Yesterday I asked 2,000 of you some questions about charity. Why? I believe we have an innate desire to give, but that has been eroded by noisy and questionable marketing practices. Charities have lost their natural connection with people, most of whom (I believe) are natural donors. What can we do about it?

The survey was carried out using a service called Pollfish that allows anonymous surveys to be carried out for free (if, like FPL, you have an audience) or for a small cost. Here are the results:

1 in 4 of us say we don’t give enough money to charity.

3 of 4 of these people are put off by charities’ marketing tactics.

Half of us would give more if charities didn’t spend so much on marketing

And here they are in more detail.

Why is a free online lottery carrying out research like this? Well, I am a human being and it’s something I care about. I love helping people, especially when they really need it, but why am I missing so many opportunities to help? The messages that charities send out should immediately prompt me into action, but more often than not, I dismiss them and go about my day. I do give money to charity regularly, and usually respond to crisis appeals but I don’t feel I give enough. What’s wrong with me? Am I alone?

According to Christopher Jamison’s Telegraph article today’s “Younger people” (under 35. I’m an immature 36 year old) are not less generous; They just need to be “nudged”. So, what’s changed? According to the same article young people are disillusioned with charities (and politicians) because of the way they spend too much on admin and, frankly, themselves. But young people can’t be disengaged with everything. In fact, I would describe most “younger people” I see as “over-engaged”! But in social media, and sadly, TOWIE. Isn’t it just that Charity (and Politics) needs to adapt in the same way that other sectors and forms of media have in the last few decades? Not in a cringey, media-trained, download-our-useless-app way, but someone needs to turn it inside out.

And don’t the figures above prove that it is not just young people? 45% of the respondents were over 35. What is going on?

I think the problem is too big and too wide to blame on the kids. I believe that we are born with an innate charitable desire, but that desire has been eroded away by charities’, and (more often than not) their partners’ marketing. Marketing isn’t bad in itself, but too much of it treats the donor as a means to an end. We’ve become too wise and cynical for this to work in any sustainable way. In my view, marketing’s aim should be to engage us as partners and foster the fact that we already care.

One example it the now ubiquitous “charity muggers” (or “chuggers”). All, I’m sure, wonderful and generous people selected for their sunny dispositions and powers of articulation. But the problem is that they put us on the spot and guilt us into giving. The charity gets their regular donation (which is great), and the chugger gets their commission (they need to eat). But we walk away feeling a little bit violated, not proud and elated that we have helped a cause that we should care about. The cumulative effect of this is a kind of emotional pollution that removes the feel-good factor and erects a barrier between the charities and us, their natural partners.

Another very sad example. Earlier this year veteran poppy seller and heroic giver Olive Cook killed herself after receiving thousands of letters and calls from charities.

In September, a House of Lords review recommended a tough regulatory regime for the voluntary sector in light of such recent scandals and the charity sector behaving like it was “above the law”. They concluded that, of course, charities have a right to ask the public for money, but the public had a right to be left alone, or treated with respect and humility by fundraisers. They recommended that the Fundraising Standards Board should be replaced with a tougher regulator and a Fundraising Preference Service, like the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and Mailing Preference Service (MPS) should be introduced. They also said:

“Charities need to view and approach fundraising no longer as just a money-raising technique, but as a way in which they can provide a connection between the donor and the cause.” – House of Lords

The good news is that the bigger charities have already started backing the proposed tougher rules, and the RNLI have even pre-emptively adopted the opt-in rule meaning that they cannot contact prospective donors unless they have explicitly opted-in to such communications.

I also believe that our giving patterns are extremely ad-hoc and not reflective of what we care about. What do I mean? Well, at the moment we are passive receivers of torrential marketing communications. Our job is to filter these messages and decide what we care about, how much we care about it relative to other things we care about, how much we can afford to give, and whether our donations will be used effectively. I’m guessing that most of us have pretty random arrangements. Perhaps you were cornered by a Save the Tiger (a very worthy cause of course) chugger years ago on a night out and signed up to a £10 per month donation and recently responded by donating £3 to the crisis in Syria via Unicef. Did you really care more than 3 times as much about tigers every month than you cared (once) about the crisis in Syria? Probably not. Perhaps more so. My point is that the relationship between causes and donors is very imperfect. In a time when we can press a button on our phones and get picked up in 3 minutes (admittedly not from all postcodes!) via Uber this surprises me. Not you?

What can we do?

This is the hard part. If charities didn’t spend money on marketing, how would we know about them? My suggestion, for now at least, is that we should be more proactive. Think about what we care about and seek out charities that are trying to help. The Charities Commission publishes extremely interesting and useful information about how charities spend our donation. Here’s how the RNLI is doing.

What about you Chris?!

I’m no expert on the charity sector. This is just something I’ve thought about a lot recently. Personally, I’m going to take my own advice and be more proactive about giving. But also, I’m working on a couple of ideas to promote more donations via FPL. In the meantime, I’m going the change and extend the “Double & Donate” feature so that all winnings (from all draws) can be doubled and donated to a charity of your choice (as long as they are a registered charity and haven’t been involved in any recent scandals). As of now, any winnings from FPL will be doubled and donated to a charity of your choice if you are so generous as to sacrifice the winnings yourself. (Until now only the Main Draw had this feature and the choice of charities was restricted).

Now I’ve ranted… It’s your turn. Please let us know what you think in the comments section. And, as always, please keep it clean 🙂

Chris