In this recent post, Merkle creative director and blogger Jeff Brooks takes on Charity Navigator for whining about "junk mail" and for buying into the "myth that fundraising is a form of harassment."
Right on Jeff!
And he doesn’t just complain. He gives four very sound bits of advice for how you should deal with donor resistance to getting more stuff in their mailbox:
1. Don’t let a noisy handful of complainers drive your mail policy.
2. But do respect your complainers.
3. Create opportunities for donors to take control of the relationship.
And to me most important of all …
4. Be relevant.
I love this post. Jeff, you deserve a raise!
Tom
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Herewith are my comments as posted on the Donor Power blog when Jeff Brooks’ piece was originally published on June 16:
‘To set the record straight, Charity Navigator does not “buy into the myth that fundraising is a form of harassment”. The video was hardly an indictment of what we consider the respectful way that the vast majority of charities go about fundraising, including direct mail appeals. Rather, it was aimed at assisting those on the receiving end of endless appeals, and who are fed up with the practice (and we receive complaints by the thousands every year), to take a proactive approach to remedy the situation. Your advice to charities as bulleted in your blog piece is all well and good if they take it, but our experience (yes, we are givers ourselves with drawers full of “gifts”, including enough address labels to last two lifetimes) is that a good many of the bad actors frankly don’t give a darn. Until they do, we’ll be happy to continue to provide individual donors with the tools and information they need to stop what is, in their view, excessive soliciting. After all, it is about the donor, isn’t it?’
Ken Berger, President & CEO
Charity Navigator
I think there is a greater point here that is being missed as some are taking offense to the challenging thinking.
Demographically, I am a Gen X’er and have been in fundraising for over 15 years. And, I believe in direct response. It works…so far! But I have to tell you, as a donor, I am increasingly resistant to the”push” tactics that have been inherent in the direct response mentality. Reality is, that as younger donors come on stream (who knows when?), they want to be in control and they will turn you off more quickly than their Boomer or Civic predecessor donors.
The question in my mind is, will charities be able to transition to a “pull” strategy to transition to more engagement tactics than interruption tactics? It’s a difficult transition. I’ve been struggling with this myself, but I think we’re going to have to become far more clever as marketers of our mission.