Intelligent Giving - How many pens do we need? - Comments

unsolicited contact

john A burton — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:54:57 +0000

Unsolicited gifts are only slightly worse than unsolicited mailings. As an example several years ago my wife and I made a donation to a charity on behalf of my father-in-law who had died. We said this was a one-off, and was made because he would want to support the charity, (and it was not one we had any particular intention of supporting). But once we were on their mailing list, it was nigh on impossible to get off it despite writing on many occasions. This is the sort of thing that gets charities a bad name, and I have named this charity to friends and family ever since, as one NOT to support because of their inefficiency and incompetence.

It would be very useful indeed if IG had icons indicating whether or not a charity sends out unsolicited mailings, whether or not they dish out 'gifts' of any sort (there's no such thing as a 'free' gift), and whether or not a charity indulges in chugging. All very relevant to giving intelligently.....

And I could envusage some very entertaining icons....

Apologies for the overuse of bold script

Ginsters Dragon — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:27:08 +0000

I'm not "shouting" all the way through the post below. It was an error!

Don't shoot the messenger

Repsonse to- isn't it the norm?

Ginsters Dragon — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:25:15 +0000

I'm not sure how 'normal' it is. But that's what IG (and others) should be getting worked up about if transparency is truly their prime concern..... And it's not just misrepresenting fundraising costs, there's far worse that goes on below the radar.

rspcacambridge: I personally don't disagree with you about pens. But if incentivised mailing packs are not working for a particular organisation then all they have to do is stop mailing them. If donors don't like it then all they have to do is ignore them and stop giving..... Do we really need regulators to metaphorically hold our hands, look after us and tell us what's best? It's seriously depressing.

Don't shoot the messenger

Isn't it the norm?

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:33:14 +0000

Don't almost all charities use dubious figures to make themselves look more appealing to donors? For example 1p in every pound raised is spent on fundraising & admin (yeah right!) or every pound we raise could be spent (so could means maybe it will, maybe it won't!).

Donor choice

rspcacambridge — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:17:31 +0000

My problem with the unsolicited pens is that donors treat ME as a potential pen-monger! I have no worries about things that really are incentives that the donor can choose or not - for example different types of membership with or without a glossy magazine.

What's wrong with unsolicited items is the way they try to trade on people's guilt about not paying for the "gift" which leaves potential donors thinking charity fundraisers are basically dishonest. That then feeds into the belief that we're all paying ourselves enormous fees and expenses as "admin costs".

Fiddling while Rome burns

Ginsters Dragon — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:02:31 +0000

And whilst we worry about who sent which plastic promotional novelty (and how many of them).... There are charities out there wilfully misleading the public, lying to donors and exagerating the impact of their work. It's all a matter of priorities I guess.

Don't shoot the messenger

It's the "nannying " that riles me

Ginsters Dragon — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:57:31 +0000

OK, maybe people don't like gifts. But in the nicest possible way, 'so what'. If you don't like it don't respond to it. If peole stop donating off the back of 'incentivised' (urghhh!) mail packs then charities will either adjust their practice or give way to others who are more responsive to public demand.

Businesses regularly send unsolicited 'junk' out and I don't see the private sector ringing their hands and beating themselves up about it. My point is that it may well be bad practice, it may well be wasteful, but there's no lack of transparency. CRUK weren't sending out pens under the pretence that they came from somewhere else, or wilfully lying about the costs of their fundraising or the impact of work. They were doing something that some people might disapprove of. That's all. Why the need for this constant naval gazing and (self) regulation?

Don't shoot the messenger

It's fair enough to make

Charity Chris — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:39:18 +0000

It's fair enough to make the point about the phrasing of the question. The survey notes on the same page that:

- 70% of FRSB respondents and 69% of CAM respondents think charities put gifts in to make people feel guilty about getting something for nothing.

- 16% of FRSB respondents and 29% of CAM respondents think putting gifts in direct mail as an incentive to give is acceptable.

That doesn't sound like a popular method of fundraising.

Whatever the whys and wherefores of the debate on gifts in mailings, in this case one person received 13 pens from a charity over a relatively short stretch of time. Whether or not they were addressed or unaddressed or whether it was the postman's fault seems to me pretty much irrelevant. The pens arrived on one person's doormat, and they came from the charity.

IG have simply pointed out that the basic facts of this particular situation seem to have been ignored, and also suggests that if self-regulation is going to be seen as transparent and effective, that donors should have more input to the process.

FRSB survey

SimonK — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:57:16 +0000

OK, I found the survey - available to download from http://www.nfpsynergy.net/freereports/ (free registration required). And, as I expected, the actual wording says something completely different from how you've put it.

The actual statement which 93% of existing charity donors (who cared enough to respond to the survey) agreed with was, "Money spent on putting gifts in direct mail might be better spent on the cause". Let's start by taking notice of that "might", which you've conveniently ignored - of course it "might", but that doesn't mean it should. But more importantly, what's any of this got to do with pens?

If I'd been answering that questions, I'd probably also have answered yes, because I wouldn't have made the connection to pens at all. I've never thought that when I got a pen in the post, it was intended as a "gift". Some cheap, crappy biro - what sort of gift is that? No wonder you're calling it "junk" if you're thinking of it that way. I've always assumed that the idea of a pen was so that I had something to hand to fill in the direct debit form - I'd never realised that I was supposed to think of it as a present!

When you look at another stat from that survey, which was that only 1 in 5 of the FRSB respondents claimed to have received direct mail containing a "gift", it seems like I'm not alone. Pen does not equal gift.

We're creeping towards consensus I feel

Ginsters Dragon — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:42:50 +0000

I'm sure you're right about the majority of people not liking incentives/gifts/junk (call them what you will). But I also agree with Simon with regards to the inherent bias that creeps into market research - especially in contencious areas such as public opinion on charity fundraising,

The trouble with creating such a stark (and false) dichotomy as pens versus valid charitable work is that it completely misses the point. As you well know, one funds the other. It isn't a matter of preferring fundraising activities over dying children/homeless greyhounds/ impoverished african communities etc. By extending the same argument you could make the case for sacking all professional fundraisers/ marketeers and depending entirely on the good will of people with a bit of time on their hands. All very worthy but the dying children, homeless greyhounds and imporverished african communities would ultimately suffer.

My attitude to direct mail is that bad practice will be it's own penalty in the end. Charities that perfom badly and irritate the donating public will be forced to change their ways or lose out to 'better' organisations. If IG focuses on forcing charities to be open, honest and transparent then the public can make better informed decisions when they chose who to donate to. That, I thought, was your sole remit and it's a very worthy one.

Don't shoot the messenger

93%?

SimonK — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:08:19 +0000

Adam, do you have a link to that research that says "93% of people think charities should spend their cash on charitable activities instead of pens"? It strikes me as a classic example of survey data being led by how the question is phrased.

If you ask people, "Do you think charities should spend money on charitable activities or on sending pens to potential supporters?" then you're highly likely to get a 93% response one way. But if instead the question was something like, "Research has consistently shown that including pens in direct marketing appeals will greatly increase response rates, meaning that charities can spend less on fundraising and more on their charitable activities. Do you think they are justified in doing this?", then you'll get very different figures.

I'm not suggesting either of the wordings above is better - I'm just saying that loaded questions will get loaded answers, and without seeing the original survey, quoting the figure of 93% is meaningless.

Junk or not?

Adam Rothwell — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:25:27 +0000

Hi Ginsters,

OK, it's a fair cop: maybe using the word 'junk' to describe the 'gifts' charities send wasn't the best of ideas. However, I would hazard that the vast majority of people would have no problem with my phrasing. As the FRSB's own research has shown, 93% of people think charities should spend their cash on charitable activities instead of pens. So whilst perhaps I shouldn't have called them 'junk,' I think many people would.

Adam, Intelligent Giving

personal prejudices creeping in?

Ginsters Dragon — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:49:01 +0000

Adam , I thought your remit was confined to promoting transparency within the charitable sector.... By describing DM incentives as 'junk', you're clearly expressing a personal opinion. It makes any investigation that you undertake open to suggestions of bias from the outset.

Don't shoot the messenger

More pens

Adam Rothwell — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 10:29:25 +0000

Those are all good questions, Charity Chris, and it would indeed be interesting to see CR-UK's response to them. Not that I want to put words into their mouth, of course, but I also recently came across the following study which shows, apparently, that the inclusion of 'gifts' really does increase response rates significantly: http://opus.zbw-kiel.de/volltexte/2005/3439/pdf/cesifo1_wp1218.pdf

The study, though, unfortunately doesn't reveal how many people were put off giving by receiving such junk through the post.

Adam, Intelligent Giving.

A touchy subject

Charity Chris — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 10:17:36 +0000

The FRSB promise is written in pretty tame language - for me, it's not really a great surprise that the first ruling should have gone this way. For example, the complaint in this case seemed to be more that the methods being employed appeared, on the sight of it, to be wasteful, which doesn't really seem to have been addressed. Perhaps that is because, under the promise, that simply isn't in the FRSB's remit.

That' s a shame in some ways, and self-regulation, particularly as is pointed out in the article, by 'charity types' could very well be seen as too cosy.

However, the fundraising promise does state that: "We answer all reasonable questions about our fundraising activities and costs".

Whilst that is still open to debate (after all, what is or is not a reasonable question?), perhaps IG could put a number of questions to Cancer Research UK, for example:

How much do you spend on pens each year?
What evidence do you have that it increases the response rate by 70% (their figure from the adjudication)
How is that response rate measured (after all, a complaint could be taken to be 'a response')?
How many complaints have you had regarding gifts in mailings?

Whether or not the questions are asked, I will be interested to see what happens in future adjudications.

How many pens do we need?

Adam Rothwell — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:19:04 +0000

OH DEAR. The Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB), set up last year to police how charities raise cash, has failed its first test. We're not surprised. But we are disappointed.

The FRSB's aim is to help you 'give with confidence.' To this end, the Board asks its members - which include most of the country's big charities - to sign up to the Fundraising Promise (PDF, 50K), which guarantees certain ethical standards. If you spot a charity breaking the rules, then you can complain to the FRSB. It can, in turn, impose a narrow range of piffling sanctions if it finds a charity guilty - which, as we've said before, isn't ideal, but is certainly better than nothing.

We think that the FRSB is a good idea in principle. But in its first adjudication on a complaint, it has made the wrong decision. Asked to judge whether it was reasonable for Cancer Research UK to send a bemused gentleman thirteen pens over a period of two years, it decided that such behaviour was perfectly legitimate. Even the fact that the gentleman in question received four such pens in one day apparently did little to sway the FRSB's judgement.

We are at a loss to comprehend the Board's reasoning. In its adjudication, it states: "whilst accepting that the complainant had grounds for being annoyed, the receipt of this number of mailings ... did not amount to unreasonable nuisance or disruption and neither did it indicate that Cancer Research UK is not committed to high standards."

"Who judges what is unreasonable?"

The key point here is who judges what is "unreasonable nuisance." We think it should be donors - within reason - who decide. They are, after all, the ones being targeted; they know how it feels. But the FRSB apparently disagrees. Its judgement - which is based in part on the astonishingly irrelevant fact that CRUK might not have sent similar numbers of pens to other people in the same area - is all that counts. And who in the FRSB makes that judgement? Unsurprisingly, it turns out to be a group of charity types and direct-marketing people.

We hope that the FRSB will show greater concern for donors' wishes in future.