Popping the question and revealing your expectations.

Howard Lake | 5 April 2008 | Blogs

Us fundraisers are used to surreal worlds, but the world of ‘disclosure’ takes the biscuit. Just how does it make sense to insist that a fundraiser, at the point of asking someone for a donation, should start discussing their renumeration? Why this overhead in particular? What about the CEO’s salary or the cost of service delivery or any one of the other expenses incurred along the way?
I guess the Charities Act gives the gave away when it describes those who should reveal their cut as ‘professional fundraisers’, obviously a shifty bunch or they would be doing it for free as volunteers. This piece of muddled thinking and daft legislation smacks of the Dorothy Donor generation, whose mindset sees fundraising as a strictly amateur pursuit. The Baby Boomers, who control most of our wealth today, are rather more realistic.
To date we have the situation where few people bother to disclose and no one has been prosecuted. Maybe we need a case just to show how awful this legislation is in practice – not that I’m volunteering.
The draft ./guidance on disclosure is now apparently out for consultation, but how do we engage with something that makes little sense in itself? Oh, by the way, the new ./guidance indicates that all paid fundraisers not just those naughty ‘professionals’ should disclose and the amounts for each appeal they are collecting for to boot.
So, you might just be my test case – do let me know.

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.