The thank you note that made my day

I was touched this morning when, through my letter box, arrived an envelope addressed to me, in what my mother described as “beautiful hand writing.” Inside was a note, in the same equally neat writing, expressing thanks for a donation I had made back in April to a locally-based charity.
I had, quite honestly, forgotten I had made the donation and felt sure there had been some misunderstanding, but sure enough when I consulted my cheque book it turned out I had indeed done the deed.

I was, quite frankly, utterly moved. This was a lot of effort for a reasonably small donation. It was even more of an effort when I considered that there were probably rather a lot more of these notes for the secretary to write and deliver.

What was most heartening about it, though, was that it was nothing other than a thank you. It wasn’t one of those “Cheers, but reckon you could still dig a bit deeper mate?” Kind of letters, it just affirmed the importance of support, expressed thanks for the donation and summarised the charity’s work. There was not even a sniff of a request for anything.

How sharply it contrasts with too many big charities today.

I do not criticise them for not going to quite this extent in trying to be personal in their responses.

Were this charity bigger, and most of the donors not living within a particular locality, the job of writing to many people spread far and wide by hand might be more problematic.

I do, however, think acts of generosity like this on the part of charities inspire people to consider donating again, volunteering, or just spreading the word (I will be naming them at the end of this post).

Big charities would do well to remember that it is the personal touch which really sells in the marketplace, and yes, charities are competing in a market.

There is ample good will, but limited cash, and lots of worthy causes. That is why simply asking for more and more, doesn’t work. It is, at times, done in a hideously impersonal way.

I expect this dreadful phenomenon may have been lost on Olive Cook, the wonderful elderly lady who sold poppies every year without fail yet who, in her 90s, committed suicide, apparently unable to cope with not being able to support the hundreds of charities she believed were asking for her help.

Perhaps she hadn’t realised that she was just a name on a spread sheet, with mail merge functionality generating a letter automatically, which, in charity upon charity, would have been robotically stuffed in to an envelope by a well-meaning administrator who would have had no idea of the vulnerability of the person to receive it.

IT wasn’t just one charity, it was dozens. She, and she alone, was responsible for her death, but it is scandalous that organisations set up to deliver a social good, made her feel so utterly inadequate when, to everyone else, her life was characterised by extraordinary kindness.

We have had a minor but similarly vexing problem with a children’s cancer charity, which I will be gracious enough not to name. We bought some raffle tickets years, possibly even a decade ago and have been bombarded with begging letters and more books ever since.

We have repeatedly returned raffle tickets, on two such occasions with apologetic letters asking not to be sent anymore, as we support all the causes we can afford to already and stating, very clearly, that these are not wanted. No phone number is given, hence writing the letters.

Nothing changes: still we get the tickets, still we return them, again and again. Quite apart from anything else, I will never give to a charity so apparently unconcerned with wasting precious resources harassing people who’ve already said they can’t support them.

I once made a £5 donation by SMS to another cause I will not name. It was another case where charities had stipulated a minimum required.

Months later, I received a menacing phone call which, as I was travelling on a train home from work, stressed and tired, I just didn’t need. When I picked up, this woman bellowed, and I mean bellowed, at me down the line.

She told me how appalling things are for those poor Africans. “It’s not good enough is it, Aidan?” She screamed.

“Indeed not, but I’m terribly sorry, I’m not in a position to support any more. I lack permanent employment and already give as much as I can to causes dear to me.” (This, whilst an excellent get out line when accosted by chuggers who rarely justify the cost to employ them, was true with me).

“You’re not just going to let it happen, are you?”

Outraged, I cut off. I wish it was a landline so I could at least have had the pleasure of slamming something violently.

There are too many instances where charities are just going too far.

They stop you in the street, they knock at your door, they outsource fundraising to boso idiots who guilt-trip you on the train home, they bombard you with mail and are totally indifferent to your complaints.

Worse, they are pretty indifferent to you as the donor.

Don’t get me wrong, fundraising is hard, and it is competitive. I know this because I have been trustee of a charity for 4 years, Sight for Surrey, which was a wonderful source of support to me in the past. I know both how hard they work on fundraising, and how innovative and creative they are.

The most important thing, for me, is that they never take support and supporters for granted, and they are part of the community.

They engage the community, make a real effort to show them who we are, and what we do, and we are very, very appreciative of all our wonderful supporters. You’ll forgive me using this post to express my sincerest thanks.

I myself worked in fundraising for a couple of months for a different charity, trying to source a very inexpensive prize in exchange for bucket loads of good PR. I’m afraid I did not succeed. I even drew a blank when I tried to contact local organisations to discuss what we could do for them, without requesting any money. I was simply greeted, call after call, with the monotone response “Can you send an email?” And this was when I was offering something for free!

I am therefore not unsympathetic to the reasons behind pushy campaigning. One good cause has to fight to be heard over the clamber of other equally good ones.

If I get charity fatigue (and I confess, I do), I can’t expect not to have to work hard to overcome that feeling in others.

One does not, for example, get generous legacies without being pushy. It’s not easy to ask people if they’ve thought about who they’ll support when they die, but, given that legacies can often mean a pretty sizeable amount of cash arriving in one go, it is a necessary evil to do it.

It’s also an evil that can be somewhat remedied by showing the person, whilst alive, how money is helping now and how their future help might benefit everyone in the future.

It is when pushy becomes cruel, that charities have to step back and look at what they’re doing. But next time we are blackmailed by the wasteful cancer charity sending us yet another unwanted raffle book, sporting a picture of their latest celebrity signing, or a deranged cold caller tries to blame me for world poverty, I will look at the beautiful hand written note proudly on the notice board, that some-one kindly took the time to write for me, to let me know I’d made a difference. 

I will be supporting them again, for sure.

The charity, by the way, is RACET: Rural Africa Children’s Education Trust. It helps underprivileged children in villages near Ogoja, Cross River State, Nigeria, to attend secondary school with the help of sponsors in the UK.
Website:
www.racet.org