Charity consultants, including Howard Lake, "squeezing us dry", says Observer
Howard Lake | 13 May 2006 | News
Observer columnist John Hind, writing in the This Modern Life column in today’s issue, asks if charity consultants are “squeezing us dry”. He cites UK Fundraising’s Howard Lake’s charge of £199 for a day’s training on improving Gift Aid conversion using the Internet as part of this worrying trend.
In his article entitled “Giving it large?” Hind opens by lamenting the fact that “the trend in the world of charity is for more and more charity money to be spent on advice and training on how to ‘harness the power of giving’.”
He points out that nowadays “Fundraiser Training [sic] abounds” and cites the fact that “for £199 a punter, consultant Howard Lake spoke recently on ‘Online GiftGiving’ [sic]”.
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Similarly he notes that CCR Data Ltd are holding “‘Digging for Donations’, another typical ‘Not-for-profit Training Day’ (costing £135+VAT per punter).”
To be fair to CCR Data, UK Fundraising should point out that Howard Lake’s training course did add VAT as well.
This training for charities abounds according to Mr Hind in the “the world of post-tsunami philanthropy”. Presumably fundraising training was in scarce supply before the sudden deaths of so many people. Perhaps the Directory of Social Change, with 30 years’ experience of fundraising and other sector training, should set him straight on the matter.
Charity Consultants Ltd do get a note of approval from Mr Hind for offering their advice for free to charities for the first 20 minutes. But the Institute of Fundraising comes in for criticism for including a social event as part of this year’s three-day annual convention of lectures, seminars, discussions and training sessions.
Mr Hind seems particularly galled at the first conference planned by the Association of Fundraising Consultants in June, at which he suggests “much celebration is expected over the booming business prospects for these professionals, who charge up to £2,000 per day for ‘maximising charity'”.
Mr Hind’s column is brief and ends without a noticeable concluding point, but its message is clear: charities should avoid paying for professional advice and training and instead focus on their charitable mission.
Indeed, the column achieves a double hit: charities are wasteful, and charity consultants are not worth the money they charge.
Writing as someone who sells his 18 years’ fundraising experience plus 14 years’ online fundraising experience for £600 + VAT a day, I have a few questions:
* why, if charities don’t need training, do they currently fail to recoup £800 million a year in Gift Aid – money the government makes it easy to reclaim?
* how many comparable commercial sector training courses charge as little as £199 +VAT per person for a day’s training in central London? (Incidentally the Gift Aid course Mr Hind referred to, even if he couldn’t spell it, included content both from myself and Gift Aid specialist Barry Gower).
* how many fundraising consultants charge £2,000 a day? A tiny minority. In my experience most charge under £500 a day.
* why should fundraisers’ professional conventions differ from other professions’ and not include a little amusement in the evenings?
Finally, no doubt Mr Hind approves of UK Fundraising: it featured all the above examples (bar the £2,000 figure) as news items or adverts, so presumably was helpful to him in cobbling together his column. The site is intentionally transparent, offering the public a view, should it need it, of the fundraising profession. And even better, like the only good kind of charity consultant and trainer, it doesn’t charge a penny to be used. Not too much “squeezing dry” going on there then.
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.