It’s that time of the year. The political requests for money are not as frequent as they were before the recent elections, but they are not gone.
We are constantly reminded that our elected representatives, and the wannabes who seek to replace them, need our money. In many cases these are good, sincere people. But the internet has made them pests.
The messages sent to us are generally devoid of content. Fund raising is set up as the essential contest between them and their opponents. Then there are “deadlines” where they “most urgently” need to show their fundraising capabilities. Why should I be giving to this person to satisfy a hypothetical priority?
They tell us virtually nothing about their efforts, success and failures to promote the better society they claim to seek. Worst of all, they set up the Other Party as the enemy to be defeated, disabled, and destroyed.
And now we are seeing the flood of appeals via the U.S. Postal Service for funding not-for-profit organizations. They too are virtuous, responsible, high-minded folks.
I already have eight 2024 calendars from good-purpose folks. I will list them in alphabetic order so as to avoid biasing your consideration. The Alzheimer’s Assoc., the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Ocean Conservancy, Peta, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and two identical offerings from the Yosemite Conservancy.
In this past week I’ve had solicitations from 14 very fine worthy organizations.
They include Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Amnesty International, Common Cause, Doctors without Borders, Environmental Defense Fund, Habitat for Humanity, Indy Humane, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Multiple Sclerosis, Planned Parenthood, Sierra Club, Wheeler Mission, and World Wildlife Fund.
Serious scholars at IU’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy attempt to guide organizations in setting their budgets for fundraising. The School also recognizes the “constant tension facing nonprofit organizations between using evaluation to learn and inform decision making versus using evaluation to prove to funders and other stakeholders that the organization is worth supporting.”
All the appeals and the hard work done by philanthropic organizations need such study.
The number of worthy causes may be limitless. But is there a more efficient way for the collectivity of organizations to raise funds?
Once upon a time, local organizations sought support through the United Way or a similar entity. Today that pathway seems to be less traveled.
Some local chapters solicit through their national or regional agencies. But we, the donors, may want funds going to specific geographic areas. The same applies to more generic causes where forests may have favor over wetlands within the environmental catalog of concerns.
Let’s hope schools of philanthropy deliver recommendations on fund raising that offer fewer calendars and fewer appeals with better consequences for these necessary organizations.