Campaign against Marriage Tax Allowance generates £122,850 in charity pledges

Howard Lake | 28 April 2010 | Blogs

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The ‘Don’t Judge My Family’ campaign against the Conservative Party’s Marriage Tax Allowance in the General Election campaign has generated pledges of £122,850 to charity. Its organisers, who have achieved considerable national media coverage, have invited supporters to pledge to give the proposed £3 a week tax break to charity, should the Conservatives win the Election and implement the policy.

So far 2,295 people have signed up and the pledge total stands at £122,850. On the campaign’s “They need it more than me” page, the organisers list and link to children, family and relationship charities that they argue would benefit more from the £3 a week gift. These include Barnardo’s, Relate, Gingerbread, Women’s Aid and National Association of Widows.

This is a good example of turning a popular, single-issue campaign to the advantage of charities. Not only can supporters sign up to join the campaign, they can be offered a chance to put their money where their mouth is. In particular, the money would benefit not the campaign organisers but a range of independent charities.

Will all this money end up in the charities’ coffers even if the Conservatives win the General Election? I doubt it. It’s very easy to pledge money in this way, especially as that act alone can be seen as sending a message. Still, it’s another example of ‘freelance fundraisers’ in action: members of the public who can use web tools to create a campaign to fundraise for one or more charities with probably no direct input or initial support from the charity.

www.dontjudgemyfamily.com/home/Theyneeditmore.html

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.