Wise Up, Charities

I suspect what I am about to say could provoke a backlash similar to that which Mia Freedman copped on "Today" a couple of weeks ago when she refused to fall into line with the rest of the country and gush obsequiously about Cadel Evans' Tour-de-France triumph. However after recently suffering yet another irritating experience with a charitable organisation, I can no longer swallow my bile and must vent my frustration. Frustration, I hasten to add, that is directed not at the causes that charities represent which are generally very worthy, but instead at the way some charities deal with donors and their modus operandi in general.

Before you start thinking of me as some form of misguided niggard who pulls the wings off flies as a hobby, let me first give you a couple of examples of how I have been treated by charities I have lent significant support to in the past. If you have had a similar experience and haven't felt even slightly aggrieved, you can then stop reading and go off and do whatever it is patsies do for entertainment.

The first experience happened around the time my wife and I had our joint 40th birthday party. As we were blissfully unaware that the GFC was just around the corner, we spent up big and asked about 100 people along. Instead of bringing presents, we asked everyone to instead donate generously to our nominated children's charity, which they duly did. We then went to my employer at the time, showed them the amount raised which was well into 4 digits, and got them to match the donation - bringing the total amount raised to well over $5000. After doing all this, what do you think the charity did? Well, to be exact - nothing. Not a thank you letter, not a call to say, "Well done, we really appreciate your effort". The next time we heard from them was 3 months later when we got a "print merge" letter from them asking us to give them some more money. Clearly our efforts had registered at one level in that we had made it onto their database, but clearly not enough for them to give us a simple "Thankyou". As you can well imagine that letter, along with all subsequent correspondence from the charity, quickly found its way into the bin.

The second concerns a major international charity who I have donated a lot of money to over the years via colleagues doing fun runs, walking the Kokoda Trail or generally making an ass of themselves in a good cause. Being a web-based system, you are required to leave certain basic details of your donation but given my wish to not be constantly harangued, I was careful to always check the box on the web page which said that I neither wanted to be contacted nor receive any correspondence.

Imagine my surprise when some time later, I received a call from their call centre at home asking for my credit card details so they could set up a regular direct debit to the charity. Obviously they had been tracking what I had donated over time and so had somehow made the assumption that despite my express wish not to be contacted, I would like to nominate for a regular monthly debit. Well, they thought wrong, and the consequences of their irritating invasion of privacy was that my charitable dollar now gets directed away from that organisation as well.

I can understand and forgive small charities treating their donors in a less than ideal fashion because generally, these organisations run on the smell of an oily rag and are no doubt too run off their feet taking care of business to worry too much about what their donors are thinking. Hence any failure to show the appropriate level of appreciation is generally inadvertant. However, where large, multi-national charities such as the ones we were dealing with treat donors in such a high-handed and dismissive fashion, then they really are doing the people they are trying to help a serious disservice. After all, its not like they are a bank or phone company where there are only a handful of organisations active in the market and you therefore generally have no choice but to put up with execrable service. Worthy charitable organisations are a dime a dozen and it is very easy for a donor to vote with their feet - or worse, decide not to donate to charities at all.

The fact that many large charities are sub-optimally run is even more concerning when you consider the prevailing world-wide political sentiment. In an age which is increasingly dominated by a neo-conservative bent towards lower taxes, smaller government and shrinking welfare services, the need for charities to step up and fill the void left by governments that are now bereft of funds is more critical than ever. In order for charities to maintain and grow their income streams, they need to be both get their processes right in terms of how they relate to their donors and manage their affairs, and be prepared to be more innovative than they have in the past. This may sound like anathema to anyone working in the not-for-profit sector, but in order to get their organisations to be the best they can be, to my mind they would be well served by engaging more thoroughly with the business world and be prepared to learn some operational lessons from successful and well-run businesses.

I was at a charity lunch a couple of months ago put on by "Western Chances" at which the Australian of the Year and Macquarie Banker Simon McKeon was the guest speaker. Having been active in both the business and not-for-profit sectors for some time, he had some interesting insights into how businesses and charities relate to one another, and in particular, what sort of things charities should be focussing on. Too often, he said, charities adopt the approach of simply asking businesses for money, blissfully unaware of the fact that the primary objective of a business is to make money for its shareholders, some of whom would quite likely feel non-plussed about their profits being given to charitable organisations whose objectives they may not feel passionate about. Instead he said that charities needed to look more at how businesses might help them in other ways than straight donations, for example, law firms conducting pro bono work or the marketing department helping out with promotional material during non-busy periods.

A great example of a charity that adopts the right approach to business and does get things pretty much right is one that I sat on the Victorian committee for a few years ago, namely the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. First of all, they hand picked committee members from a broad range of business sectors, thereby maximising the number of business contacts that could be collectively called on for either donations or to participate in their major fundraising event, the national "Walk for the Cure". Secondly, they encouraged the committee to think not only about how they could get their colleagues to participate, but also how their businesses might help the fundraising effort in innovative, non-monetary ways (for example: a building company allowing advertising banners to be placed over hoardings at prominent building sites). Finally, while it was (and remains) a significant charitable organisation, its back office was well run meaning that at least 80% of all money raised went to the actual research - a staggeringly efficient number when compared to most charities.

Now - is finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes more important or critical than the work that Oxfam does, or the Anti-Cancer Council does, or Beyond Blue? I suppose it depends on your point of view, but what I did know was that by being well run, having a sensible and innovative approach to fundraising and treating their donors with the appropriate level of appreciation and respect, JDRF punched well above its weight given the fairly limited "in house" resources at its disposal.

So there we are, charities. Rise to the challenge and lift your game. After all, the way things are unravelling in the western world economies right now, and with the Tea Party right-wing loonies pressing to an end to taxes and government welfare, we might all need to call on your services sooner rather than later.