Just a quickie today, more to draw attention to what someone else has written than to share anything original from my desk. But with an added complaint as bonus material.
I enjoyed this blog on ‘Fundraising around the World’ by Jenna Pudelek at Third Sector magazine. The description of the successful launch of face-to-face fundraising in the poor country of Nicaragua is a real one-in-the-eye for those who moan about people asking for money for good causes in this wealthy country.
For the purposes of balance, an item in today’s Civil Society Media (still known as Professional Fundraising to most of us) annoyed me, for a similar reason to the item in Third Sector magazine that I wrote about in my last blog.
It is incredibly frustrating when the media (especially the charity sector media who ought to know better) focus on costs to the exclusion of taking an interest in outcomes and impact. Last time my complaint was an excessive focus on the cost of charity re-brands, and today it’s an otherwise nice article about a new legacy campaign from the Red Cross, which contains this sentence:
While he wouldn’t be drawn on the cost of the campaign, Jacques said that: “For the British Red Cross, this is a significant investment.”
Too right he wouldn’t be drawn on the costs – but I bet he’d have been willing to have a discussion about the projected return on investment.
Come on charity sector media – leave this sort of nonsense to the tabloids and write articles that reflect the reality of running professional organisations in the 21st century.