Observations on charities

When it comes to charitable donations, supporters of the various political parties conform firmly to stereotype. Those living in Labour constituencies tend to donate to causes that support human rights, help the homeless or conduct research into cancer or Aids. Voters in Conservative areas are in the fluffy and cuddly camp, supporting animal welfare groups and wildlife protection societies. And the Lib Dems? They suffer from "a lack of conviction" about which charities they should support.

We know all this thanks to Occam Direct Marketing, which carried out the research on behalf of charities. We may still think of charities as comprising quaint, church-going folk who give up their Saturdays to write letters asking each of us individually for a kind donation. In reality, charity today is an industry, a cold, hard marketing machine. If some charities continue to act up the quaint image, it is only because market research tells them that that's how to get more cash out of us.

Just as the charity sector is growing - receiving more than £7bn in donations last year - so a whole sub-industry of charity marketing consultants has emerged alongside it. Third Sector, the trade magazine for charity staff, is stuffed with ads for fundraising advisers, marketing consultants and donor research outfits.

Charity fundraising professionals pay thousands of pounds of donors' money to get their hands on the latest statistics, giving trends and donor profiles.

In the past month alone, research has revealed that TV watchers tend to donate £126 a year to charity, compared with the average £86; that women give £13.57 per month to charity, a whole pound more than men; that people who give to children's organisations are "promiscuous", slipping cash to all manner of other charities, too; and that donors to third-world development also help the homeless. One in three people never gives to charity, but as a nation we continue to give as much as we did two years ago, despite the threat of economic downturn.

To the tabloids, such figures make quirky news-in-briefs. But among charity fundraisers, the numbers, tables and projections inspire foaming at the mouth. Fundraisers live in a strange world of impenetrable slang, involving donor pools, elite givers, high-value participants and active or lapsed reciprocals. The government's Giving Campaign, which aims to encourage people to volunteer or donate more, has just released a report called The Physics of Fundraising: releasing supporters' potential energy. Whatever these terms mean, the result is that Guardian readers get Amnesty International leaflets dropping out of their paper, while the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds puts flyers in the Telegraph.

Yet many charity workers still prefer good old stereotyping. "Does our charity do enough for Ethel?" the communications department in one disability charity always asks - Ethel being the typical grouchy old lady who always complains if she receives too many mailings or not enough mailings, or finds the supporter magazine a bit too risque. A group I worked for still plans campaigns not according to detailed market research or donor promiscuity tables, but by imagining what the man at Marks & Spencer would think about each new idea.

For all the corporatisation of char- ity marketing, with its text-message donations and "press the red button on your remote" awareness campaigns, the oldest methods are still favoured. And they remain the most effective.

We know this because more research tells us so. A joint report published in August by the Charities Aid Foundation and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations showed that most of us still prefer to shove grubby spare change into a tin that is being rattled in front of us.

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