What makes you engage with charity fundraising and what puts you off?

[5013R]

Hi all - I’m hoping / looking for some honest views on fundraising. I lead a medium-sized domestic abuse charity which supports women and children. It has been around for a long time and I am not the founder. It depends on fundraising, grants and a couple of contracts to survive, and the fundraising landscape is understandably bleak right now. I don’t think any charities are having a particularly good time, but in this sector where we have to safeguard the identities of who we support and be very careful not to put anyone at increased risk, our marketing strategy means fundraising suffers even further. I can’t show donors the lovely faces of our service users to show impact and tell their story.

Whether from a personal, community or corporate fundraising perspective, can you tell me - what makes you engage? What makes you avoid and walk away? What fundraising activities have you been involved in that you absolutely loved and would recommend?

The charity world is a very proud one where it is not the done thing to ask these questions in a public forum, so I’m hoping Mumsnet can help - any thoughts massively appreciated!

Chief executives get paid.

I’m really sorry to pick on you! But, this clearly illustrates a problem that charities have.

You don’t want a charity with his costs (presumably admin costs). But you do want to be able to phone them with questions… so they need people to staff the phones, and a system of data collection so they can answer your questions.

If people want effective and transparent charities, they need to realise that this comes with overheads above the specific costs of providing front line services.

A friend who runs a (small but effective) charity is often stuck because people want to fund cool sounding projects, but not the electricity bills that let her have somewhere to work to run those projects.

I’m happy make one off donations, but not happy to sign up for monthly ones. Most of my charity donations are through Just Giving. And I never tip them.

I avoid chuggers like the plague. I hate ‘so you want to round this up?’ type of stealth in shops, it just annoys me.

For small, local charities, I think there needs to be something in return. I like a plant sale, or ‘Fun days’ where there are activities and events for the family. sponsorship schemes are good for larger international charities because you can see exactly where the money is going and the impact it has.

I am less inclined to engage with charities that provide services that should be covered by the state.

I will not do any kind of subscription based donations, I also get very annoyed by charities wasting money by sending me random junk mail that I then have to recycle (looking at you, RBL). I cannot believe there is a ROI on speculative mail outs anymore.
I immediately cut my relationship with any charity I suspect has sold my details as a donor.
Basically any kind of pressure or unsolicited contact flips me to an immediate ‘no’ regardless of the cause.

I am a trustee at a local homeless charity. It does excellent work with the homeless, running a day centre which offers multi agency support. Helping people off the street takes a long long time. Although we can publish success stories, some cases are v complex and take years to solve.
Funding is a constant issue. There are more and more charities chasing fewer and fewer grants. Writing grant applications is a full time job. As trustees it is a large part of what we think about.
Having regular monthly givers, via a safe platform, that also collects appropriate gift aid, is a life line. Its interesting to me that the concensus on here seems to be that people want to give cash, one off donations or actual stuff. These are the least cost effective ways to raise private donations. And adds hugely to admin costs. Which everyone is also against.
We run a womens arm too, which we cant publicise at all, all our ladies come from referals and outreach work. We cannot even advertise when our womens sessions run. For fear of DA perpatrators turning up.
I sympathise. Its a hard hard world for charities at the moment.

Completely agree - I do get why psychologically those food collection bins at supermarket doors make sense (people can just pick up a an extra tin as they go around and it does feel satisfying dropping your donation in there) but every time I look at them I can't help thinking how stupidly inefficient it is. Someone has to collect all these donations, sort through them, bin the inevitable rubbish/unusable stuff, transport it to the warehouse and repackage for distribution etc. All that effort and resource could be so much better spent if the charity had simply received whatever cash people spent on the donations They could then buy exactly what they need when they need it, ideally in bulk so cheaper than supermarket prices, much better than everyone guessing what kinds of foods might be best as they do their own shopping (probably doing a bad job, loads of people for example buy bags of dried pasta thinking it's an easy staple, but many food bank recipients don't have access to cooking facilities to make even a simple pasta dish, plus would need fresh ingredients to make it a balanced meal, things like tinned stews in cans or even dried noodles or soups, while less appealing and healthy overall are better are much easier to prepare and a complete shelf stable meal), plus donating this way means paying individual supermarket prices (no gift aid either) - good for the supermarkets, much less good for the recipients and the charity

It's the same impulse that causes people to want to send physical items to environmental disaster victims or war refugees, even at enormous cost and difficulty compared to simply donating money - a well known phenomenon and causes no end of bother to disaster support charities who generally need and appreciate cash injections to buy medical or building supplies or food (or even, yes, horror pay staff costs for skilled workers who can actually help but shouldn't have to work for nothing even for a good cause), 100 2nd hand coats and or lovingly hand knitted blankets and hats flown over from rich first world countries less so, but hey the giver feels good and it's 'transparent', 0 donated money has been 'wasted' on overpaid managerial staff or central London offices (although less than 0 benefit has been given to the victims, as the donations are actually net cost in terms of resources) so all's well hey! Sorry to rant but the illogic of it all gets to me and yet it's very hard to have these conversations in real life without upsetting generally very kind and well intentioned people who are often only doing their best to help...

Hi.

I do get the problem and I don’t have an issue with paying the electricity bill. I have an issue with Director level salaries over £100k.

One of the hedgehog charities I support is a woman and her friend, both of whom answer the phone.

Are you going to tell us about the corrupt cancer charity too and the things it did that disgusted you or are you only going to slag off the charity that helps "affluent" old people?

@AnnieApples I avoid chuggers like the plague. I hate ‘so you want to round this up?’ type of stealth in shops, it just annoys me

I forgot about the round up thing! No thanks.

I like the old fashioned tin rattlers in town l am afraid . I enjoy craft and bake sales and events like that but no l don't like the thought of anyone taking money out of my bank account.

My animal rescue makes quite a bit from having stalls at local fairs & markets - especially from our tombola. But that does involve paying for the spot, getting stuff donated & having people to staff the stall.

I have two charities that I donate to regularly, but in addition to that I'm always happy to sponsor a friend who is running the marathon.

a director earning over £100000 may be responsible for generating income of multi millions per year
what’s an appropriate salary
hospices need to raise millions - they have no government funding
it costs money to raise significant amounts of funding
there’s no shame in that
and a hedging charity may be a CIC which is turning over £1000’s with hardly any overheads
both orgs are valuable and one isn’t worthier than the other

Engage with is about having some personal experience or interest in a charity, e.g. donating to a hospice where a friend or relative was. What puts me off is the aggressive nature of some charities. I never round up the amount in shops when paying by card - feels like guilt tripping. Some charity TV adverts (when children might be watching), animal cruelty etc are horrific and should be banned. I prefer charity to be anonymous and get fed up with celebrities blowing their own trumpets and furthering their careers on the back of well publicised charity events. I'm put off by people doing more and more extreme things like running 27 marathons in 27 days. I wish they'd just go away. Also highly suspicious of where money raised from charities goes. We never get told.

This might be of interest: https://www.cafonline.org/personal-giving/resources/why-do-people-give

Domestic abuse? Women and children? I'm a captive market. If you can shout from the rooftops that your charity provides a genuinely single sex service free from adult males, however they identify, and if your charity has a presence in the geographical area in which I live (or works with women in a part of the world where they are known to be severely oppressed), I will gladly set up a monthly direct debit and bother people to donate to fundraisers for you.

I'm generally quite mistrustful nowadays of charities that aren't grassroots and hands-on, and tend to donate to local appeals.

Some of the charity CEOs earn more than the Prime Minister.

But each to their own. I prefer smaller charities.

The OP wanted to know what encouraged people to donate to charities and what puts them off. Directors earning more than the PM is a turn off for me. You think they are worth it, so you donate. I don’t, so I give elsewhere.

I have been put off charities for domestic abuse when I can see no evidence of them providing a single sex service.

Yes I do think it’s worth it
because without them there would be no RNLI, no hospices, air ambulances, cancer research, Alzheimer’s or dementia support charities, macmillian etc
the third sector supports every single aspect of life and death and many of our family members will need these services which will be free at the point of use
there’s also a place for smaller charities
and the richness of the sector means everyone will find a cause which speaks to them and they will want to support

I have stopped going to my local (small) ASDA as every week there is a different charity there trying to pounce on you. I’d donate change if it was a bucket, but approaching you as you’re leaving the store every single time to sigh up to a direct debit is infuriating. I actually fed it back to the store manager and she said they get complaints daily.

Our Morrisons do this too and I rarely go there now for the same reason.

What puts me off:
Being hounded afterwards.
Chuggers.

What works:
Asking for a concrete amount.
Not asking for my time.
Helps if it is a concrete thing like a raffle ticket or bracelet or whatever.
Being able to define a woman if it is single sex.
Respecting my no may way sway me to donate at a later date.

Knowing the money is going where I intended it to. I know there are costs in running charities but some pay much more than others.

Carrot Cottage rabbit rescue is currently facing a legal struggle. They are not using their donations to fund the case, but they have set up a 'go fund me' for the legal fees.

You said 'women and children', these days I want to know that you mean actual women.

The reason I got an interest in Carrot Cottage as they were subjected to abuse from TRAs including being reported to the charity commission.

This is a tiny charity run out of someone's house.

I don't have a huge amount of money so I find it useful if a charity will accept donations that are not just cash.

I have a monitor on my TV that identifies which adverts I watch, I do this because they send me points and I can spend those on various things including vouchers. I can normally get a £10 voucher each month, I get Argos vouchers that go to local charity near me. They are a community shop / food bank / charity shop and I asked them what was useful.

Chuggers and ppl knocking on the door put me off. Find it irritating being asked as charity shops to increase the amount at the till.

A pitch before an event can work well, then if you're given the leaflet on it you can decide at a later point whether to donate or not. Also a radio ad works well.