Begin with the basics - Chapter from The Porcupine Principle

 When my children were little, I had one of those treasured parental experiences you do not find in parenting manuals. My daughter was three years old and I asked her a question. She replied, ‘uh?’ I adopted a stern parental face, and she said, ‘Oh, sorry, I mean, what?’ I replied, ‘I think the word you are looking for is “pardon”.’ ‘Oh, whatever’, she replied. 

So, clearly, I am hardly one to preach about good manners, because I obviously struggled with instilling them into my own children. But if you are involved in fundraising, good manners really are absolutely essential. It is simply amazing how often fundraisers do not use them. Bad manners can be overt or subtle. The subtle bad manners manifest themselves in the way we can leave people with no moral option other than to do our bidding because of the emotional blackmail we lay on. The coded message we send is that we do not genuinely care about them and we just want their money. That is plain rude. These subtle ways may be harder to spot but can often be the most damaging. 

That said, overt ways are very harmful too. What happened to good, old-fashioned ‘please’ and ‘thank you’? So many charities do not acknowledge any donations, particularly small ones, and that leaves me baffled. How do you feel if you spend an age making tea and no one thanks you for it and then you are left to do the washing-up? Alternatively, how would you feel if someone did thank you for the tea but then said, ‘Thanks for the tea, but we really need your help making tea tomorrow too.’? We would not treat people we know the way some charities have treated their donors, and how can that be right? 

If some charities do acknowledge donations, then they often do so in the most remarkably begrudging way. As soon as the donation is acknowledged, they tell the donor off for not using Gift Aid, and when they have done that, the charities ask for more. What kind of message is that sending to their donors? Basically, I read that as saying ‘We’re acknowledging your donation, but it wasn’t enough.’ That, to me, is more bad manners. 

One of the things you really should do is, just occasionally, ring up a donor to thank them for a donation rather than sending them a letter (assuming they have given you permission to do this, of course). They will be shocked to start off with, and a bit wary and suspicious of your motives, but when they realise it really is just a thank you, and not a call asking them to ‘upgrade’, they will be really pleased. They will be so pleased they will tell their friends about it too. It is a whole new niche: ‘polite fundraising’; and I bet it has the best fundraising ratios going. 

Look out for next week’s final sample chapter ‘Planning your way out of a bag’. 

The Porcupine Principle is now published, order your copy here.