Charities Urged to Stop ‘Crass and Irrelevant’ Appeals

Charities that rely on mail solicitations, telemarketing, and other direct-response techniques to recruit

and retain donors must make big changes in their approach or risk permanently alienating constituents, Ken Burnett, an international fund-raising consultant with the Cascaid Group, in Reading, England, told a meeting of fund raisers in August.

“We’re in dire straits in our profession,” Mr. Burnett said. “The hard sell is the dominant practice, and people see our solicitations as crass and irrelevant.”

Fifty to 70 percent of donors recruited through direct mail never make a second gift, even though charities spend tens of billions of dollars to win new donors every year, said Mr. Burnett, who wrote the book Relationship Fundraising, at the annual conference of the Direct Marketing Association’s Nonprofit Federation.

Potential donors, he said, are very much aware that many charities’ main focus is not on respecting their wishes in how they wish to be communicated with and other matters, but on continually finding new donors through mass marketing and jumping on the latest fund-raising bandwagon.

“We stoop ever lower to raise money,” said Mr. Burnett, citing European charities’ practice of sending solicitors to ask people on the street to make monthly gifts that are automatically deducted from their bank accounts. Initially effective, the street fund raisers quickly became so numerous that they began to annoy pedestrians in London and other large cities, Mr. Burnett said. The British press, he noted, now refers to the solicitors as “charity muggers” or “chuggers.”

Mr. Burnett also derided the way in which some charities use surveys and other tools in their direct-mail appeals to involve donors and make them feel they are helping an organization accomplish its mission.

He recalled an appeal from Amnesty International that included a pen to illustrate a true story about how a political prisoner was tortured with this everyday object. Donors were urged to use the pen to sign an agreement to join the Amnesty movement and help end torture by making regular gifts.

When other charities found out how successful Amnesty International’s mailing was in making donors feel involved, dozens started copying the technique and adding pens, as well as petitions and questionnaires that the charities never actually read or responded to, Mr. Burnett said.

“Most donors soon learned to treat them with the contempt they deserve,” said Mr. Burnett. “We have no way of protecting our methods from overuse.”

Giving Donors Choices

Rather than focusing so much on mass recruitment, he said, charities should concentrate on forming long-term relationships with new donors and letting them choose how they wish to receive information. Instead, most charities do a poor job of handling feedback and other communications from people who have donated in response to mailings and other direct-marketing appeals.

“Nonprofits are rotten at customer service, and I’ve tested dozens,” said Mr. Burnett. “They should be the best in the world. Why can’t we focus on customer support? McDonald’s is better at this than we are.”

Mr. Burnett said that donors should receive a quick acknowledgment for their gifts, thanking them and providing concrete information about the difference they made, before they are asked to give again.

He urged fund raisers to follow the lesson of an approach taken by Botton Village, a home in England’s North Yorkshire Dales for more than 300 mentally disabled people who produce baked goods, toys, and other items.

On the verge of financial collapse in the 1980s, Botton Village began an unusual direct-mail campaign. Donors were asked how often they wanted to receive information: once a year or more often. If recipients did not want to receive solicitations from the charity ever again, they could also say that and be dropped from such mailings.

In addition, they were given the choice of simply receiving information without ever being asked for money, and all were encouraged to visit Botton Village.

That approach, said Mr. Burnett, has built a loyal group of about 90,000 donors.

The charity receives donations from 31 percent of the previous donors it solicits. More than half make multiple gifts each year, and nearly 15 percent of those who asked not to be solicited give anyway. A typical year-end mailing two years ago to 78,864 donors won gifts from 35 percent of the recipients and netted $1.7-million.

Mr. Burnett said that, while it may become easier for charities to track donors’ preferences with the help of technology systems now being used by corporations to manage customer relations, he is surprised that more charities haven’t adopted simple approaches like those used by Botton Village.

Years ago, he said, “I predicted an end to mass marketing, that there would be real personalization and donors would be offered real choices.

“It was a wonderful dream, but it hasn’t come to pass.”