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Adam Rothwell
- Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Over at PF Blogs, Tania Mason has what sounds like a good idea. Faced with impending recession, voluntary-sector umbrella groups should, she argues, launch a campaign to encourage the public to ‘give to charity’. As survey after survey shows that giving is going to be hit by the downturn, this sounds like an excellent idea. But it isn’t. That’s because encouraging people to ‘give to charity’ perpetuates the myth that all charities are equal: that a donation to one cause is worth much the same as a donation to another. But that’s not the case. Some charities are simply better than others.
A general campaign to encourage indiscriminate ‘giving’ would run the risk of damaging charities which do the best work, while lending to support those which are less deserving of it – a counterproductive and potentially damaging outcome.
So if the charity world is seriously interested in helping needy people, what should it do? The answer is straightforward: it should encourage the public to give to charities which really deserve our cash. Instead of pretending that ‘giving’ is a good in itself, the umbrella groups ought to encourage us to find out which charities we genuinely believe in, and give to them instead.
@Conor: Perhaps that could happen - but my fear was that the sort of campaign Tania's suggesting would be in the mould of the one launched in Scotland a few years ago, where one of the tag-lines was something like "when was the last time you gave to charity?" Which I don't think is very useful.
@David: I like your analysis of umbrella bodies' role - and I agree that they're probably not going to take up either my suggestion, or Tania's. But I still thought it was important to emphasize how potentially harmful the idea of indiscriminate giving can be, on a principled level.
Adam, Intelligent Giving
I think there is a core problem with the whole discussion based around understanding the roles and workings of umbrella bodies .
Unlike you, I don't think that it is the role of umbrella bodies to be encouraging 'us to find out which charities we genuinely believe in', however, I don't think I agree with Tania Mason either: In my opinion (as someone who used to run an umbrella body) is that neither of these roles are things umbrella bodies should be taking on - as a priority, anyway. They have a difficult enough job to do in terms of supporting charity development, and representation of charities to other bodies - which is why it IS appropriate they are lobbying government with regard to the charity sector, and it IS appropriate they should be teaching charities to be better organisations and better fundraisers. But as umbrella bodies they are all membership organisations and therefore to advocate one charity/member as opposed to another is a difficult (and inappropriate) role for them - and as such not all their members would appreciate YOUR recommendation, however right that might seem for the 'public'. Not surprising then that I don't think either you or Tania Mason will get much change out of NCVO, ACEVO, NAVCA or whoever.
Adam,
Are you not kind of contradicting yourself a little bit. On the one hand you dont think a general "give" campaign is a good idea and on the other you are saying umbrella groups should "encourage us to find out which charities we genuinely believe in, and give to them instead". Well could a general "give" message not achieve that goal?
Give...to the charity you believe in.
Hi Adam. Far be it for me to say you are wrong about anything, but I'm not sure you understand the principles of advertising. Come back to my PF blog http://tinyurl.com/727ubn for more...