I've seen the future of charity income generation

Howard Lake | 19 October 2010 | Blogs

I’ve come up with a radical new way for charities to generate income. It has been conceived in response to the upsurge of charity comparison websites, some of which have received criticism for being totally ineffective and a complete waste of time, money and effort. It’s called ‘fundraising’.
Comparison sites – whereby some bright spark sets up a website that allows potential donors to compare charities’ costs, incomes, outputs and such like – rely on the prospective donor to make a proactive decision to visit the site. While it sounds fine in theory, the problem of course is that no bugger ever does that of their own volition.
However, ‘fundraising’ gets round that problem by actually asking people to give money to a charity. There are many ways that charities can ‘fundraise’. They can send letters, use TV and press adverts, make telephone calls, send emails or texts or even stand in the street and ask people as they walk past.
Each and every way of doing this has the advantage over static websites that it prompts people to give who otherwise might not have thought about it.
Of course, ‘fundraising’ is a lot more expensive than just setting up a website and waiting for the populace to flock to it, bank cards in hand. It might even cost charities a year’s worth of donations. But in the long term, I think it will be worth it because, by my reasoning, you’ll end up with more donors giving more money by asking them to give than if you don’t.
Simple, really.

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.