When asking for cash, charities rarely make specific promises. Most of the time, they couch their appeals in vague terms, claiming that they’ll spend your money making the world a better place in some un-specific, anodyne way – like eradicating poverty, or saving the starving.

But should donors be happy with this? Making such broad promises means the charity can spend your cash wherever it likes, so long as it’s legal – and while that has the advantage of meaning that the charity can spend the most where it sees the greatest need, it also means that, as a donor, you don't really know where your cash will end up.

Until now, most charity supporters have been happy to live with this. But over at Donor Power Blog, fundraising guru Jeff Brooks thinks that’s about to change. According to Jeff, we’re all becoming more discerning, and will in future demand more from our charities.

Drawing a parallel between charity appeals and direct-marketing for companies, he makes rather a good point: “Suppose you got a piece of direct mail from a book seller, and on the reply coupon it said:  Yes! Send me a very special book!” If a shop made you such a vague promise, you wouldn’t be happy. So why, Jeff argues, should you stand for similar behaviour for a charity?

Jeff’s conclusion is that charities will just have to live with donors being more demanding. But more important, from a donor’s point of view, is whether that’s a good thing. And I’m not sure I know the answer.

On the one hand, I think it’s a big step forward if charities do more to explain their work to supporters. But on the other, charities have to be able to allocate cash where there’s the most need – and that might change rapidly and unpredictably. What should charities do?
 

 

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