While charitable giving has seen a rise over the pandemic, charities have had to show creativity to multiply their methods of raising money. Between grants, statutory help and the willingness of the people, charities continuously have to find means to keep afloat.
A recent statistic led by Statista revealed that “the average amount which people give to charity has […] increased slightly in recent years. In 2020/21 for example, average amount given to charity in England per month was 27 British pounds, compared with 24 pounds in the previous year.” The pandemic has thus not deterred people from giving money to charity, on the contrary.
As the end of the year is fast approaching, charities will send out more requests than ever. As Nicolette Larson sings: “Christmas is a time for giving,” and charities are no exception. According to Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in their 2019 CAF’s UK Giving Report, “peak months for giving money are November and December”, with 36% of the population donating in December and 39% in November.
Historically, helping the poor was a way for richer folk to participate in a religious act and save their souls. A clear distinction, however, was made between those who were deserving of help, and those who weren’t. Those that lingered in “willful idleness” did not deserve philanthropy, as explained by Brian Tierney in “Medieval Poor Laws”.
If there are multiple reasons for giving today, the ways in which charities raise money are just as diverse.
Reliance on others
Today’s landscape is different: non-profits and charity organizations work as entities providing specific help to specific targets, through precise and well-defined programs. To build said programs, charities have different streams of income that they rely on: grant-giving trusts, statutory funding – for those who receive it – and the general public.
The Fundraising Regulator, the independent regulator of charitable fundraising in the United Kingdom, which was founded in 2016, has been setting the standards for fundraising through its Code of Fundraising Practice. Generally speaking, the Code regulates on the many mediums used to fundraise, such as phone calls, digital media, email communications, and organized events. With the overarching requirement to practice with honesty, safety and reasonability, Section 1.3 states that charities “must take all reasonable steps to treat a donor fairly, so that they can make an informed decision about any donation.” Moreover, Section 2.7 states that “[a] donation must be used for the purpose for which it was given.”
While the Fundraising Regulator sets the rules, it also completes an annual report which traces the evolution of fundraising. The most recent report found that while “charities reported receiving a total of 17,800 complaints, which was down by 4% on the figure reported last year,” “Online fundraising received the most complaints (5,836); this method of fundraising has seen a 357% increase in complaints over the past three years. It is the first time in the history of this report that online fundraising is the most complained about method reported by charities.” Charities are thus free to choose whichever method they find most fitting, with the risk of running into resistance.
Fittingly, companies like Uprise Up specialise in digital advertising and have started working more and more frequently alongside charities to help them develop digital strategies to fundraise. John Onion, Managing Director and founder of the digital media agency, explains the usefulness of digital fundraising and search engine marketing: “From a marketing perspective, this is really the most effective targeting you can do, targeting people who are looking for you – as opposed to mass targeting. The other big thing is that everything is accountable, so we’re very big on data and tracking. Understanding what clicks, what makes people donate, how much they’re giving.” John Onion thus underlines the future of charity fundraisings, one that relies heavily on the digital medias.
The Upper Room
At the Upper Room, a London-based charity fighting homelessness, the Fundraising Manager Fiona Cook explains the situation of her small charity. While they do not receive statutory funding, they rely on grant-giving trusts to cover 80% of their budget. For the rest? “We are very much imbedded in the local community, so we’re fortunate that with things like our harvest appeal, we get a lot of donations of tin foods and dry goods. But also, we get a lot of cash from churches, schools and individuals.” Events such as winter lecture series, festival stands, quiz nights and tennis tournaments populate the charity landscape and raise money to complement the intense search for grant appeals.
The four main projects of the Upper Room – providing meals, helping with job employability, offering counselling, and helping ex-offenders learn how to drive – are all programs that are separately funded. Each program gets personalized fundraising to raise money for their specific cause and aim. The reason? “Funders like to be able to pinpoint where their money is going, that we’re able to evidence that we’re not squandering the money that they’re giving to us.” Says Chris Francis, Acting CEO of the same charity. Francis also explains the importance of not being “overly reliant on one particular stream of income.” While the donations of the local people only constitute 20% of the Upper Room’s budget, new approaches such as online auctions like the one running at the moment with “Artists at Home” (see image on the left) and corporate partnerships are constantly being thought out. The overall idea is that charities need constant ways to reinvent fundraising tactics, while the population wants to get involved in any way they can: “This pandemic is a point of real crisis, and people look inward and think about what more they can do.” Francis goes on: “It made people realise that there are [others] in real need.”
“I think we’ve got a really good story to tell. […] The one thing we struggle with is resources, because we’re a small organization.” In that regard, the Upper Room reveals that not all charities are equal in developing programs that will appeal to the general public. John Onion underlines this difficulty, saying that there is a “lower barrier entry, for smaller charities, in terms of media spending.”
Ethical conflicts
Philanthropy and the act of giving has been constantly put under a magnifying glass. Famous thinkers such as Marcel Mauss and his essay “The Gift” constantly contemplate and rethink the ethics of charitable giving. But what about the nature of fundraising: can it also be questioned?
Joanne Ciulla, Professor at Rutgers University, Newark, USA, specializes in business ethics. Alongside her academic involvement as a professor, she is the founder of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School. Through her Institute, which works with non-profits, and her interest in applied ethics, she has also dipped her feet in the ethics of charities. In an article she wrote for the Rutgers Business Review, “Dirty Money: Some Ethical Questions About Donating to Charity”, she mentions the important role of giving to charity as a form of “social solidarity”, as a way to “feel part of society”.
While Professor Ciulla focusses mainly on the ethics of giving, she mentions the notion of “ethical purity”: it is central to question who charities can accept money from to avoid “dirty money”, and it is just as central to question how charities get people to donate. “You need money to have a program, and you can’t raise money unless you have programs. [Charities thus] compete by their programs. And of course, the ethics of this competition is how clearly they represent what they’re doing. The question is really: are they honest about what they’re conveying they actually do.”
This goes back to the problem of resources in smaller non-profits such as the Upper Room: charities need solid programs to raise money, but they need money to come up with them.
Making a decision
With just a quick search on the Government’s Charity Commission for England and Wales, there are over 6,000 registered charities in London alone. Choosing where to give to and for which cause can be difficult. If ethical dilemmas are added to the mix, what first appears to be a benevolent act becomes a difficult task.
While transparency is one of the key requirements set up by the Fundraising Regulator, it can be difficult to keep up with charities once the money has been given. Although tools such as ratios of revenues and expenses are calculated to keep track of charities’ actual spending, it becomes more complicated on the donor’s side. As Joanne Ciulla says: “You just have to do your research. We all have things that we feel strongly about, and you should follow your passions in terms of what you donate to. But you do have to be careful, and you do have to be specific.”
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