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Adam Rothwell
- Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Every year, almost 40 per cent of people who are signed up for a charity direct debit at the start of the year cancel it. That is a damning statistic. Charities are forever telling supporters that they need long-term, non-stop support. But the stats show that, once donors have signed up for this long-term commitment, charities are appallingly bad at holding them to it (PDF).A new report from fundraising consultancy Bluefrog provides further depressing evidence of many charities’ lacklustre efforts at looking after their supporters. The report, which is based on 110 telephone interviews, 12 three-hour workshops, and hundreds more informal conversations with so-called ‘lapsed’ donors, explores why people stop giving.
In one respect, the report’s conclusions are strikingly obvious. People stop giving because they don’t feel charities value them, or their gifts. No surprise there. But what’s really fascinating is the report’s insight into why people keep on giving, in spite of charities’ shoddy treatment.
In this respect, the report is stuffed full of revealing anecdotes and sobering conclusions. “Worrying numbers of donors are disengaged,” the report says. “Put simply, if these relationships [between charities and their supporters] were friendships, business partnerships or romances, the majority of them would have broken down fast” (emphasis in original).
Oh dear. But it goes on. “POOR COMMUNICATIONS PUSH CHARITIES AWAY FROM DONORS,” the report says: “By making changes that donors dislike ... by taking donors for granted ... by breaking promises ... by not paying attention ... [and] by not knowing when to stop,” people are given an excuse to stop giving.
Anecdotes from Bluefrog’s interviews litter the report. “[Giving] seems just so kind of impersonal, and just about the money,” says one interviewee. “I signed up to something that I thought was different. But it was just more junk mail and phone calls asking for more money,” says another. “I’m not sure if I can see them [the charity] organizing a piss-up in a brewery,” added another.
Donors, it seems, feel that charities treat them badly. That’s why so many of them give up giving. But if charities so often behave like that, why don’t even more people cancel their gifts?
Guilty giving
There are a number of legitimate, admirable answers to this question. No doubt, most people keep on giving because they genuinely believe that their charity is doing an excellent job, and deserves their cash. But another factor may also be at work. Guilt.Bluefrog’s research reveals that, once people have started giving to charity, they feel bad about stopping. When people do cancel their direct debits, the report says, people “blame themselves[,] because they are too nice to blame charities. ... People do not like to admit to having had higher expectations.” The report also reveals that people typically spend a long time contemplating cancelling their gifts before they actually do so.
Once people start giving, in other words, they feel guilty when they think about stopping. And if that’s the case, then it’s a fair bet that a big chunk of charities’ donors keep on giving because they don’t want to feel bad about stopping – not because they feel particularly enthused about the cause. And that’s extremely bad news for charities in the long run.
I think I need to point out that our survey into direct debit cancellation rates (that you’ve linked to in our first paragraph) doesn’t imply that charities are “appallingly bad” at maintaining donor commitment.
The study was a benchmarking exercise that showed how monthly rates of cancellations had changed since 2003 and we didn’t draw any conclusions from it about charities’ stewardship methods.
Of course, that doesn’t mean others can’t interpret the data for themselves. But there is nothing in this data that shows that rising cancellations are due to charities being bad at stewardship and relationship fundraising.
In fact, our analysis shows that cancellation rates were falling – which if anything suggests improved stewardship – until the collapse of Northern Rock, at which point they began to rise steeply.
So the apparent causes of the increase since September 2007 are the credit crunch and the recession – factors that are outside the control of any charity.
Of course charities will need to use better stewardship to try stop more donors cancelling and bring those donors who have cancelled back into the fold. But, as I have said, the cause of the increase appears to be external economic factors rather than anything charities were or were not doing with supporters.