Fundraisers "need their own awareness campaigns"
Howard Lake | 16 April 2007 | News
Ian MacQuillin’s latest blog post on UK Fundraising argues that awareness raising campaigns are needed to counter the prevailing “anti-fundraising attitudes” held by many members of the public and media.
MacQuillin, of charity PR specialist agency TurnerPR, argues that many of the negative attitudes to face to face fundraisers or charity direct mail exist because the public now view their relationships with charities as more akin to a consumer-commerce relationship rather than in the context of the fundraiser acting on behalf of the beneficiary.
MacQuillin refers to Richard Dawkins’ latest book ‘The God Delusion’, in which Dawkins points out how the women’s, gay and black rights movements have raised awareness to the point where certain words, phrases and attitudes are now considered unacceptable, simply by continually campaigning against those words and attitudes whenever they encountered them.
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“Fundraisers should adopt these awareness-raising techniques to counter the prevailing attitude that charity is all about allowing donors to give rather than helping to improve the lives of beneficiaries,” MacQuillin says.
“So when you hear someone complaining at a dinner party about chuggers or charity junk mail, politely point out that face-to-face fundraisers and direct marketers are acting on behalf of the beneficiary.
“It will be a drip-drip, bottom up, long-term effort”, he adds. “But it will be worth it, because we will be campaigning for another group of people who are marginalised, suffering, and too often don’t have a voice of their own.”
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.