In a world long past there were campaigning charities and there were service delivery charities, and never the twain did meet. But in our brave new world, more and more charities are making campaigning a central part of their mission and messaging. Celina Ribeiro looks at what is behind the trend and what it means for fundraising.

Last year marked the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of twentieth century divisions based on fear and thinking. A turning point in the way the governments and people of the world deal with and understand each other.

Two decades on, the charity world is witnessing some shaking along its own iron curtain. The ideological, emotional, operational and often physical separations between fundraising and campaigning are crumbling all around us.

As more and more charities abandon the traditional distinction between campaigning and fundraising, civil society organisations’ own internal cold war could well be coming to an end. But does this new Third Way work for all charities? Or is it a case of adapt or lose relevance in a modern supporter-driven world?

The earthquake in Haiti last month marked a step change in the relationship between fundraising and campaigning. Within 24 hours of the quake hitting the long-impoverished country the Disasters Emergency Committee launched an appeal for donations. Millions of pounds flooded in, and continue to do so. It was a straightforward natural disaster: earthquake hits, mass devastation occurs, aid agencies and armies fly in to right the wrongs of Mother Nature.

But this disaster, unlike the 2005 tsunami before it, prompted a different response from some charities.

Eight days after news started coming in about the disaster, Christian Aid – a member of the DEC – kicked off a campaign to drop Haiti’s national debt. A few days later Oxfam piped in with its own drop the debt campaign. Dropping Haitian debt has become an international campaign.

Christian Aid pledged to use its online petition to lobby the UK’s representative at the International Monetary Fund, Chancellor Alistair Darling, to cancel Haiti’s $890m national debt so as to free up the country as it embarks on the road to recovery. Five days after launching the petition, Christian Aid had more than 3,700 signatures – and their associated names and email addresses.

After signing, petitioners were sent an email with six possible further actions. Supporters could donate to Christian Aid or the DEC, take more campaigning action and become a fan of Christian Aid on Facebook.

Oxfam, meanwhile, had petitioners send a pre-written email to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, with a similar debt cancellation message. Oxfam took supporters’ email addresses and postcodes. Once you signed Oxfam’s petition, you were sent to a page where you could relay your action to your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

The answer to the question ‘What can I do about it?’ whispered from couches into TV news broadcasts of Haiti’s starving, injured and displaced was no longer simple. Supporters could do a lot for the people of Haiti – and without even typing in their credit card details.

“The idea that somehow an NGO should just meekly patch people up and send them on their way without saying ‘why is this happening and how can it be stopped?’ would have virtually zero public support,” says nfpSynergy’s Joe Saxton.  

Trend towards campaigning-fundraising integration

This rise of campaigning has not gone unnoticed, nor uncriticised. Last December Spectator magazine published a scathing editorial from Ed Howker who blasted charities for losing track by campaigning.

Indeed, there has been a spate of charities heeding the call to campaign. In November RNID announced a massive restructure which would merge fundraising and advocacy and do away with a single director of fundraising post. Charities such as Cancer Research’s UK ask supporters to pledge support for campaigns and Unicef UK just this month has launched its first ever integrated multimedia fundraising/campaigning effort.