Fundraising has become so sophisticated that actions which bring on my grumbles may have been intentional – perhaps to get me to read more carefully! Anyway, here is a grumble about a letter with the heading Alzheimer’s Care and Research Fund. Nothing wrong with that, but the letter, referring of course to Alzheimer’s, soon introduces us to a charity, Guideposts, and the latter’s Care Research Centre.
Accompanying the letter is a ’survey’ on Alzheimer’s and Domestic Care. One can tick a box and not take part. But, part-way through the survey, there is a box for making one’s contribution “to help The Alzheimers [missing the apostrophe we had at the beginning] Care and Research Fund. But the cheque has to be made payable to Guideposts Trust. And the Gift Aid form comes over the page, at the end of the survey – which might well be missed if one had opted out of the survey.
How much simpler it would be to receive a letter from one organisation, explaining what it does – and for the donation to go there.
Two other points. There is no facility to make payment by debit/credit card, or on-line. I wonder what others make of this sentence: “Guideposts Trust receives 100% of your donations. The costs of fundraising come from preplanned budgets set each year in line with the immediate and long term needs of Guideposts services”
What a peculiar sentence. It seems as if they feel they ought to make a comment, but have no comment to make on their costs. If the % spent on fundraising seems high, there may well be good reason for it (and it’s unlikely, in my view, to be higher than the perception), so why include a sentence that is a nod towards a perceived concern without addressing it?
Or is it simply a case of poor copy writing?