How do you handle charity support requests?

[SillyJokes]

Do you get a lot of legitatmate requests from groups raising money for charities asking for freebies?

We get about three a day, probably because the stuff we sell is relevant and used on such events.

Everytime I get one it breaks my heart to say no, but it is our business to sell stuff for events, not give it away.

Then another little voice says it could give us a good name in that community, but the other voices say it probably won't give us any publicity even if they say they will.

What is your view? Should we give something to them in the hope it will raise our profile, no matter how little, or should we stick to what we do which is selling party goods and continue our support of Comic Relief and some local charities in our office area?

 

[gary]

I think you have to be realistic - you can't possibly support every charity, so choose the charities you do wish to support, and Comic Relief is of course perfectly named and suited! (Ours is the Loud Tie Campaign for Bowel Cancer, not pretty, but appropriate!).

When someone calls up, explain to them you have a standing Social Responsibility programme (which is the policy that deals with how you deal with charitable contributions), and so you are unable to assist them at this stage.

It may also help to limit the calls if you can add something about Charitable Donations to your contact page on your website if they are getting your number from there.

Gary

 

[gj]

I've seen a written comment a few times now along the lines of:

" As you will appreciate, we receive numerous requests from charities for support. To support them all would be impossible and to support some would be unfair to the others"

Gary is right - just support the one or two you really want to.

Another thing I have heard a few times is that you should perhaps support a charity for the right reasons - because you want to support the charity - not because you want publicity.

We used to do quite a few charity audits, to be honest because we thought we might get some nice referral work. We never got a thing and the charities became quite demanding - asking us to attend meetings of the trustees etc - of course we felt we couldn't say no -and these were often evening meetings.

We now have a policy that we do not do charitable work, but we support one specific charity. I am very comfortable with that. Any other charities that contact us are simply told we have allocated our charity budget.

Grahm

 

[Ozzy]

Hi Caroline,
I have supported the NSPCC for years personally, and I do get a fair number of charity phone calls. I decided to make the NSPCC the charity of choice for Quick Formations, so now for every company that gets formed through Quick I donate 50p to the NSPCC. I have a formal contract in place with the NSPCC that supports this.

Now when any charities call up I simply repeat the same as what Gary mentions above. We already support the NSPCC and have a contract in place already.

There is sometimes commercial benefits in supporting a charity, but as Graham states don't make that the reason behind supporting a charity.

 

[Anonymous]

I believe you have to separate what is business and what is your personal feeling about charity.

If you are donating to promote your business do so in order to get publicity. However, if you decide to donate because you feel that, do it but in silence.

I usually don't trust in persons that say they donate because they care about others, but take any chance they have to let others know about that.

I contribute to several institutions, but I do it in my personal life and do not involve my company in it.

Cheers

 

[Ozzy]

Hi Fernando,
Although I understand why you say what you do, you do also need to be commercial about it.
If you pay yourself a salary, you pay tax on your earnings, and then you pay so much to the carity of choice. If you pay from your company then the payments are tax deductable, meaning you can afford to pay more to the charity because less is going to the tax man.

Then there is the benefits of telling people you donate to charity. They can choose to order from a company that doesn't donate to charity, or a company that donates a percentage of their profits to charity.

Personally, if I was looking to buy a product and had a choice of where to shop, I do choose to buy from a company that supports a charity. I have also done so.

 

[gj]

I weigh up a number of factors when I am buying a product or service - quality, delivery, price, support etc. but whether or not they give to charity just wouldn't affect my decision.

I am rather cynical with this sort of thing - and agree with Fernando - if they are shouting about how much they have given to charity, I am of the view they are doing it for the publicity.

If Fernando is giving to charity personally because he wants to, he doesn't need to be comercial about it and take tax implications into account. In any event there are certain tax breaks etc for personal giving, deeds of covenant etc. but lets not turn this into a tax issue!

Graham

 

[Ozzy]

I do find yours and Fernando's thoughts on this quite interesting.
On the publicising donations front I am told that all things being equal 83%(ish) of shoppers would choose to buy from the company that supports I charity, so there are commercial benefits there. However not only does the charity benefit from the donations, but the charity also benefits by increased public awareness.

A friend of mines company supports a charity that sends terminally ill children on dream holidays. That charity is practically unheard of, but he publicised the charity and his support on his website and I know this has brought that charity more supporters. The charity is http://www.make-a-wish.org.uk/ for those interested. I wont link to my mate as he's a big competitor

I also agree with the thought though that you mustn't just support a charity because you think it "looks good", that is unethical. I do however agree with publicising the charity, because charities do a lot of good work and helpful publicity for them is always needed.

 

[Anonymous]

I agree with you Richard.

I am not against using charities in a commercial way. Here everyone benefit, your business and the charity (as you said not only with the money but also with the publicity). Maybe I have had bad experiences with this. Once I bough in a site that supposely promoted a charity, and afterwards, due to a direct contact with the charity, I discovered that what was supposed to be a donation in cash by this company was a donation in vouchers to be spent in the same company.

Maybe for this reason I am a little sensitive with the issue..., but of course, this case was an exception more than the rule...
Cheers
Fernando

 

[kerryn]

well they say charity begins at home as as I work from home :wink:

However we are frequently getting calls from people wanting either monetary donations, freebies, or to advertise on their calendars etc

Our policy is -

monetary donations are a no - we give already to a select two - these are personal and private.

Freebies - surprising number of people who assume that we can just hand over products for nothing not even an mention or offer of catalogue distribution - these requests generally come from child/health/maternity workers -

Advertising - again dont do - we dont usually get anything from them

Kerry

 

[BBWdressseller]

Having recently donated an item to a charity auction I was pretty disappointed that the charity got less for the item than it cost us. Knowing what I know now, I don't think we would donate in this way again, unless it was all put on eBay. Much better to give them a proper donation.

The one type of charity I will not get involved in are ones which are involved in any way with carrying out "Ch'ugging" - Charity Mugging on the streets. I don't care if they justify it as a very cost effective method of getting money, I view it as a very unethical.

Just my 2p

 

[Ozzy]

Hi,
Kerry - I'm afraid a lot of advertising agencies tend to not be too ethical when it comes to selling advertising in diaries/calenders/etc etc. The charity themselves get almost nothing from this. This is why I personally opted to pay direct to the charity with money, at least I know they get it all.

I also agree with BBW to an extent, yes it does drive up public awareness and it is cheap, but its the "guilt" aspect I hate. I can't afford to give to every charity I see and no-one else can either ... so I have to walk past them at the point they raise their voice to the tone of "help stop children die" etc. That is unethical.

Fernando - I don't know if you have had a meeting with a charity commercial representative or not but it will shock us all some of the stories they have about how a handful of will businesses use a charity name to boost sales and one way or another not give to the charity what the charity was promised. This is way unfortunately now charities are having to spend thousands of their money on legal contracts to protect themselves from these sorts of people Very sad.

 

[kyber]

Speaking for LAM Design, given problems with many many scam charity calls, as a policy we rufuse all requests and advise any interested parties that we support specific local charities of our own choosing and we do not advertise this support. We have not maximised the tax benefits for charities or ourselves as yet.

Speaking personally, I do tend to buy from companies that support charities that I like (all other things being equalish). I also try to contribute to charities directly in such a way as to maximise the tax benefits for them.

Stuart

 

[UKRobin]

I find its best to set yourself a total amount for each year and stick to it. When you are over that budget simply saying 'We have met our yearly budget for this year, please feel free to try next year' Polite and to the point.

As much as we would all like to, you can not solve all the worlds problems!

Robin

 

[Pilfo]

We have supported many charities in the past, usually by agreeing to have an advertisement printed in their publications.

These haven't come cheap, and from them all, we have never had one single enquiry about our product.

Almost immediately that the publication/event has taken place, we receive another telephone call/letter asking for our support again for the following year, or an upcoming future event.

Ralph

 

[Ozzy]

The problem with advertising is these "charity publications" is that the charities get hardly any of the money! If you want to support a charity it is usually best just to give them the cash and advertise in the "right" places to give you a return on your investment.

 

[Ozzy]

I know I am resurfacing an old thread here, but I've just had a call from the "Police, Fireservice and Ambulance Press Office" thanking me for our support in the past! :|

Interesting considering that I only donate to two selected charities, and that is not one of them!

He then wanted to know if they could count on our continued support .

I politely informed him of the two charities that we support and that we donate directly to those charities, and no we will not be taking any advertising in any publication, whatever it was.

He thanked me then hung up

 

[DawnieB]

Talking of the advertising company 'charity calls'....

We used to get weekly calls from these companies telling us how they spoke to us "x months ago" and that we agreed to advertise with them and they had just gone to print and were preparing the invoice!

Apparently, I must have been agreeing to these in my sleep as we counted 17 of this type of call in one month!!

 

[Cornish Steve]

Everytime I get one it breaks my heart to say no

This is what they rely on. Sometimes you have to appear to be cruel to be kind.

In the case of those soliciting donations, I tell them firmly that our giving is generous but it's planned; as a point of principle, we never give in response to a phone call, email, or mailout.

Travelling a lot to the developing world, I frequently encounter beggars. I refuse to give anything because it's not really going to help them much. Instead, I sponsor children through organised programs (in my case, through the Christian Children's Fund) in countries that I visit. On one occasion, in India, I had the pleasure of visiting a sponsored child, and it was really heart-warming.

Thank, Ozzy, for bringing this thread back to life. Often, like Caroline, I feel bad about saying "no", so this was a good opportunity to reaffirm my stance in my own mind and to ensure I am listening to my conscience.

 

[Miranda]

We support a locally based charity, Feed the Children, who have a warehouse down nearby and use a firm in our building to hire a van every now and then (so we get a free collection). They take our surplus stock of discontinued nappies for use in their orpanage in Kenya, so it's mutually beneficial.

We also support the local National Childbirth Trust by advertising in their publications and donating vouchers for use in prize draws. We record evey outgoing voucher and I think on average the customer gained spends about 1.5 x value of the voucher (and often returns for more), or for about 1/4 of the vouchers the voucher isn't used and I suspect is forgotten about, I can see one from over 3 years ago still not used - and equally we won a voucher at my daughters school 2 years ago from a local dog parlour for a cut and trim - we have no dog!

Other than that we don't do any other charity as a company.

 

[Rhyl Lightworks]

I agree with the general consensus that you support one or two charities of your choice, and politely inform others making requests of this.

I also strongly agree that you refuse requests from publishers asking you to contribute to 'charity publications' such as open days for Fire, Police or Ambulance service. These seem to be cynical ways of publishers trying to use your good will to make money, while domating a miniscule amount to the charity concerned.

Barrie