Study finds face-to-face fundraising "does not alienate charity supporters"
Howard Lake | 4 November 2003 | News
More than 90% of individuals surveyed by Bristol Business School “were happy with the recruitment process.”
Face-to-face fundraising, which has come under heavy criticism for being unduly pressurising, does not alienate charity supporters, according to the latest research from Bristol Business School, part of the University of the West of England.
The School has carried out a study to to find out more about ‘street donors’ and why a proportion of them cancel their regular gift after a relatively short period of time.
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Researchers worked with six major UK fundraising charities drawn from a range of
causes, undertaking a two-stage programme of qualitative and quantitative research amongst 4,846 active and lapsed face-to-face donors.
The researchers looked at why ‘street donors’ stop giving; what their expectations are when they sign up on the street to
support a charity; and what they think of the communications they receive from the charity they give to.
The study revealed that more than 90% of individuals were happy with the recruitment process and that pressure was not a significant factor in them cancelling their support.
The study also found that the main reason for lapsed gifts is a change in financial
circumstances, rather than dissatisfaction with the charity or with the
recruitment method.
The researchers found that both lapsed and active donors have “very favourable
experiences” of the face-to-face recruitment process.
Age seems to play a part in lapsed donations. Lapsed donors are significantly younger than those who keep giving. Also, many donors do not plan to keep giving for as long as the charity might hope: half of the lapsed donors planned to give for one year or less when they signed up.
Donors were “generally happy” with the communications they received from the charity they donated to, but a common theme was their preference for more choice in what they are sent. In addition over 30% would prefer e-mail communications.
Face-to-face fundraising is no longer growing the size of the market of donors, it would seem. Over 80% of the individuals in the study reported that they give regularly to an average of four charities.
Adrian Sargeant, Professor of Nonprofit Marketing at Bristol Business School, commented: “Face-to-face (street) fundraising is one of the main routes UK
charities and pressure groups use in recruiting new donors. It has attracted
a new cohort of donors, not normally reached by other types of fundraising. The majority of face-to-face recruits are aged 20-40 – a good deal younger than the traditional profile of UK charity givers.
“However, many charities have found that a high proportion of donors recruited on the street cancel their regular gift after a relatively short time, and this ‘drop off’ has led to face-to-face budgets being cut
dramatically in some cases.”
He concluded: “whilst individual organisations have undertaken research to
discover more about why these donors stop giving, and how they could encourage them to keep giving for a longer period, the fundraising sector generally understands very little about what drives donor retention amongst this audience. We have carried out the study to provide such intelligence to charities and pressure groups.”
You can download the report “Retaining and Developing Face-to-Face Donors” at no charge in Word format from Sargeant Associates.
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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.