Why people don't give

Many practitioners and academics (me included) spend a lot of time thinking about the reasons behind why people give money to charity. It's a fertile and important area of research as insights can help fundraisers dramatically improve their fundraising effectiveness. In that I'm hoping to publish my doctoral research this summer so watch this space.

In the meantime however as I interview charity supporters (and a few non-givers) I'm increasingly intrigued as to when and why people don't give. Claire Axelrad and I have been having an interesting debate in the Major Donor SIG pages about the importance of considering gender issues when crafting communications - written or verbal. I'm convinced that inappropriate messages are turning people off in an alarming manner. It's almost as if some people look for a reason not to give or to reject an ask. Look at the continued furore there is about street canvassing. It's even made it into Wikipedia.

However when you look at the research, as opposed to the urban myths some interesting observations become clearer. CAF report every year that around 60% of the adult population gave money to charity in the month prior to the survey. Cathy Pharaoh, who supervises the research maintains that this conspicuously underreports the actual percentage of people giving. Others consider that the American statistics of around 80% of the adult population as givers, are probably approached by the UK if we could get a more accurate measure. That is still however a very large number of adults not giving when Darwin (as opposed to Dawkins) reckons that we are all fundamentally altruistic animals.

What is not disputed is that giving across the population, as a percentage of GDP, has fallen very considerably over the last 100 years. In the last 20 years that I've been a fundraising practitioner and academic I see more charities asking for more money in more and more inappropriate ways. I still think compassion fatigue is a myth but I'm certain that, by our own poor practices, we are encouraging more people to say no.

Carpe Diem

You might have noticed that I've been banging on about death quite a lot lately, though in relation to fundraising and giving, with very good reason.

Many charities pussy foot around the D word and even if they do get round to asking, ever so humbly, for a legacy - tend to do it in an unstructured, ad hoc, sort of way. Mind you asking, is a lot better than not asking! Look at the differences in Legacy Income for Shelter compared to Crisis. Both formed around the same time for similar issues about homelessness. Shelter have asked consistently for legacies, Crisis haven't. Result Shelter's legacy income is 10 times that of Crisis.A strategy is vital to plan the right approach.

Yet there's always a more urgent bit of work to be done isn't there? That'usually the answer I get when I ask why a charity doesn't have a coherent approach to asking for legacy gifts. Well I've got news for you. The fact is you sometimes have to JFDI (just effing do it) and the new year is a great time to "seize the day".

Start to ask some of your long standing supporters if they've made a charitable will and why the have or haven't remembered you. You'll be amazed by some of the insights you gain and which can help you refine your legacy vision. (You've got to have a vision). You're not asking for a gift, yet, but do it now because there are people dying who will never die again!

As George Smith put it, "it's the last great fundraising opportunity". Stephen Pidgeon is even writing a book, "Love your donors to death!" Next time I'll tell you about the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers. Even though they do it silently, there is a lot we can learn from their approach to wills and will writing.

How to get the Case for Support right?

I've just being editing a cracking case for support for a new charity working with people in poverty in Ghana. What is particularly interesting is that Ghana is generally viewed as "middle income country (WHO) but in fact some areas are dirt poor as a young teacher doing VSO in Lawra found to her considerable cost. Remote, hot, very very poor the kids spent all day hunting for food rather than walking several kilometres (in that heat) to sit in a shack.

However instead of just getting on with the VSO role (to help improve teaching methods) she set about raising the funds to build a kitchen. Working with parents and teachers (who run the free lunch facility) the charity she set up build the facilities, laid on clean water and provided a regular supply of local food. Now attendenc has risen from 76% to 96%. The kids all get a free meal and their performance has improved dramatically.

It's so simple, it's a story. Sarah came home, gave up teaching and splits her time between fundraising and running three projects in and around Lawra. Tell it how it is. What do they do? why do they do it? And why you should support them? We overcomplicate these things. Of course a grant application might need a 10 page description but it's still the same three questions that have got to be asked. ATE Ghana is set to raise and invest £100k in their first year of operation. Not bad for a young girl! Take a look at the story at: www.ateghana.org What's not to like?

Champagne and Social Enterprise still on offer!

I was at the NCVO and ISIRC conferences in Birmingham last month presenting papers on Philanthropy and Social Investment but listening to a number on developing Social Enterprise(SE). There's still a lot of discussion about what SE is and isn't but between a large number of academics no agreed definition save that "you know one when you see it" and also lots on what it isn't.

So I'm offering (again) a bottle of champagne to the best definition in 30 words or less and as someone pointed out this around the 140 character SMS/Tweet limit. We generally agreed that SE is somewhere on the spectrum between a purely "altruistic" charity and a "red in tooth and claw" commercial company but where and what does that mean?

Come on have a go, but be warned I'm hard to please and four professors have failed so far to satisfy me. Incidentally Stephen Barber (now a reader at LSBU!), gave a very whitty run down last time on the "Big Society" and likened it as liable to be ditched by Cameron if things get too hairy in the same way as Blair ditched the Stakeholder Society when it started biting him. Just how much have we heard of late?

I am still convinced that if we mention BS at all it needs to be as the "Bigger Society", since we've had a very successful Big Society, in the guise of the work of charities and community organisations for more than 100 years. Albeit at the moment, with the retreat of government, it's definitely becoming the "Smaller Society"

Philanthropy is not fair

With all the talk of bankers (or as I prefer, banksters) bonus' and whether they could, should, might give them to charity it is worth reminding ourselves of why people give. After all, as some of you know, I'm doing a bloody PhD on the "Nature of Philanthropy" and some of the bankers I've talked to in the past have actually been really quite nice people with a social conscience!

Equally, as the Guardian put it, most people don't want charity, they want fairness. Equality of opportunity whether it's in jobs and homes or clean water and food. Giving philanthropically does little to address those concerns but may still help make the world a slightly better place. It doesn't matter whether it's Bill Gates trying to abolish polio (winning) or malaria (way to go) or a mere mortal making a more modest £10 per month to help bring books to kids trying to get educated. The charitable intention is, I believe, a healthy one and capable of making the world a nice place both in the givers' own community or country as well as where the funds are used.

However, just as inducing a guilt trip for a quick one-off donation is, usually, counter productive for developing good relations with a giver; so, blackmailing a bonus receiver into forgoing it or giving it to "charidy" will probably provoke a backlash in the individual's own charitable motivations and also in his or her working community. Maybe, just maybe, we've got to use intellectual persuasion to change beliefs in order to change attitude and behaviour as those of you who've read the "Spectrum of Philanthropy" might twig.

It's a harder, longer, slower path but I think it could pay dividends.

The Banksters could learn something from charities

Well well, another $2bn popped it, this time from UBS, and they said it couldn't happen again.

In my experience, if the banks put in something akin to the cost controls that the average charity has (actually Parliament could learn something here) then it really couldn't happen again. The number of signatures, checks, balances and justifications one usually has to make to get repaid for a trip to, say Leeds, would make all but the sturdiest stalwarts tremble in their boots. But it works.

The same applies for sales control as I've just found out. I've spent the last two months chasing around the university to get an invoice raised for a tiny piece of research. Eight weeks, six signatories about about four separate forms all so that the university can be paid by an organisation gagging to pay us! You might say that this is over controlled. I couldn't possibly comment. It does however throw into stark relief the fact that with a few more people looking over the shoulders of the traders and asking the obvious questions, this stuff just could not happen.

Marketing or Fundraising? The Big Debate

A most interesting debate at LSBU today as to whether we must integrate fundraising into all our charity communications and fundraising or whether the skills needed for "the ask" are actually separate, complementary but different to those needed for marketing communications.

An initial vote showed 70% supporting the motion.

Patrick Boggon of Tarnside proposed that everything that fundraisers attempt in trying to change the world is driven by marketing principles. In fact unless Maple's five Ps (price, place promotion, product and positioning)are considered carefully and honestly the fundraising proposition is likely to fail.

Peter Maple countered that fundraising unlike marketing is really very, very simple. Taking into account Tony Elisher's fundraising cycle and the ubiquitous case for support all the fundraiser needs is to listen and ask appropriately. Marketing, on the other hand is full of concepts, theories, paradigms, matrices and gurus. He conceeded that one must have an understanding of effective marketing in a not for profit but asserted that it doesn't have to come from the fundraisers.

The audience were largely unmoved agreeing that there are two skill sets but that fundraising like sales )in commerical organisations), needs to be fully understood and integrated into the marketing function.

You had to be there.

Why feel guilty?

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about feelings of guilt. And that's not easy for someone who has been described variously as being relentlessly cheerful and a remorseless optimist.

Interviewed on in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/video/2010/feb/01/chuggers-street-fundraising) about street canvassing I remarked that people need to sort out their own preferred giving and then stop feeling guilty about saying no to canvassers. In fact, I said, if they still felt guilty they'e better see my wife the pyschotherapist!

However I've just seen a Muscular Dystrophy poster using a child in a wheelchair with the caption " He'd like to walk away from this poster too". In my grumpy view this is guilt fundraising of the worst kind. Why make people feel bad when, with a bit more effort, you can inspire them to feel good about helping to change the world? It got me thinking that maybe I'm dismissing guilt too readily in pursuit of relationship fundraising.

I'm doing research into the motivations of those who give to charity and maybe I need to revise my methodology. After all if we accept that some people simply want to transact with the charity and not have a relationship that maybe we need to look much harder at some of those negative drivers? What do think? Do you feel guilty passing a blatently emotive, heart wrenching ad?

So called relationship fundraising

And another thing that dear Ken Burnett and the most of the fundraising pundits bang on about is about building relationships with our donors. But most of them don't want a relationship with us! Take my wife, no, do please.

She is seriously pissed off with charities trying to "build a relationship" with spurious mailings, telephone calls and the rest. What she wants is genuine NEWS about how her hundred quid is making a difference, but she gets a barage of thinly disguised appeals. They don't even do the "Botton Village" thing and ask her how often she'd like to hear from them. And they are household name large charities with apparently "sophisticated" communications strategies.

She's not a major donor, but does give a few hundred a year to things that really interest her. What's more she's not alone. Cash donors are going to get a lot pickier over the next couple of years, mark my words!

Managing Expectations

Talking with some of the fundraising students on the part time MSc course at London South Bank University yesterday about fundraising management. We agreed that sometimes it's the expectations that are the hardest thing of all to manage. From trustees who ask "How long will it take to raise your salary" to the supporters who ask, "What, you get paid?"

Great expectatations can be a heavy burden (think of Linus in Charlie Brown who says "There's no heavier burden than great potential). And so, one of the most important lessons fundraisers can learn (and give their teams license to say)is the ability to say NO! It can of course be moderated.....No, not unless we invest more, or stop doing something else - but essentially managing unrealistic expectations.

It doesn't come easy to those used to being optimists and whose glass is always half full. Never the less it's a powerful tool used sparingly.