When harsh words and actions spark positive giving campaigns
Howard Lake | 23 April 2015 | Blogs
Some fundraising campaigns come with an additional sense of schadenfreude – not at the expense of the beneficiaries of course, but at the original instigators.
Some of the best of these appear amongst crowdfunding campaigns, where individuals have reacted to a problem or injustice with a desire not just to give themselves but to enable others to support them, in an outpouring of financial restorative justice.
1. Campaign for victim of crime
There was the example earlier this year when Katie Cutler raised over £330,000 for Alan Barnes, after being appalled that the 67-year-old, who had had sight and growth defects since birth, had been attacked, suffered a broken collarbone, and left in fear or returning to his own home.
While his attacker might or might not have appreciated the contrast between his actions towards Mr Barnes and those of the 24,800 people who donated to the fund set up to help him, it proved very satisfying to many people to be able to help, and indeed to watch this process as the total rose.
2. The town that turned a neo-Nazi march into an anti-racism fundraising event
Residents of Wunsiedel in south eastern Germany last year managed to turn a neo-Nazi march on their streets into a sponsored event to promote tolerance.
The march was an annual event on National Heroes’ Remembrance Day. The neo-Nazis chose Wunsiedel because it was the original burial site of Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler.
A campaign called Rechts gegen Rechts (Rights Against Rights) was set up to turn the march into a sponsored event to raise funds for EXIT Deutschland, a charity that helps people leave neo-Nazi groups.
Townspeople pledged to donate for each metre that was marched. As a result, the citizens posted motivational posters along the route of the march, offered free food (‘Mein mampf’ or ‘my food’ posters appeared – mocking the title of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’), and covered the marchers with confetti at the end.
The campaign raised €10,000.
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3. Gunboats for migrants jibe becomes rescue boats for people
Izzy Saunder’s Mediterranean migrants fundraising campaign for MSF-UK
The latest example comes from comments in a column in The Sun newspaper by Katie Hopkins. Amid reports of hundreds of people drowning in the Mediterranean as they tried to reach the safety of Europe, she wrote that she would “use gunships to stop migrants”.
Although her column appeared two days before over 700 migrants drowned in the latest disaster, the number of deaths since January had already far surpassed the same period in 2014.
She described migrants as “cockroaches” and wrote:
“Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care”.
Izzy Saunders set up both a change.org petition to ask The Sun to stop using Hopkins as a columnist and a JustGiving campaign to raise funds for MSF UK to support its efforts to provide search, rescue and medical aid for Mediterranean migrants.
The campaign aimed to raise £5,000. It has raised £37,957.50.
So, if you are stuck for fundraising ideas, look out for news reports of someone saying or doing something that is an unwarranted attack on the people that your charity helps or the changes you seek to make. There are plenty of people who seem happy to put things right with a donation, if they are asked.
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.