Pell and Bales find top charities still not promoting Gift Aid enough
Howard Lake | 6 June 2005 | News
According to Third Sector magazine, a mystery donor survey by telemarketing agency Pell & Bales has found that only 42% of the 39 top-100 charities approached recommended that the donation be made by Gift Aid.
Pell & Bales approached the major charities using email, post and telephone and attempted to achieve three objectives – to request information, make a complaint and donate money.
The results were astonishing. Third Sector reports that, “out of 117 attempts to pledge a monthly direct debit donation, only 66 were successful. And one charity took 210 days to return the confirmation and thank the donor.”
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The would-be donor received different responses depending on which medium they used to contact the charities. For example, Gift Aid was suggested by all channels by only 8% of the charities contacted. Only 13% managed to thank the donor irrespective of the channel used; but then 13% also failed to thank the donor at all, no matter what channel was used.
A previous survey by Pell & Bales had even found charities using different versions of forms for donors, depending on which medium they were using to communicate with them.
Regrettably, the promotion of Gift Aid is getting worse. The 2004 figure of 43% is four per cent down on that reported by Pell & Bales in their survey of 2003.
While Karl Holweger, chief executive of Pell & Bales, acknowledged that some charities were doing well, “a larger number seem virtually inert”, he said, adding “these are the grateful dead. They need to wake up.”
Pell & Bales carried out its survey from May 2004 to January 2005.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.