSynergy, went one step further recently and tweeted asking people to say what they think of him. Apparently the most common response was that there wasn’t enough room on the form.
Well Joe, we love you. Not least because you have Diary’s favourite job title in the charity sector. Without exception this column imagines a little gang of ideas thumping one another and sticking gum to the seats in a crowded Vauxhall Meriva, with you leaning round occasionally to shout “All right in the back?”
Thanks for the clarity
Rob Wilson, minister for civil society, reminded the Lords Select Committee on Charities this week that he had once given a speech warning charities not to be party political. When asked what this meant in practice, he said that he didn’t know, and it meant whatever he was told it meant by people elsewhere in government.
It puts Diary in mind of a political slogan pioneered by Tony Hawks, author of such classics as Round Ireland with a Fridge and Beating the Moldovans at Tennis.
“What do we want?”
“We don’t know!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!
Okay, that's all clear then
Diary was rather taken by the Fundraising Regulator’s new proposals on the Fundraising Preference Service this week. The FPS was originally conceived as a “reset button” service which would let a donor opt out of all fundraising communications by all charities for all time.
It’s safe to say that it hasn’t quite met its original expectations.
After conception the FPS disappeared into a series of committees, and earlier this week it squidged out the other end.
The Fundraising Regulator, the body behind this wheeze, issued new rules confidently. This, it said, was the final version. A day or so later, it issued a clarification statement saying it did, however, apply to all communications via all channels by all charities.
Diary started thinking about the implications of this. What if you want to park in Oxford but you’re having trouble finding a spot? Just nip round to Oxfam, park in their car park, and sign up to the FPS. They can’t send you a penalty notice.
What if you’re a bin man and you want to cut down on your round. Just sign up to the FPS and stop collecting CRUK’s bins. What if you’re a student and you don’t want to hand in your essay. Just sign up and your tutor can’t email you.
And this “all forms of communication” thing? That’s a lot of forms of communication to monitor. Fax. Snapchat. Semaphore. Paper aeroplanes. Comms masers. Drones. Carrier pigeons. A note tied to the collar of a dog. Ceefax. Smoke signals. Winking.
Sadly a couple of days later, the regulator clarified its clarification. By all comms via all channels, it actually meant all direct marketing communications, via text, phone, email and addressed mail.
And actually, you couldn’t stop comms by all charities. You had to individually name them.
Oh. And it didn’t really apply to all charities anyway, because it didn’t include those in Scotland, or those spending less than £100k a year on fundraising.
Oh, and it's not for all time, your registration lapses after a year.
In short, it seems to have worked a bit like a Hollywood rewrite. The first draft was about a romance between a couple in Paris with a bit-part for their mate as a comedy extra. The second draft has a bigger role for the extra and is now set in Berlin. The third draft cuts out the couple and gives the starring role to the mate and moves the action to the north of Canada. In the fourth draft there are some new baddies and the extra is a wisecracking action hero. The fifth draft is a Tom Cruise vehicle set on Mars.
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