Just give me money: The Beatles and fundraising
Ian MacQuillin | 11 December 2013 | Blogs
Inspired by Adrian Salmon’s blog post from a few weeks back about what early classical music can teach us about fundraising, I’ve been considering what we can learn from other musical genres and the artists who perform them. Having mulled this over for all of 14 seconds, I decided to take a look at the Beatles back catalogue (who’d have seem that coming?).
So, what can The Beatles tell us about fundraising? If you know where to look, a surprising amount.
There’s only one direct reference to charity in a Beatles song: The Ballad of John and Yoko, which features the line:
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Saving up you money for a rainy day/Giving all your clothes to charity.
But elsewhere, The Beatles empathise with a ‘chugger’, bottle out of asking a donor for a big gift, and bemoan formulaic DM and continuous attrition rates. Don’t believe me? Then read on.
Hello Goodbye
Hello Goodbye is often thought to be a little more than a word game set to music. But it is actually a cry from the heart over the endless cycle of donor recruitment, attrition, reactivation calls and emails and then more recruitment to replace the donors you couldn’t reactivate.
You say goodbye, and I say hello, sings Paul. You say stop, I say go go go.
Clearly bemused why donors cancel their Direct Debits even before they make their first payment, he plaintively sings:
I don’t why you say goodbye I say hello
Why, why, why, why, why do you say goodbye
But Paul hints at why some people perhaps have second thoughts about their monthly donation.
I say high/You say low
Perhaps they have been recruited at too high an initial gift and realise they can’t afford it. Or perhaps they have just had enough of being ‘churned and burned’.
You Won’t See Me
If high attrition is a reaction to overused and not very imaginative donor acquisition, then the obvious answer is to make these asks a bit better. But it’s not as easy as all that, as Paul’s song You Won’t See Me from the Rubber Soul album explains.
[Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ojG6Ox-kCo no longer available].
At one level, the lyric When I call you up, your line’s engaged is about a girl not answering the phone to her boyfriend. At another level, it’s a comment on the diminution of the telephone as a donor recruitment tool as more and more people register with the Telephone Preference Service. But at a third and deeper level still, it is a clever satire on formulaic direct marketing fundraising using generic creative.
For You Won’t See Me uses the same chord structure as the Four Tops song It’s the Same Old Song, which is so called because Motown songwriters Lamont Dozier and the Holland brothers bashed it out by using the same chords they’d already used in the Four Tops’ previous hit I Can’t Help Myself. Just the same creative going round and round and being marketed to the same people and being too junior at your agency to do anything to change it (I can’t get through, my hands are tied).
I Want To Tell You
So what is the best way to break the shackles of formulaic DM? The Beatles, like the best fundraisers of any era, were masters of storytelling.
In two-minutes and six seconds, The Beatles told the story of a lonely old woman who died alone with her local church seemingly indifferent to her plight. In a few words in a DM letter, Karen Weatherup at Burnett Works told the story of a political prisoner who was blinded by a ballpoint pen but that donors could use the same device to save lives by writing a cheque for Amnesty International.
And yet despite the wealth of stories they have to tell, many fundraisers, particularly major donor fundraisers, have often been worried about closing the deal, putting off indefinitely (I could wait forever, I’ve got time) the point where they actually have to ask for money, while they finesse the relationship just a little bit more, or enhance the case for support one more iota.
George encapsulates their angst in his song I Want To Tell You, from Revolver, which he emphasises with a dissonant (you taking note, Adrian?) piano.
I want to tell you, my head is filled with things to say
But when you’re here, all those word they seem to slip away.
I want to tell you, I feel hung up and I don’t know why.
I don’t mind, I could wait forever I’ve got time.
But whom is George – ever the cynic – really addressing? Who is it that makes him feel ‘hung up’ and causes his words to slip away? Is it potential donors? Or is it fundraising ‘gurus’ telling him he needs to stop writing his award-winning DM appeals and start telling ‘stories’ instead, perhaps over-thinking and complicating the process?
[Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77J0-NMMJHA no longer available]
You Never Give Me Your Money
The natural extension of exploring the existential angst of having to ask another person for a donation is for The Beatles put themselves in the middle of just such a situation.
In You Never Give Me Your Money, from the Abbey Road medley, Paul describes a dialogue between a street fundraiser and the passerby he is trying to recruit, repeatedly switching standpoints between the two.
The song opens with the ‘chugger’ – a college leaver trying hard to makes ends meet – bewailing the pedestrian: You never give me your money. Perhaps the fundraiser is actually talking to the great mass of passersby who, by averting their eyes from the fundraiser, also fail to see the problems he is attempting to redress.
Paul then becomes the voices of the pedestrian, retorting with – You only give me your funny paper – a reference to a Direct Debit mandate.
And then it’s back to the ‘chugger’, whose line And in the middle of negotiations you break down, describes to the pedestrian’s feelings of guilt about declining the fundraiser’s ask and the Twitter rant that ensues from it.
Now we return to the pedestrian, who tells the fundraiser that he never gives to charities that employ chuggers. I never give you my number, he sings, referring to his bank account and sort code.
I only give you my situation, responds the fundraiser, pointing out that all he is doing is asking the person if they can help and not twisting his arm into doing so.
The passerby walks away, determined to bring down the whole edifice of face-to-face fundraising. But the inevitable happens – In the middle of investigations, I break down – resulting in numerous letters to the media, a string of anonymous abusive emails to the PFRA and several spurious complaints to the FRSB.
But the story has a happy ending (at least for the fundraiser), as his ‘one sweet dream’ comes true and he gets a ‘proper’ fundraising job as assistant individual giving fundraiser at a medium-sized international aid charity and finds a way to get back that ‘magic feeling’ – the ‘warm glow’ that donors get from giving and he gets from asking.
[Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN2AD6Bbj5s no longer available]
Baby You’re a Rich Man/It’s All Too Much/Money (That’s What I Want)
The Beatles knew the value of that warm glow and the value and meaning that comes with making a donation to charity. Most of their songs were, after all, about love in all its many forms, and philanthropy is the love of mankind.
In Baby You’re A Rich Man, they ask people who have acquired wealth but don’t know how to find value from it (people who Keep all [their] money in a big brown bag) how they will find the meaning they are looking for (Now that you’ve found another key, what are you going to play?).
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvERZh3tIO8 no longer available.
They provide the answer in a line from It’s All Too Much, one of George’s songs from the Yellow Submarine film:
The more you give/The more you get
[Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UzZW5SFAAg no longer available]
In the end though, like all fundraisers, The Beatles knew that to get you had to ask (You ask me for a contribution, John sings in Revolution) and they knew how to strip fundraising right down to its bare essentials:
[Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeqW3t6EnvU no longer available]
More fundraising and The Beatles
- If you want it come and get it: The Beatles’ fundraising outtakes (25 April 2014)
- Donated Beatles album raises over £2,000 for the British Heart Foundation (22 May 2023)
- Eleanor Rigby signature auctioned for charity (28 November 2008)
About Ian MacQuillin
Ian MacQuillin is the founder and director of Rogare, the fundraising think tank at Plymouth University's Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy. He has worked in fundraising since 2001 as editor of Professional Fundraising (2001-2006), account director at TurnerPR (2006-2009) and head of communications at the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (2009-2013).