Macmillan Cancer Support’s chief executive said last night that her charity has carried out a full review of its fundraising practices and made some “difficult decisions” after a fundraising scandal which saw the charity accused of mistreating donors.
The charity was one of a number of large charities which has come under pressure over their relationships with agencies who had been exposed for pressuring vulnerable donors and other poor practices by newspapers.
Lynda Thomas giving a talk last night at Cass Business School’s Centre for Charity Effectiveness where she said that the Macmillan has been on a “journey” over the last two years.
She admitted that the fallout highlighted that some of its fundraising “was not as it should be” and that the charity had not met expectations.
She said that there was a “lot more scrutiny externally and internally,” of its fundraising and that “for a while we were a bit defensive”.
Macmillan set up a committee to look at all of its fundraising activity and has begun implementing a number of changes aimed to “get to that point where our fundraising is effective legitimate and ethical”.
She said Macmillan has hired a compliance manager to work closely with fundraisers.
‘We scrutinised the portfolio’
Thomas said that after looking at all of its fundraising products in detail, the charity had also had to make some “difficult decisions” for financial reasons.
She said there were some events where “it becomes a nice thing to do and donors have a great experience” but the charity has to remember that “actually it’s a fundraising event” and consider if it “makes money for us”.
With all products she said Macmillan looked at the “return on investment” and “when the expected payback was”.
She said there were some surprises, with some products never reaching the expected threshold, as they “never matched expenditure because of donor attrition”.
This has led to “some really big decisions around some fundraising products” which will affect staff and agency workers. But she said: “We have got to see this through.”
Trustee involvement ‘vital’
Thomas said that the board played a “vital” role in driving through change.
The committee reviewing fundraising was chaired by a member of the board, and it also include the board member responsible for reputation to strike the right “tension between raising money and what does this mean for reputation”.
She said at times trustees were the charities “harshest critics” and asked “some really difficult questions of us as executive leaders” but that there “has been some good open dialogue”.
She added that it helped that trustees had a personal connection to the cause or had been involved in raising money for the charity.
‘A more meaningful relationship’
Thomas said “fundraising is about engaging with people” and that often beneficiaries and fundraisers are the same people.
“There is a real relationship between what we call give and what we call get,” she said.
She said almost three quarters of funds raised come from people with experience of the charity.
She said Macmillan was exploring ways to build longer term and “more meaningful” relationships with supporters.
“How can we talk to those people who run marathons year after year after year?" she asked. "Are we good enough at recognising that long term life time value and celebrating that?”
‘Consent is a thorny issue’
Macmillan has also done a big piece of work with 3,000 donors around consent to be contacted and ended up with a “hybrid” between an opt in and opt out model for consent.
"What was really interesting was that most people didn’t understand consent,” she said. "People say things like 'I don’t want to be contacted but I would like to be sent my coffee morning pack'."
The charity has also done a lot of training with staff to make sure that they understand what consent means as it has committed to listening to 1 per cent of all calls made on behalf of the charity.
‘Right to fundraise’
Thomas also it was more important than ever to make the case for charities being able to fundraise.
“There are people out there that think why do charities need to fundraise?” she said.
“We need to be good at talking about why the need is greater than ever,” she said.
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