Fair to say that New Philanthropy Capital chief executive Jonathan Simmons’s comments about charities needing to “make themselves more visible” to high-net-worth individuals at an event last month raised a few eyebrows. Perhaps that was his point, and I’m sure his intentions were good, but many felt the comments ignore the difficulties facing charities to even get in the same room as these people. How do you make yourself more visible exactly? Send them an email?
As senior philanthropy manager Imogene Deery at Right to Childhood noted in an email to our publisher: “Charities are increasingly encouraged to build meaningful relationships with philanthropists, but that can be difficult when funders aren’t particularly accessible and introductions often depend on existing networks. Surely there’s a responsibility on both sides?”
As Simmons suggests, storytelling might be the answer, but is it really any easier now because we all have a phone in our pocket? “The suggestion that storytelling has never been cheaper or easier is reductive,” adds Deery. “The tools might be cheap, but good storytelling still takes time, expertise and resources, particularly when we’re trying to share people’s experiences responsibly.”
And it’s not as if charities haven’t been trying to woo the wealthy. As Civil Society’s news editor Rob Preston points out in a recent blog: “Some, mainly larger, charities are investing in their relationships with major donors, with Crisis, and Nordoff and Robbins both recently creating senior fundraising roles to support this work.”
But there may be a harder truth at the heart of why some rich people don’t give, no matter how “visible” charities are. A lot of very rich people, those who have spent their entire lives in the pursuit of money, don’t in essence believe in charity. Some do, some say they do, and some do if they get something in return – but a fair few fundamentally don’t. It might not even be that they don’t care about the world’s problems. They might. But even if they do, they don’t seem to think charity is the answer.
There are so many nuances to the argument about why the wealthy don’t give more that people have published entire books about it. And there will be many more because it is a complex problem. But there again, surely, it can’t be that hard... as fundraisers are used to hearing from their trustees every year when they see the Sunday Times Rich List: “Just call Richard Branson. He’s got loads of money.”
Stephen Cotterill is editor of Fundraising Magazine.
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