March/April 2005

After the flood of giving, will fundraisers clean up?

This was the biggest and fastest public response ever to a major disaster. It was also an opportunity for professional fundraisers to show themselves as masters of technology and communication. Instead, in many cases their role was little more than standing still and holding out a bucket.

Perhaps it was the timing, the day after the national overindulgence that Christmas has become. Perhaps it was shock and awe at nature’s uncontrolled power. Maybe it was the sheer scale of the destruction and the vast numbers of lives lost. Or perhaps, the unimaginable terror a sudden giant tidal wave must have inflicted on its victims in the minutes before it snuffed out their lives. Whatever, we’ve never seen such a quick and huge response to any disaster, ever. AIDS, wars, famine and global warming are much bigger, but these ongoing disasters haven’t struck donors with anything like the force of the tsunami wave that hit Asia last Boxing Day killing upwards of 250,000, leaving millions homeless, whole communities destroyed and a watching world wondering what to do in its wake.

If optimism is possible at such a time it comes from the nearly instant outpouring of donations from hundreds of thousands of ordinary people around the world, people so intensely moved they simply want to give from their personal resources to help others in great need who they will never know. In these cynical times, that’s remarkable in itself. It was the day the world changed irrevocably for millions. Before the flood had ebbed, the world had also changed irrevocably for fundraisers.

For many, this may only just be sinking in.

A billion dollars plus raised in just a few days

Across the world ordinary people reacted particularly quickly and spontaneously. Despite the inevitable later carping analysis, the complex aid effort demanded by such a crisis swung quite quickly into action as many appeals amateur and professional were launched to raise funds to pay for it. It seemed that fundraising could perhaps be something wonderful, at the start of 2005. In each news broadcast the chaos in Iraq was driven from lead position by the story of donors and aid workers across the world pulling together to help the mainly Muslim victims. A spectacular momentum developed. For a while the story seemed to hold potential for something more, the chance of some unity in a divided world.

As news of the catastrophe spread, almost instantly amateur appeals by email arrived in my inbox from all round the world – the Hong Kong hotel we had once stayed in, a friend in Holland, a computer firm in Texas, a website that campaigned to stop the invasion of Iraq, a friend in Geneva who works for UNHCR... Even my local Safeway was collecting just two days after the wave struck. But the professionals seemed less swift, less effective. As a donor to a few aid agencies, not one had contacted me by the year end either by phone, email, or letter (I get instant updates from the UK charity ActionAid, but that’s because I’m on their board). Perhaps unsurprisingly, it took several hours and a dozen tries before I got through to donate to the TV appeal launched in three days by the UK Disasters Emergency Committee. Fourteen days later I’ve received neither acknowledgement nor feedback to encourage me to give again. I don’t want thanks, but as a fundraiser I know that effective thanking leads to further gifts. When I donated by phone their automated system didn’t ask for my email address, though it’s an option were I giving through their website. Is that excusable, at a time of such frenetic activity? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It did offer me the chance to opt out from further communication, implying that further contact might be unwelcome.

Washington-based veteran fundraiser Jennie Thompson reports a similar experience. She says, ‘ The big charities rolled out their usual appeals, but the folk who do the work on the ground haven’t told me what’s needed long-term. So I’ve been hunting around for someone doing something right in the face of this amazing disaster.’ Though there may be several reasons for a slow professional response, Malibu-based telephone fundraising specialist Rich Fox thinks it’s a question of timing. ‘The crisis hit during Christmas week, when the decision-makers were on their break. Had it happened the following week we might have seen more of an immediate response. We’ll start seeing campaigns soon now that people are back at work.’

Surely this isn’t good enough, at such a time? Quick, accurate feedback is vital to reassure donors and encourage further giving. We know the three things fundraisers need to offer donors to secure the all-important second gift: reassurance the original gift was safely received, evidence it was ‘set to work’ as intended and feedback showing the project having its desired effect. Now thanks to email and the Internet we can all easily ensure donors get the right information directly and quickly. We should revisit some of our most fundamental concepts in terms of how and how often we contact donors, what we send and what we ask of them at times of disaster. Many fundraisers seem to forget that when donors can see their giving doing good, most want to give and give again. Here the ‘sales’ approach that’s ingrained in fundraisers works hard against us. Clearly there is no such thing as compassion fatigue. What we see is asking fatigue.

The most relevant message we could give donors is that in an emergency, relief aid is like applying a Band-Aid. The lasting solution is long-term development so, in addition to their spontaneous gifts, what’s really needed is their sustained support. There couldn’t be a better platform for promoting what all fundraisers want – regular committed giving. When will I be sent such a proposition, along with the feedback I think, as a donor, I deserve?

We know what should happen

Seven organisations likely to respond to the tsunami emergency include Vancouver-based fundraising expert Harvey McKinnon on their mailing lists, although as far as he knows only two have his email address. Whatever, nearly two weeks after the tsunami they’ve all yet to contact him, even the two major charities for whom he’s a monthly donor. At times of emergency Harvey advises his clients to be prepared, to get responses out quickly (hours, not days) to have the ‘thank you’ process permanently ready to go, to use volunteers to make ‘thank you calls’ (this worked wonders during the Ethiopian emergency), not to hesitate to pull staff in over the holidays, to ask for email addresses at every opportunity and to use the opportunity of a disaster as a time to invest in acquiring new donors. Response to cold appeals on even slightly related subjects are known to skyrocket just after a major disaster.

But it isn’t just a handful of fundraising leaders who possess these insights. From years of experience we know them to be sound. It’s hard to imagine why they wouldn’t be scrupulously followed in a disaster of this magnitude. OK, we can perhaps excuse charities overwhelmed with donations (despite thousands of volunteers the American Red Cross was swamped with a mostly unsolicited $150 million) but clearly there are lessons here, particularly in feedback, speed and frequency of response and use of electronic media. Some additional tips on fundraising for tsunami victims can be found on http://www.npadvisors.com

The power of the Net

It seems that email appeals may still be working better in the USA than elsewhere.

Nick Allen is on many fundraising mailing lists, mainly because he heads one of the world’s top electronic fundraising consultancies, donordigital.com of San Francisco. The day after the tsunami struck the first of a flood of fundraising emails hit Nick’s inbox. Over the next few days he heard from most of the big development charities. First were World Vision and Save the Children Fund on the twenty-seventh. More emails came next day, but some didn’t get there until the thirtieth. SCF sent its second email quickly, on the twenty-eighth, the first of several updates. They went on to provide excellent and regular feedback on what the early flood of donations was achieving.

Nick points out that beyond the hundreds of millions of dollars raised on it, the Internet also enabled all sorts of smaller, personal efforts – emails from individuals, especially those with some connection to the region, for example surfers, who quickly contacted their friends and asked them to donate. Also, lots of companies big and small launched their own appeals and the Internet was an easy way for them to manage it. The sentiments would have existed for previous disasters, but the Internet and email facilitate the communications that can raise money instantly and mobilise people to offer other kinds of help.

Social change sites such as Move-on.com and OurWorldOurSay.org, which have transformed campaigning and mobilisation of public opinion recently, also quickly used their member lists to raise massive funds for the relief effort. Web logs too played a major part. In America http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com was the tenth most visited site in the humanitarian category. Sites such as www.smart-giving.com that helps donors make the most of their charitable giving, also came into their own, offering members practical advice on the best charities to choose.

As time passed it became clear that many charities had mounted effective appeals and that more than a few had made good use of electronic media. But lots of donors appear to have found as I did, that the big fundraisers were slow and that good feedback for donors was rare or in some cases nonexistent. Perhaps inevitably it depends which lists one is on. But it shouldn’t. The tsunami disaster was unprecedented in disaster appeal fundraising. It should compel fundraisers to reassess their approach.

Are Americans mean?

Not all responses to this tragedy were as heart-warming as the worldwide public response. Despite national governments galloping to out-pledge each other in public, it’s universally understood most will renege on their promises because, apparently, governments always do. A revealing side story emerged when the UN’s chief relief coordinator innocently observed that America is inexplicably ‘stingy’ when it comes to foreign aid. This upset President G. W. Bush more than a little. Using the fact that in absolute terms America gives more than any other country, his man Colin Powell claimed that Americans are ‘the most charitable people on earth’. He neglected to point out that the US Government’s contribution is paltry when viewed per capita or as a percentage of national income (the standard that America signed up to some years back). Among the rich nations, America comes twenty-second out of 22 in the percentage of national income it devotes to development assistance.

But it seems unfair to say individual American donors are mean. Amazon and Yahoo both raised tens of millions on their sites for the American Red Cross. The average gifts from their hundreds of thousands of donors was between $75 and $100, making these Americans easily as generous as their transatlantic counterparts. Although valid data is often limited, what studies there are often show Americans as more generous than citizens of other countries. Also, given the ‘two Americas’ theory that has held sway in the rest of the world since the last election, it would be interesting to plot where the majority of American donors are to be found. (The theory is that the east and west coasts form thinking America, and the other half is the bit in the middle. Whether you believe it’s the bigger half or not depends on your confidence in vote-casting machines.)

So who will change the world?

The poor, says the Bible, are with us always. And the rich visibly get richer and richer. As the gross unfairness of our world becomes ever more evident, many find this ever harder to tolerate, particularly as we know that the main causes of poverty are political and that ending poverty forever is well within our grasp.

Although achieving the much-vaunted Millennium Goals seems some way off there are signs that were politicians to seize all available opportunities now, absolute poverty could be eradicated from our planet once and for all. This realisation led to the launch recently of the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign, a noble objective that should find favour with all. So political leaders, media figures and celebrities are flocking to its banner.

But what chance has it got?

The clear lesson from this Boxing Day disaster is that ordinary people have a huge, powerful voice and are prepared to use it when they see a need. The advent of the Internet has given this voice instant expression. To unite the two, all that’s needed is a little leadership, leadership that will be more credible from the voluntary sector than from those with political agendas. But if we are to show the giving public that dramatic social change is, at last, a real possibility, we need to believe in it ourselves, and prepare for it appropriately.

© Ken Burnett 2005