Disaster Fundraising: Be Honest
Last week I saw a reference to a television (HBO) documentary — Haitian Money Pit — that, among other aspects of political corruption and paralysis, sheds light on the fate of charitable funds raised for Haiti in the aftermath of its 2010 earthquake.
As described in the item I read (unfortunately, I wasn’t able to view it … maybe an Agitator reader did and can comment), the film establishes that only a pittance of donated and international aid funds actually made it through to benefit victims of the disaster.
The earthquake disaster in Nepal, the scale of which is still unfolding, requires international response, including from humanitarian aid, health and development charities and their fundraisers.
I hope all will do their jobs responsibly and effectively.
Jeff Brooks at Future Fundraising Now just wrote this piece on disasters and fundraising which I urge you to read. He comments on how media drives the “fundraising event” and notes that today’s digital communications make “disasters we wouldn’t have considered in the past potential strong candidates for fundraising”.
He also explains, pragmatically, why disaster fundraisers should not expect to retain many of the new donors they acquire in the heat of the moment.
But most importantly, he urges honesty …
“How you spend disaster-motivated revenue is a problem waiting to get you. Be honest, open, and super-clear with donors about how their gifts will be spent.”
And that’s the point I want to strongly endorse … be honest.
Victims of disasters need support. Donors responding to these appeals need honesty.
That’s what separates ‘ambulance chasing’ from ‘fundraising’.
Tom
P.S. The Agitator has written before on disaster fundraising:
We covered a ‘must read’ study on online disaster fundraising prepared by Network for Good.
Our Gift Receiving vs Fundraising post addressed the challenge of retaining disaster givers.
And we dealt further with the challenge of converting event and disaster donors into ‘mission’ donors in The Foibles & Follies of Donor Conversion.
One response to “Disaster Fundraising: Be Honest”
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I tried to give as soon as I heard the news. I know Oxfam AU. I know how very, very good they are in the field. But their robot (the form I have to complete to turn over my hard-earned money) kept telling me, “No. You violated my internal logic. Try again. Rrrrrrrr.” After 3 frustrated tries, I left. Moving over to Doctors Without Borders, as the death toll soared. The good Doctors’ robot violated one of my principles, though: it would only accept the name on my credit card, which is Thomas … not Tom, which is the name I go by everywhere on earth outside a bureaucracy. I give them EXTREME bonus points, though, for honesty. They’re sending something like 6 teams to Nepal at the moment (the airports are pretty much closed). Therefore, they will not let you designate for Nepal at this time. I was happy to become an undesignated monthly donor to Doctors Without Borders — but that Tom/Thomas thing is a rankling robot stupidity that all charities should overcome, so I moved on. FINALLY, Save the Children (like Oxfam AU, a client I know does great work in the field) had a robot that allowed me to be called Tom in all future communications and even accepted my donation with a decimal point (something that sends other robots into a flaming tizzy). As today’s Agitator notes, the news drives giving. So Dear Robot: Let me help! It’s ONLY HUMAN!!!