GoGen has paid the price, but the PR challenge remains for all fundraisers
Howard Lake | 31 July 2015 | Blogs
This week Emily Dent blogged on PR Week explaining Why silence, not fundraising tactics, sunk GoGen. Did silence in terms of a PR response kill fundraising agency GoGen? No it didn’t!
Why? First, they weren’t silent. Secondly, this wasn’t just a story about GoGen. It was a story about GoGen, the British Red Cross, Oxfam and several other charities. The coverage they received – over which GoGen had zero control – also contributed. Thirdly, there was a bigger issue at play, one which could not be addressed in a couple of interviews by an agency under fire – that of a fundamental misunderstanding of how charities operate in the modern world.
When this story hit, it hit hard. There was no way this story was not going to run. As GoGen’s PR agency, our strategy to mitigate the damage was to:
1. answer the newspaper’s accusations
2. counter the inaccuracies about its operations with the facts, and
3. demonstrate how the organisation had made immediate changes to address the issues raised about its culture.
The accusations came thick and fast. A constant stream of emails filled our inbox. No sooner had we responded to one set of claims, more would arrive. It was relentless. Over the course of the story, the Daily Mail sent over no fewer than 48 questions – the majority of which were based on unfounded, inaccurate claims. We had to work hard and fast to counter these and to prevent the story from gaining even more pace and legs.
No ‘no comment’
At the same time we were responding to calls and emails from other journalists. Everyone who asked for information received it. At no point did we ever respond with “no comment”.
We provided very clear insight into the particulars of the case, including details on how the company operated, how immediate changes to the vulnerable contacts policy had been made, how fundraisers were recruited, trained and managed, why and how it wasn’t breaking TPS rules, and more.
More importantly, clear and constant communications were taking place with GoGen’s two key audiences: their clients and their staff. Staff needed to be reassured and morale maintained; clients needed to know what we were doing to address the charges and how instant changes had been made to tighten up the fundraising process.
Wait for it – fundraisers get paid
The Daily Mail gets personal in its criticisms of four charities.
Yet, as alluded to before, this was a broader story. On 8 July, the Daily Mail’s cover story was the “shocking” revelation that fundraising directors get paid and that they also have a life outside of their jobs. Nothing particularly newsworthy about that, one would assume. But not in the eyes of the Daily Mail – its view was that to be paid for doing a highly skilled job, one that generates billions of pounds for good causes, was nothing short of a heinous crime.
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Death knell for GoGen
That story signalled the death knell for GoGen. The day after these fundraisers were “named and shamed”, GoGen’s biggest client, whose director of fundraising had been so unfairly targeted, pulled its contract. A mere 48 hours after the first story had run. No amount of interviews, statements or press briefings by GoGen were going to change that.
While we believe the fundraising directors of these charities understood our position, their trustee boards were not so forgiving. They wanted the stories to stop. The course of action they chose to try and achieve this was to pull their contracts with GoGen. Immediately. We can appreciate why they did this but it doesn’t make the outcome for GoGen and its 485 employees any easier to stomach.
Which brings me on to the final point. Yes, a couple of GoGen’s team behaved inappropriately and yes, there are improvements that could be made to the telephone fundraising process (despite what Emily Dent believes, people don’t just give out of guilt but also joy and empathy).
Would billions be donated if no-one asked?
However, it wasn’t just the “bad apples” that made this a story. There was genuine amazement and horror that people actually get paid to fundraise and that charities actually have to ask for donations. One headline used by Good Morning Britain was: “Company paid to raise money for charity” – as if that is unusual or immoral. Even the eminent John Humphreys on BBC Radio 4’s The Today Show seemed to think that if people wanted to give money they would, and therefore shouldn’t be asked – even though all evidence points to the contrary.
These views demonstrate that the media and the wider public appear not to have the foggiest about how charities operate and the challenges they face when it comes to funding.
Just as “journalist gets paid to write news” isn’t a story, “fundraiser gets paid to raise money for charity” shouldn’t be a story either. But due to the chasm between public perceptions of how charities are run and the realities, it is. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency by the charity sector and its suppliers as a whole. If we don’t do this then there should be no surprise when similar stories hit the headlines.
Becky Slack is founder and managing director of Slack Communications, and PR consultant to GoGen
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.