Incensed…. that’s the only way I can articulate the puffs of smoke that are still blowing.
This morning I listened to an interview with Kate Bahen on CBC radio. You can get a glimpse of the discussion at http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/09/21/con-charities-fundraisers.html. The CBC article generated a waft of responses: all horrified at the immoral activity or, as Bahen says, the ongoing “arms race.”
The interview tossed out the horrendously large number of dollars spent on professional fundraisers. While left unsaid, the intimation was that this money was spent in the last year. But it actually represented 4 years. The massive number quoted as paid to “professional fundraisers” (the term was left undefined) actually only represented 10% of overall money raised. Those percentages were not revealed in the interview.
I’m not sure who Bahen was referring to when she used the term “professional fundraisers,: but from the description of their activity it seems that they are face-to-face and street teams and telemarketing personal. When analyzing the fund raising activities throughout Canadian charities these activities represent about 1-3% of fund raising efforts overall. But the sweeping statement caught the attention of donors who are abused by the professional (sneaky and underhanded?) tactics used by charities.
I rolled through Charity Intelligence’s web site and found a disproportionately small number of charities. The reductive statements made suggest that they can be applied to all charities. It’s hard for me to apply these kind of comments to ALL charities when so few charities have actually been analyzed.
According to the little online response on CBC’s article, this “study” (and I use that word generously) has caught a lot of attention. Unfortunately it does not represent the integrity of hundreds of thousands of charities who are working honestly and with integrity — even with professionals.
Listening to such a tremendously biased interview from a journalist I respect was disconcerting. Figures being tossed into the conversation without perspective quickly brought the conversation to a fury against the injustice to the donor.
Unfortunately, the conversation was naive.
Fund raising is a complex and strategic endeavor. Charities are not fund raising to cheat their donors; they are fund raising in order to accomplish the tasks to which their organization is committed. There are times when charities are communicating to a new audience and the cost of that communication will be much higher, percentage-wise, than when communicating to their closest friends. It’s easy to take those specific fund raising endeavors and use them as examples of misspending. But fund raising activities aren’t isolated, one-off events. Understanding the relationship building activities that go on in a charity to build sustainable funding sources is complicated.
Personally, I only donate to organizations that are diligent in hiring professionals to implement fund raising strategies because I know they will build a plan that maximizes the effectiveness of the dollars spent for long term donor growth.
I am a communications and marketing expert. I understand positioning.
This morning’s interview effectively raised concern by positioning a few undefined and unexplained statistics to slander fund raising professionals.
Power of words
Gayle – I appreciate your perspective on this. A good corrective. Unfortunately, despite the misleading use of numbers by this journalist, I know from experience that there is a large number of corrupt charities in Canada, many of which are not caught by the government system. I offered marketing to such a charity for a few years. My Spidey sense tingled about their ethics and I consulted with Revenue Canada (now CRA) and the Imagine Foundation. They apparently met all requirements, so I ignored my intuition for another year or so. The charity received rave reviews from journalists. Eventually I decided I did not feel right about the organization. I walked away. Several years later, their corruption was exposed. I am increasingly wary about the organizations I work for, and their definitions of “program.”
Thanks Susan,
You’re right…. we need to understand the charities we align with, ensuring they meet the standards of integrity we have set. I am very concerned with the ethical standards set by charities and want to ensure that their operational procedures and marketing standards are high. The managing of a charity is much more complex than we see from a cursory look. My sadness at the CBC report was the lack of integrity in the depth of the statements they used, lumping numbers together that were meaningless, but dramatic. In many ways the journalist used the lowest form of marketing in positioning the statistics in a manipulative way to paint charity with a greedy brush.