Isn’t it funny in this time of credit crunch, collapsing banks, economic crisis, and more doom and gloom predictions everywhere you turn, how some fundraisers and organisations appear to be oblivious to what is going on. In fact, over the past few weeks I have come across a number of examples of abysmal practice that just makes you wonder whether, even now, some charities just assume the money will just keep on rolling in.
If these weren’t so sad, it would almost be funny!
I know of a supporter who raised around £1,000 doing an event for a charity and simply needed the charity to give him a receipt so that he could get the money match funded by his employer and double the value of his gift. He has emailed them 3 times now and had absolutely no response.
I’m sure he feels really valued and will be bound to do even more for them next year.
A potential supporter informed a well-known charity they were keen to sponsor two children via a high level giving product. They requested packs and information in September and chased again, but to date have received nothing.
I’m sure they still feel there is a genuine need that they can help meet.
A number of charities shared in a newspaper Appeal. They were allowed one follow-up contact to readers who responded with a donation, but only one of the six had bothered. They reached an extra 20,000 people while the other five just took the money and moved on.
It must be great to be so flush with cash to be able to just ignore offers and opportunities to raise extra funds even with little or no effort required.
Bah humbug.
Comments
Another example
I too am often staggered by how unresponsive some charities are when funds are being offered. My partner's company has a Christmas collection every year. This time round a well known UK charity was selected by staff to recieve the funds and was requested several times to send a collecting tin and literature. Despite several phone conversations with the charity the collection box never arrived, so a different charity became the recipient of the funds raised. Obviously some charities are just so flush with cash they don't need more donations.
More of these
Depressing stuff John. And I bet we'll hear more of these examples in the press as the recession bites.
I'm sure we've all got our own examples. I've been annoyed to see the same appeal letter from a Christmas-related charity arrive four times to my partner and I. All with the same postcode and house number of course. You'd have hoped that the deduping processes would have spotted those.
How should one overcome this waste though? Is it down to each individual to double-check their processes, or a more savvy approach from managers? A bit of both, I should imagine.
Anyone want to share examples of how they or their organisation overcame these stupid wasteful glitches in their processes?
Process and wasted energies
Thought-provoking blog John, thanks. And I agree with Howard, unfortunately, as working with multiple charities I often see key processes falling by the wayside.
Maintaining focus on one of the most important assests any charity has - it's supporter relationships - has to be a priority from a procedural perspective.
The good news is that in every charity I work with there seems to be a tangible appetite to get this right so perhaps things will improve. Linking to a previous couple of blogs I wrote, I think some specific campaigning and marketing skills wouldn't go amiss either, whether developed internally or recruited in from outside.
Cheers
Kevin
Founder, Bottom Line Ideas
www.bottomlineideas.com
Speaker, Cancer Research UK