Ending Charity Fraud, Misrepresentation, and Bad Practices
By Brendan Read In defense of CDG and other teleservices firms, and their charity clientele, while the returns seem low there are huge costs—mainly labor--in managing outbound fundraising campaigns. While these companies can significantly lower the expenses and increase the haul such as with offshoring and more autodialing do existing and prospective donors, and clients want that? Charities point out, correctly, that what they have left over is more than what they had before their campaigns. Chuck Hurley, chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving told the Long Island Business News, in a story published Oct.10, 2008, that MADD national tried more 'down-home methods of fundraising', but they failed. MADD national in 2005 lost money on golf tournaments, made a mere $585 after expenses on walking, running and biking events and earned only $326 on dinners and luncheons. “’If you think it’s easy to raise money for a nonprofit organization, even one as important as MADD, you're new to this,’” said Hurley. Yet charities run the risk of losing credibility with donors and the public with such campaigns. If the misrepresentations and low takes continue and if the telemarketers annoy people with too many live agent or autodialed calls, they could face legislated restrictions on their fine efforts. Just like what happened with commercial telemarketers. To prevent that from happening with charities there needs to be reform of telemarketed fundraising. There should be a combination of stiffer and aggressively enforced laws and penalties to reflect the vileness of the fraud, ways to remove the temptation of misrepresentation, and a review of practices to increase returns while maintaining a viable teleservices industry. To make these changes happen organizations such as the American Teleservices Association, the Direct Marketing Association, and the Canadian Marketing Association and the charities need to step up to the (collection) plate to come up with best practices that become standards that in turn form the basis of laws. It is in their best interests, and the public’s to create a feasible consensus solution set that the lawmakers and regulators can support and put in place. By making worthy causes more worthy to donate and by sending and at the same time delivering a tough message to those parasites that infect and abuse individuals’ good nature as unwitting hosts, more people and organizations can get the help they need. This is the least we can do for those who have and continue to serve us and who try to make our world a better place. CIS CIS Magazine Table of Contents |