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Homeless Hacks fundraising challenge Day Two

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Day two of the Homeless Hacks fundraising challenge, and things are proving difficult.
 
I’ve created the Virgin Money Giving fundraising page – the charity we’re supporting, Action for Brazil’s Children, asked us specifically to use the Virgin site, not Justgiving (I wonder how many other charities do this?)
 
But the site is driving me mad. Parts of it are ‘temporarily unavailable’ whenever I try to use them. The site froze up when I tried to save the blurb I had written, so I lost it and had to write it again.
 
It took about half an hour to upload a picture onto the site. And the function that lets you email your contacts directly from the fundraising page is so frustrating that I ended up emailing my friends and family from my own account, and pasting a link to our page.
 
When I was writing the email, I had a bit of a dilemma: how strongly should I ask for sponsorship? I’ve heard plenty of people complaining that they’re inundated with sponsorship requests and feel guilty turning people down, so I didn’t want them to think I was pestering.
 
In the end, I opted for a clause at the end of the email saying people shouldn’t feel obliged to sponsor me but that if they did it would be much appreciated.
 
It’s been a day since I sent the requests, and we’ve had some really generous donations. But I’m very wary of not wanting to let the charity down by missing the £300 fundraising target we’ve been set, so we can’t afford to get complacent.
 
Sophie and I will keep blogging and tweeting and see how far that gets us. If the cash flow has dried up by tomorrow, we’ll have to think of offline ways of raising it – and pronto.
 
If you do want to sponsor us, visit our page.

 

Sleeping rough for charity – a good idea?

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Every now and again, it helps to look at things from a different perspective.
 
By covering the fundraising patch at Third Sector, both my fellow reporter, Sophie Hudson, and I have grappled with the arguments for and against various forms of fundraising, the complex regulations that surround raising cash and the various fundraising strategies that charities adopt.
 
In short, we’ve become fluent in the language of the professional fundraiser: we know our PFRA from our FRSB and our ROI from our attrition rate.
 
But this week we’ll be seeing things from the other side: that of the beady-eyed, enthusiastic donor. We’re taking part in a charity challenge – to sleep rough in Spitalfields market in London. In November. Oh, and to raise £150 in less than a week.
 
The event takes place on Friday, and it’s for the charity Action for Brazil’s Children.
 
We’ll be blogging, tweeting and sharing photos and videos during our week of frantic fundraising and on the night. Our attempts at sponsorship and sleeping rough might be an invaluable chance to see what donors really think and how charities could improve their events fundraising. Or they might be a disastrous, humiliating failure.
 
Either way, it’s for a good cause.
 
If you’d like to sponsor us, go to our Virgin Money Giving page. 

 

Tory minister praises Labour council shock…

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After a 28 per cent cut to the budget for local authorities was announced in the comprehensive spending review, David Cameron warned councils across the country not to cut funding for the voluntary sector first.
 
His concern, he has said on several occasions, is that some local authorities will “pull up the drawbridge” and protect their own staff by scrapping grants to charities.
 
But Lambeth Council leader Steve Reed set out a much more radical plan for saving money, in a speech at the launch of an Acevo report on personalisation last night. And the voluntary sector is at its core.
 
Lambeth is planning to become the first “co-operative council” in Britain and has been in talks about what this means for more than a year. Talks have become more urgent, however, since the council learned last month that of the £80m it will have to save over the next five years, £40m would have to come from next year’s budget.
 
So, here’s Reed’s plan. The council will set up pilot projects in which charities and community groups deliver public services. Over time, there will be more and more of these until a “tipping point” is reached and most of the council’s social services are being delivered in this way.
 
When this happens, the council will be a “service enabler” and a “support platform” that the voluntary groups delivering public services will be able to use when they need it. The council will no longer be a service provider.
 
It’s a big vision, and big questions about funding for the voluntary groups will need to be addressed. But if it works, it could provide a model for councils across the country and a lifeline for the thousands of charities threatened with closure by local council cuts.
 
And the biggest surprise? The Conservative Nick Hurd heaped praise on Lambeth’s Labour council at the event last night. “I want to congratulate Steve Reed for this really important work,” he said.
 
Reed responded:”It’s not the first time Hurd and I have shared a platform and said things that are so similar. This is starting to get worrying…”

‘Compulsory volunteering’ should be embraced by the voluntary sector

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Many volunteering charities will, no doubt, recoil in horror at the prospect of compulsory community-based voluntary work for unemployed people.
 
The idea is part of the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s plan for welfare reform that will be announced in more detail this week. Under the plans, some jobseekers would be told to carry out four weeks of compulsory unpaid work, and could lose their benefits if they refused.
 
Charities and voluntary groups, as well as private firms, will be encouraged to bid to deliver the scheme.
 
The familiar (and quite reasonable) cry of, “if it’s compulsory, it’s not volunteering!” must be ringing out across their offices.
 
But charities need to move past this instinctive response. Helping people back into work is exactly the sort of area this government wants charities to play a bigger role in, and “compulsory volunteering” – call it community service or unpaid work if you’d rather – is how ministers are going about it.
 
Many in the voluntary sector believe passionately that they can do this work better than the private sector. Yes, there will be practical difficulties and yes, the principle might be awkward.
 
But if it turned its back on the policy, the voluntary sector would do a great disservice to those in need of its support.
 

Corporates: charities want decorating with cash instead of paint

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There was a very loud groan from a room full of fundraisers at a recent conference when they were asked whether any corporates had offered to paint some walls for them recently.

They rolled their eyes as they grumbled that they didn’t have any walls left to paint, explaining that this was one of the main offers of support they were repetitively receiving from companies wishing to engage in corporate social responsibility.

When it comes to corporate-charity partnerships and CSR, it seems that there has been a slow but steady shift away from companies raising vital funds for charities to instead offering them help with, often unnecessary, tasks.

I think it’s time for corporates to take a step back and remember the reason they are supposed to be engaging with charities. It should not be to make themselves feel better as individuals or to improve their image as companies in some way.

It should be borne out of a genuine desire to help a charity better serve its beneficiaries.

And if charities say that the best way to help them do this is by giving them money, then this is the kind of support corporates should be striving to offer.

I realise the argument against this is that in the wake of the recession companies find it harder to raise the levels of funds they used to donate to charities.

Perhaps instead then they should be calculating the cost of their very expensive staff spending an entire day out of the office painting a wall and just give this to the charity.

Even half a day’s wages would probably add up to a lot when it comes to the kind of money bankers or lawyers or consultants are paid.

Obviously, the offer of volunteering where it is needed, especially when it utilises a very specialist skill that the volunteer has to offer, in conjunction with fundraising is to be applauded.

It is just where corporates seem to think it is satisfactory to replace large amounts, or even the whole of their fundraising efforts with volunteering that I think a real problem is occurring.

If charities want and need cash, then perhaps that’s what they should be given. A lawyer or a banker using ‘charity work’ as an excuse to go off on a jolly for the day just isn’t going to cut it, even if it does give the volunteer involved a warm sense of self-satisfaction.

To tweet or not to tweet?

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The recent discussion about the use of Twitter and other social media sites by fundraisers flagged up some really interesting points both for and against.
 
Both sides were compelling. However – and this is probably unsurprising, considering I’m the online editor of Third Sector and champion of all things digital – I came down in favour of using social media, and Twitter in particular.
 
As an initial Twitter doubter, I’ve since seen the error of my ways and now can’t imagine my working life without using it in some capacity – whether to help source stories, read comments or do research.
 
There was some concern among the commentators that Twitter is an invasion of privacy and that it would therefore be inappropriate for fundraisers to use it to approach donors. However, I think this misses the beauty of this social networking tool.
 
Users willingly sign up, knowing that they may be messaged by those that follow them and those that don’t. It is the very nature of the site. It promotes engagement and discussion and, most importantly, interaction.
 
It can help give an organisation a more human face by making a charity more approachable. And it offers engagement on a level that chugging and door-to-door fundraiser hasn’t been able to, by providing a open, relaxed environment where a donor or charity supporter can raise any concerns or issues they have with an organisation immediately, without having to wait weeks for a letter or phone call, and maybe even for no response at all.
 
It is also an information-sharing space, where people can learn more about organisations, about what’s new and interesting, and helps to develop relationships and connections.
 
It’s true a charity’s Twitter feed shouldn’t be a series of mundane messages, and nor should it become overly familiar or unprofessional. There is a balance to be struck. But it’s definitely worth a try.
 
And I don’t believe it should replace other forms of fundraising, which have been tried and tested and are successful. Instead, it should sit alongside them, because charities that aren’t using Twitter are missing out. So go on, give it a go…

 

Is volunteering too much hard work for charities?

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Two weeks ago, at a round table hosted by the European Association of Philanthropy and Giving, I listened to a group of people working in the charity sector talking about the difficulties they faced using professional volunteers.

You would think this would be easy – get in an accountant, an IT expert, a designer, and get loads of professional experience for free. But these people’s experience was quite difference.

Making a specialist placement work needs a lot of effort from the charity concerned, I was told, both before and after they get the volunteer involved. They need to plan what services they are looking for, and understand that getting volunteers involved is not a replacement for work by paid staff.

I’ve got some personal experience of this. Years ago, I decided I would practise what I hear preached each week in Third Sector, and do some volunteering. And because I’d listened to volunteering experts, I decided I’d try using my professional skills.

I figured there must be plenty of charities keen to raise their media profile, looked around, and approached three different charities, through brokerage schemes and in person.

In all cases, I was asked to look at a charity’s media strategy and marketing materials, and make some suggestions. All cases produced varyingly dispiriting results. With one charity, I received no response of any sort after putting together a response. Another rang me, a month after I produced a detailed piece of work for them, to admit that they’d lost it.

Now the common factor in all of these situations was me, the volunteer, so I can’t rule out the possibility that my advice was unhelpful, or that I didn’t have the particular skills they needed, and that’s why these experiences were unsuccessful.

But it also seemed clear that many charities, while they wanted help, weren’t really set up for receiving it.

All three organisations I spoke to underestimated the time it would take them to deal with me. And none seemed keen on the idea that any help they received would lead to work they would have to carry on themselves.

What’s needed, according to the volunteering experts I met at the EAPG, is more brokerage, to ensure both sides know what they’re likely to be asked to do, and can ask for themselves.

This fits quite well with my own experience. My expectations were probably unrealistic, and so, I suspect, were those of the charities I tried to help. Some early hand-holding would have led to better results for both sides.

Should we be putting financial value on volunteering?

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On Monday, the front page of the Guardian carried a story about a scheme being proposed in Windsor & Maidenhead where new volunteers get Nectar Points in exchange for carrying out good works: hold a tea party for pensioners, get money off at Argos.

There seems some potential problems with this idea. First of all, it puts a clear financial value on each good work. Second that financial value is very small. And it’s not clear that people volunteer in their community because of financial incentives, particularly relatively piffling ones.

The council says its idea is based on the ideas popularised in Nudge, the influential book by two American academics, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. But it’s not clear that it really follows their concepts.

Nudge is a book about choice architecture, one of the many such books to be published in the wake of pop economics bible Freakonomics. It says, essentially, that people are much more likely to do the right thing if it’s made easier for them.

For example, it says, most of us don’t save enough for our retirement, not because we don’t want to, but because it’s complicated and difficult, and we never get round to it. If the default option on the company pension scheme changes, people accept it happily, and save more.

Nudge, however, doesn’t say that people are more likely to do the right thing when they’re financially incentivised to do so.

In fact, many economists believe the opposite happens. If you offer people financial incentives, it drives out the social incentives which previously motivated them.*

At the moment, if you work for your community, you’re motivated by a number of factors. One is often enjoyment of the actual process, or a sense of satisfaction at what you’re creating. Another is the warm glow of altruism. Another is camaraderie, or the regard of your peers.

If you offer people a fixed rate in money-off vouchers, you risk replacing those motivations with financial ones. Instead of asking, “How much good have I done?” they may ask, “Is what I’ve done worth the reward I’ve received?”

If the reward is enough Nectar Points for an eight-pack of loo roll, the answer could well be no.

The Windsor scheme at least offers cash equivalents rather than cash. So long as this is seen as a fringe benefit – a non-financial incentive in addition to the other non-financial incentives – it may not drive people away, and may even encourage loyalty among existing volunteers. However, it seems a very chancy game to play.

Of course, an additional benefit of the scheme is that it’s generated loads of publicity. That’s worth a lot, even if the scheme itself turns out to be a failure.

* There’s a famous example of this happening in an Israeli nursery, which introduced penalty fees for parents who turned up late to collect children. The nursery found that parents turned up later still. They had previously made an effort not to turn up late because they felt social obligations to the nursery staff. Now, any guilt they felt could be assuaged by forking out cash.

The nursery realised this and scrapped the fees. But the parents carried on turning up late, because they no longer viewed it as a social problem, but a financial one – even though there was no longer and financial cost.

Similarly, once you’ve told a volunteer their work is driven by financial values, not social ones, you can’t go back.

Trick or treat in the big society

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Like many people, I imagine, I spent lot of yesterday evening answering the door to children in a variety of hideous costumes squealing ‘”trick or treat?” Unlike in previous years, I had anticipated it and spent a fiver at the local shops on an assortment of tooth-rotting gunge to hand out as insurance against getting the front door splattered with raw egg, or worse.

Halloween came this year the day after the government had floated the idea that people who volunteer or take part in other big society activities should be able to call in the favour later in life. A bit odd, as Sir Stuart Etherington sagely described it in a TV interview, but there you are: that’s the kind of thing they’re putting out these days. And if the government’s regular citizenship survey counts giving someone directions or posting a neighbour’s letter as volunteering, why not answering the door to trick-or-treaters?

So as I admired the fake-bloodied faces, evinced great terror at the witch masks and handed out the Smarties, I couldn’t help imagining a different kind of dialogue.

“Trick or treat?”

“Well, you look so scary and so horrible that I’m going to treat you. And I don’t want the front door messed up. But before you get the sweets, you have to sign in this little book that you’ll come back in a few years time when I’m in my bath chair and wheel me down the shops or weed my flowerbed.”

“You what?”

“That’s the deal. It’s the big society.”

“Er, I won’t bother, then.”

Result! And I get to eat the Smarties…

Pensions: the dormant volcano?

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George Osborne indicated during the comprehensive spending review that he expects to take up most of the recommendations in Lord Hutton’s interim report on pensions, published earlier this month.

Hutton’s review, commissioned by Osborne earlier this year, admitted in effect that the government could not afford its pension debts, and recommended steps to reduce costs. This affects many charities that joined local government pension schemes several years ago, and are now finding out that, without knowing it, they bought land on an economic fault line – a dormant financial volcano.

At the time it seemed like a good idea for most, but that’s changed now: the volcano has woken up and is spouting ash. Most charities in these schemes have found they have large liabilities over which they have little control, which can grow wildly in size with little notice; they will never really know the risk they’re running till the debt comes due.

It’s also difficult now to get out. Any charity that wants to get out needs to settle its whole deficit once and for all, which often costs more than all the contributions made up till now.

Even so, it may be worth confronting the problem now, because Osborne also made it clear it will soon be compulsory to enrol all your employees in a scheme – something many organisations cannot afford.

Also, all charities will have to deal with it, sooner or later. Eventually, the last employee they have in the scheme will retire, and their debts will all come due.

Worryingly, some have little idea of the trouble they are in – to the extent that the Pensions Trust, a charitable provider of multi-employer schemes, has started holding awareness-raising sessions to make sure enrolled charities realise the issues they may face.

If you’re a trustee of one of the many unincorporated organisations in this scheme, you’re at particular risk. Trustees may have personal liability for debts which can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds; many may be blithely unaware that they are living in their own personal Pompeii.

One trustee has already been sued personally for the debts of his charity’s pension scheme. The charity has been bailed out, and he will not have to pay, but several others currently have the threat hanging over their heads.

It is only a matter of time before a charity trustee is forced to  pay off his charity’s pension liabilities personally, potentially to his or her personal ruin. Only then, most probably, will many others realise the danger they are in.