Fundraising Standards Board – Direct Mail Research – An Opinion
Howard Lake | 25 November 2007 | Blogs
Last week the FRSB produced the results of their research in our sector’s use of Direct Mail. I was asked to provide an ‘opinion’ piece to accompany that research, and have reproduced it here in its entirety. For the other opinion pieces by Joe Saxton and Stephen Pidgeon, please visit the Professional Fundraising website where they can be read in full.
I for one am delighted that the Fundraising Standards Board has conducted this robust and telling piece of research into direct mail. It is long overdue in an area that causes considerable naval gazing and debate within the sector.
I have lost count of the claims and counter claims about what people do and don’t like, and what they will and won’t respond to. Claims that all too often were based on little more than a loose combination of intuition and assumption. At the very least I hope that this piece of research will help settle some of those discussions.
I am an unashamed advocate of direct mail – when it is done well it can be one of the most powerful and compelling fundraising mediums available to us. However, the flipside is obvious – done badly it can, and does, reflect badly on us all.
While the report contains many useful and important conclusions and lessons for all of us involved in charity direct mail, I believe the report contains two significant conclusions that are worth considering in a bit more detail.
Gifts and incentives in mail packs
First, the simplistic, unthinking, guilt-inducing practice of including gifts or incentives in our direct mail appeals is clearly being seen for what it is – namely a piece of lazy and fundamentally flawed fundraising. A cheap gimmick that fools no one.
Apart from one memorable long-ago occasion for Amnesty International*, it is naive at best to think a donor would ever consider a pen to be an essential component of a well-executed piece of direct mail. Likewise umbrellas, bottle tops, or a host of other things with a tenuous link to the content. Worst of all, is the unforgivably calculating and crude technique of attaching a few coppers to the appeal in order to elicit a response.
Thankfully, we now have proof our audiences, supporters of every kind and of charities large and small, dislike this approach.
So I hope more than anything that this ill thought out and depressing branch of direct mail will quickly become redundant and disappear. And those unquestioning proponents who have blindly copied a trend will be forced to think again, or even better, be forced to think for themselves and the organisations they have the responsibility to represent.
Thankfully, I remain confident the vast majority of our direct mail is imaginative, innovative and engaging. It provides the reader with an emotional experience they value, and leaves them feeling compelled to act for the good of others.
The importance of stewardship
Which brings me to the second important conclusion of the research. This report, quite rightly in my opinion, once again draws our attention to the importance of stewardship – which put simply, is the task of looking after our supporters properly. In fact it even goes as far as to define it as one of the keys to the future, and to improving the effectiveness of direct mail.
For many of us this is not new – yet it is wonderful to see this opinion validated and endorsed. Sadly, to date, it remains an area that is only slowly improving and is still undervalued and misunderstood by many fundraisers.
Yet, by contrast, the understanding and knowledge of the public is growing – especially about fundraising (as the point about gift led direct mail proves) and with this growth comes an equivalent surge in expectations.
Depending on your point of view we face either a great challenge or have a wonderful opportunity to meet those expectations.
Surely it is the latter – an opportunity to meet these expectations head-on and exceed them by spending time and effort in building genuinely two-way, and mutually beneficial relationships with our supporters. We should embrace the idea of involving them in the work of our organisations, giving them a voice, giving them choices, and respecting their opinions.
There are endless ways that we can get people engaged, motivated, and inspired by the fantastic work that we do, and as technology improves at an almost daily rate, these become ever more personal and ever more accessible no matter what limited resources you may have.
However, at its core, at its most basic, our supporters want to know one thing above anything else – simply, what difference their gift has made. Too often we forget this – it sounds easy, but sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to do.
For obvious reasons, fundraising is one of the core foundations of the charitable sector, but it cannot be taken for granted. By and large, the public bless us with their acceptance, and their incredibly generous support for our fundraising activities. Direct mail, like any other form of sustainable fundraising, will only succeed and prosper if, at its heart, it is honest, credible, and inspiring.
We still have much to do to improve our accountability and our standing with the public, and to change some commonly held misconceptions about our profession. I hope that as a sector, we will celebrate and build on the many positives contained in the report, learn the lessons it undoubtedly contains, and be ever mindful that raising money is our responsibility, not our right.
* A few years ago Amnesty International sent an appeal with a free pen. It told the terrible story of a man tortured by having his eyes put out with an ordinary biro. The mailing enclosed a small plastic pen and said ‘what you hold in your hand can be an instrument of torture or it can change the world’. A brilliant creative execution with a strong and obvious reason for including the pen.
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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.