Intelligent Giving needs to raise its own standards

Hi g

I think the issue is not that IG are a "bunch of bloggers" but that they promote themselves as an authority on charities and a resource to help individuals decide where to put their hard-earned.

People are entitled to have opinions and to share them in the public domain, but to single out 10 charities as less deserving of people's cash because they felt that it was a good use of resources to celebrate their fundraisers success seemed to be the purpose of the article.

I agree that Gill Raikes response was a good one, and justified why it was a good thing to spend money on, but Ian was addressing something more fundamental, can anyone appoint themselves a watchdog / authority? Do you have to do research before you start making judgements on what most donors would be comfortable? Can reading 500 annual reports fully equip you to tell me who is worth of my cash?!

Often charity donations can be a very private and personal thing, and managing the relationship with your donors is key to good fundraising practice. If anyone has the authority to start slating a charity on a random set of subjective criteria then trust in the whole sector goes down. I've known of several occasions where one charity avoids publicly criticising another because the result is that neither charity ends up looking any better.

It could be seen that IG is the playground bully, wandering around saying "I don't like you", "you're not getting to have any friends", or "I'm taking your lunch money because you looked at me funny." There doesn't seem to be a lot of effort to praise the charities that are doing well, indeed, the articles about the awards don't mention once the effort that the charities put into being nominated for their awards in the first place. There wasn't an overview of what the winners did to win, or how far some charities have come or any celebration the achievements that would balanced the article.

If the purpose of the IG website is to give information to encourage donors to make smarter judgements as to who is worthy of their cash (not that I believe for a minute there are swathes of people just surfing the net looking for charities to donate to) then I think anyone in the sector has a right to ask with what authority they do so. Particularly, when the outcome of some articles I've seen is to say who is unworthy and simply because IG says so.

Second point.

'Donors'cash should only be spent where they are comfortable seeing it spent.'

This raises a very interesting philosophical question that gets to the hub of charitable giving and philanthropy. But before we even get that far, we have to look at this statement, which is so vague as to be almost meaningless.

I endorse all the points Just Me makes and add a few of my own.

We need a modifier for the noun 'donors'. Is this statement meant to refer all donors, some donors, most donors, any donors? If 'most'donors, is this a simple majority of 51 per cent or do we set a limit such as 66 per cent of donors must agree to charity expenditure before a charity can spend that money? If 'any'donors, are we meant to infer that a single dissenting donor could veto a charity's fundraising expenditure? If 'some'donors, at what point do we set the threshold: 10 per cent; 25 per cent, 34.5691r per cent?

And what does 'comfortable'mean? Does this mean that donors are basically 'OK'with that type of expenditure or does it require the express and explicit approval of some/all/most/any* (*delete as applicable) donors?

Assuming this is one of IG's fundamental tenets of how fundraising in the UK should function, it needs to be constructed in a much more robust form than this statement is. It is this kind of thing I was referring to when I said IG needs to raise its standards.

The fundamental philosophical point is far more interesting than these linguistic niceties. For it gets to the heart of what charitable giving is about and why charities exist in the first place.

This statement makes satisfying donors needs the most important thing a charity must do.

Charities, however, are not set up as receptacles for Westerners'philanthropic duty; they exist because there is a wrong that needs redressing.

Charities should not spend money only where donors are 'comfortable' with them spending it; they should spend it where it will be of most use. The two may not coincide.

Charities are experts in servicing their beneficiary groups; donors are not (necessarily, but they can be). This means that fundraisers construct a certain proposition that they ask donors to support; they don't go to donors and ask where they would like to spend some money because donors are not in the best position to decide where that money should be spent. Charities however are. This is restricted funding.

The point of unrestricted funding is that we, as donors, place our trust in the charities we support to spend that money where the charity best thinks it should be spent. That may be on emergency support in the wake of a natural disaster, it may be to plug the gap in a project funding shortfall, it may be to pay the electricity bill, or it may even be to send its fundraising team to an awards ceremony.

There is or course, as Adam says, a communication issue here and it is best practice for charities to communicate to their donors how and why unrestricted funding is used.

But there is no debate on the philosophical issue. Adam, in saying charities should ONLY spend cash where their donors are comfortable, you are just wrong.

Adam Rothwell said
"Donors'cash should only be spent where they are comfortable seeing it spent."

I find that statement alarming, for several reasons

Firstly, we would have to ask every donor which things they are happy with their donation covering, for EVERY donation. We would have to wave bye bye to staff, laundry services, office equipment and supplies, core equipment servicing, maintenance, repair and upgrades. Lots of staff.

Secondly, we would have to spend time reporting to every donor exactly where their pennies went

Thirdly, that implies that currently money is being spent where donors wouldn't be comfortable.

Finally, that suggests that charities are untrustworthy. I give to charities that I trust to do the work they say they do. Whether my £1 goes on electricity, council tax, tv licenses, carpet cleaner, paint or staff I don't care because the overall effect is that the core work is being carried out. I give so that work can be done.

The charitable sector suffers enough with mistrust and uncertainty, without people being encouraged to believe that it's their right to find out where every penny of their donation goes. It's a long slow road to educating people about the value of investing in fundraising or the difficulty in raising core costs, but to have people like IG picking at scabs and making the job 100x worse.

I'd happily stand and discuss with donors the value of the "odd party" but you try justifying it to someone who's read the IG article...

I'd qualify what Just Me said by adding "SOME Donors rarely like what money is spent on...... But that's an education issue."

"Most donors are caring individuals"

What I find is that it's non-donors who have a problem with where money is spent, and I'm sure that Adrian Sargeant's research backs this up. People who don't donate expect charities to have tiny costs. The problem is that more and more charities are chasing a relatively static number of donors, and we need to have positive messages to encourage non-donors to give.

Educating donors, and non-donors is crucial, but hard. No-one wants to be 'educated' by someone. And it's not interesting, is it?

Something people forget is that charities ARE accountable. They are monitored, they are measured and they are compared, and they have to do a good job AND be effective or they shut down. The tone of IG's article gave the impression that they aren't accountable to anyone, and that annoys me.

The other problem with having IG (who spent some of the money their donors gave them to operate on going along) is perception. I saw one charity with excitable staff drinking champagne - just a jolly surely? Or were they delighted that their hard work was being recognised by their peers, and drinking the pricey sparkling wine since that was all their personal spending budget (from their own pockets, not the charity's)allowed?

"Donors would not like to hear that charities spend some of their money on champagne, veal and canapés. Would anyone like to argue with that?"

I'm a donor, and if it was for a good reason, I WOULD like to hear it. If a charity can spend £1000 wining and dining a major donor that had never heard of them who then turns around and gives them £100k, I'd love to be able to give them another £1000 to do it again.

Finally, was I the only person there that didn't get veal?

If you really wanted to, you could easily do a straw poll of donors in certain areas, and find a substantial chunk of people who would say no person working for a charity should recieve a wage (and I'm not referring exclusively to fundraisers). That doesn't mean that half of us should jack in the job and do it for free. Nor would it mean that IG would be correct in having a dig at all waged charity staff.

As a sector, we need to educate many many people in the ways that charities raise money, and spend money.

What the IG article was sorely missing, was a reflection of how much the table cost in terms of amount raised by each charity. We're talking here about celebrating some stunning work in the industry, and groups of people (or individuals) who have substantially increased the amount raised for the charity!

Donors rarely like what money is spent on. They are annoyed when we put donations in terms of hours of nursing care, because they think their donation of £12.50 should provide beds, nurses, food, transport and an outing to boot. It's those donors who'd get upset. But that's an education issue.

Most donors are caring individuals, who have an interest in the cause and (certainly in our case) a care for the staff , and would be saddened to think that you turned down an opportunity to publicly reward staff because you were afraid to spend 0.00x% of the charities overall expenditure doing so.

Adam, just because people listen, or discuss things with you, doesn't make you right. I don't have a problem with what you say, but the name-and-shame does nothing to support your assertion that you were trying to stimulate debate, nor does the apparently gleeful donors-wouldn't-like-this with which the article was written.