British red cross wasting money!

Desperado99

lincroft1710 wrote: »

I have a no idea how many of these envelopes the Red Cross are sending out, but today with my post received a normal size unaddressed envelope containing 2 Christmas cards, 2 coasters, a bookmark and a ballpoint pen, plus a request for a £5 donation.

Clearly the Red Cross do not think me worthy enough of a large personally addressed envelopes with a better choice of "gifts".

ah yes, that's the one I got today......... I vaguely considered regifting the coasters to the MIL before taking the pen out as usual and recycling the rest

pulliptears

Our area was 'targeted' last month, which surprises me given it's not an especially affluent area.
Our Red Cross Crap was addressed 'to the occupier' and every home in a 3 mile radius received one (my postie was telling me about it). I actually had 4 of these over the course of a week. Four lots of crap that went in the bin.

The first thing I had to do was call my Mum and tell her to bin it because she's elderly and is of the generation that think if you have something sent to you in the post you HAVE to pay for it.

I'd never donate to the Red Cross after this.

zagfles

pulliptears wrote: »

Our area was 'targeted' last month, which surprises me given it's not an especially affluent area.
Our Red Cross Crap was addressed 'to the occupier' and every home in a 3 mile radius received one (my postie was telling me about it). I actually had 4 of these over the course of a week. Four lots of crap that went in the bin.

The first thing I had to do was call my Mum and tell her to bin it because she's elderly and is of the generation that think if you have something sent to you in the post you HAVE to pay for it.

I'd never donate to the Red Cross after this.

That's the trouble with this sort of thing. It's like with employing chuggers. They can measure how successful a junk mail campaign was, or how much is raised through chuggers, that's easy. But they can't measure how many people have been put off donating by them wasting donated money on such things and harrasing people.

I try to avoid charities which use chuggers and bombard people with junk mail and phone calls, and I'm sure loads of other people do too. But there are no stats telling the Red Cross that they'd have got my donations instead of the DEC over the last few years if it wasn't for their wasteful marketing.

qetu1357

fluffnutter wrote: »

I've always assumed that the business these freebies generate in terms of raising their profile and encouraging people to donate outweighs the cost of producing these bits and bobs. To be fair perhaps they don't need to include so much but if it was costing not creating money they wouldn't be doing it.

Absolutely.

They do this because they end up with more money than just sending out a letter.

qetu1357

lincroft1710 wrote: »

In today's post, among several letters, I received a normal size white envelope with a begging letter and request for £9 donation from Salvation Army. The next letter was for the OH (who has different surname) also from SA. but a normal size black envelope with a different and much longer begging letter and request for £9 donation.

At least there were no unwanted "gifts", but why different colour envelopes and different begging letters?

Because they test different approaches to see which are more effective ie raise more money

qetu1357

zagfles wrote: »

That's the trouble with this sort of thing. It's like with employing chuggers. They can measure how successful a junk mail campaign was, or how much is raised through chuggers, that's easy. But they can't measure how many people have been put off donating by them wasting donated money on such things and harrasing people.

I try to avoid charities which use chuggers and bombard people with junk mail and phone calls, and I'm sure loads of other people do too. But there are no stats telling the Red Cross that they'd have got my donations instead of the DEC over the last few years if it wasn't for their wasteful marketing.

They will do research to see if they are upsetting too many people rather than just increasing donations

PlutoinCapricorn

I have seen all this from the other side i.e. within charities' Direct Marketing Departments. Household name charities operate in much the same way using the same techniques. These methods do offend many people, but they are effective.

Telephoning people to get increases in Direct Debits is standard practice: it is often done by an agency who pass on feedback to the charity. Just tell them that you prefer not to be phoned, and your record on the database should be updated to this effect so that you will be excluded from future telemarketing campaigns.

Mailings often involve hundreds of thousands of people and are done automatically. The letter type may depend on number of donations, average donation size, last donation date... it is often known as Recency, Frequency and Monetary value or RFM.

Mailings with enclosures bring in more money than those without.

jackyann

During the last few years of my mum's life she became increasingly anxious about the charity bumf that came through the door. mild dementia meant that she believed she needed the save that particular child / donkey / whatever.
I spoke to the Charities Commission but they could do nothing, so she donated, it escalated etc.
I now do no DD donations to charities. DH & I decided to aim to buy as much as possible ethically and do so even when it costs more. We do donate when requested by individuals that we care about, we belong to organisations that we want to support, and we buy a lot from charity stores - but crucially, always tick the "don't want to be contacted" box.
We probably get 2-3 begging envelopes a week on average, but not the bombardment that most generous donors seem to get.
Whenever I ask anyone connected with charity administration about this, they always say "it works" ie: they get more donations.

It also seems to me, as a long-time volunteer, that the most deserving & sensible charities struggle because they don't employ the tactics of the big boys.

zagfles

qetu1357 wrote: »

They will do research to see if they are upsetting too many people rather than just increasing donations

How do they do this "research"? They could use market research companies, but the sort of people (like me) who don't like invasive tactics like junk mail or phone call bombardment will also not like market research calls/surveys.

I never give the time of day to any cold caller, or anyone who stops me in the street, whether they are selling something, a chugger, or a market researcher.

zagfles

jackyann wrote: »

During the last few years of my mum's life she became increasingly anxious about the charity bumf that came through the door. mild dementia meant that she believed she needed the save that particular child / donkey / whatever.
I spoke to the Charities Commission but they could do nothing, so she donated, it escalated etc.
I now do no DD donations to charities. DH & I decided to aim to buy as much as possible ethically and do so even when it costs more. We do donate when requested by individuals that we care about, we belong to organisations that we want to support, and we buy a lot from charity stores - but crucially, always tick the "don't want to be contacted" box.
We probably get 2-3 begging envelopes a week on average, but not the bombardment that most generous donors seem to get.
Whenever I ask anyone connected with charity administration about this, they always say "it works" ie: they get more donations.

It also seems to me, as a long-time volunteer, that the most deserving & sensible charities struggle because they don't employ the tactics of the big boys.

Yes...convincing people to take out endowments, PPI, transferring their occupational pension to some dodgy overseas scheme with a "guaranteed" 10% return and a lump sum now, 419 scams, double glazing/timeshare hard sell techniques etc. They all "work", or at least did until people got wise to them. But organisations who want to be held up as ethical and responsible never used them. Exploitation of people who simply can't say "no" is just as bad as any of these.