Unhealthy Competition
In May 2015, 92-year-old, Olive Cooke, jumped to her death at Avon Gorge in Bristol, making news headlines throughout the United Kingdom. Olive’s tragic death led to a far-reaching series of reviews into fundraising practice in the UK. Mrs Cooke may have received as many as 3000 letters from for-purpose organisations in a year, according to a report from the Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB).
According to the FRSB report, Olive’s family indicated that ‘the
cumulative impact of the number of organisations mailing her led to her feeling distressed and overwhelmed’. A statement from the family in the report reads: ‘We want Olive to be remembered for her incredibly kind, generous and charitable nature’.
The Guardian newspaper wrote an article in 2016 about the fundraising sector, with the headline ‘The secret life of a chugger: most of us are
motivated by money, not charity’. ‘Chuggers’ – a term derived from ‘charity muggers’– such as those who compete for territory asking passers-by to sign up to regular giving through direct debit donations.
In his book Giving Hope [Roe, R. and Dalton, P. (2019) Palgrave Macmillan], DGB Global Founding Partner, Peter Dalton, refers to such unhealthy competitive fundraising practices as ‘the crowded market dilemma’. This dilemma, along with cost-ratio concerns and other issues drive many for-purpose groups to behave in ways we would expect to see only in the for-profit arena.
Following the death of Olive Cooke and subsequent media scrutiny, The Commission on the Donor Experience was formed in March 2016. The Commission advised that donors must be placed at the centre of fundraising and not sales.
In Giving Hope, Dalton and Roe demonstrate that placing donors at the centre of fundraising is achieved most powerfully through positive framing around giving those donors hope, and creating Donor Lifetime Value.
When for-purpose organisations are locked into a competitive, short-term, target-driven fundraising culture, blinded by a perceived Crowded Market Dilemma, their CEOs and Boards set ever-increasing fundraising targets, leading many to focus on raising money in ways that are often unwelcome
to donors, such as Olive Cooke. In other words, they lose sight of the very reason donors give, to give hope, not to meet short-term budget needs.
Reacting to a perceived, increasingly crowded and competitive fundraising market many fundraisers overlook what they could and should be doing – delivering a more engaged and yes, costly, in the short term, experience for donors that gives them hope – showing them how they are helping to create a better world, and thereby generating long-term, far more cost-effective, Donor Lifetime Value.
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