When Setting Fundraising Goals, are You Thinking about the Precariat?

Are you a member of the precariat?

If not, you likely know someone who is.

The precariat is a new word (to me, at least) that describes the millions of Canadians who are feeling economically precarious about life these days.

These are people who are walking an economic tightrope, who fear for their financial security. 

They are students, wondering if their university educations will actually land them jobs.

They are factory workers, wondering if their jobs will be out-sourced and off-shored to places where people work for much cheaper wages.

They are seniors, wondering if they will have enough money to enjoy their “golden years.”

They are freelancers—writers, designers, artists and more.

They are part-time workers, trying to make a living out of two or three different minimum wage jobs—since part time work (without benefits) is all they can get.

They are professionals who see rapid advances in technology threatening their employment, or who are only able to get contract work.

As Guy Standing, a professor of economics and development studies at the University of London and author of The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011), put it:

“There is a new class whose voice will soon be at the centre of Canadian life. It is the precariat, the growing mass of Canadians who are in precarious work, precarious housing and hold precarious citizenship: the perpetual part-timers, the minimum-wagers, the temporary foreign workers, the grey-market domestics paid in cash, the young Canadians who will never have secure employment, the techno-impoverished whose piecemeal work has no office and no end, the seniors who struggle with dwindling benefits, the indigenous people who are kept outside, the single mothers without support, the cash labourers who have no savings, the generation for whom a pension and a retirement is neither available nor desired.”

The precariat, says Standing, may account for 40 percent of the adult population in Canada. In some countries, it is more; it is growing everywhere.

Why mention this in a blog about marketing and communications for non-profits? Because when non-profits set fundraising goals, they need to keep in mind the growing number of people who live in a state of precarity. 

Chances are they will tend not to give much to charity, if anything at all.

And who can blame them? If you aren’t sure you’ll have enough money at the end of the month, or for a house or car or retirement, one easy place to cut back is on charitable giving.

Even many boomers are feeling the effects of precarity. 

This is a group that was supposed to be a fundraiser's dream as they retired. But may of them feel precarious, too. 

This includes those who have loaned money to their precarious kids so they can buy homes. Others aren't seeing big returns on their investments, what with the rock-bottom interest rates.

The take-away? As non-profits look to the future, they will have take the precariat into consideration. 

So the next time your board or boss says they want to increase your fundraising goals, ask them: 

“Have you heard about the precariat?” 

Dave Toycen of World Vision on Telling Stories, Decline in Giving and Fundraising Costs

Dave Toycen has retired after 18 years as CEO of World Vision Canada. During his time, the organization saw its revenues rise to over $400 million a year. To what does he attribute that success? Telling stories.

That’s one of things he told the Globe and Mail during a recent interview.

Said Toycen: “The key element has been the way we engage the public. We believe that it is important to tell stories—to share the needs of the world through personal detail, and how you can make a difference.”

Of course, it helps that World Vision mostly tells stories about vulnerable children; who can resist? But his comments are still instructive. Story-telling is key to inspiring and motivating people to give.

Toycen’s comments about telling stories wasn’t the only thing that resonated with me from his interview. His comments about the state of the charitable sector were also right on.

“It is actually a much more challenging time for all of us, but especially larger NGOs,” he said. “There are 88,000 charities in Canada now, and the growth in numbers is putting pressure on all of us.”

That includes World Vision. Although the organization has seen considerable growth over the past number of years, that growth has slowed more recently.

Competition is one reason; another is a decline in charitable giving.

Although about 84 percent give to a charity of some sort, around 50 percent of those give less than $125 a year.

And why is that? One reason, said Toycen, is that people’s concerns “about the money they need, personally, are probably higher than ever before.”

A friend of mine who is a long-time fundraiser has coined the word “precarity” to describe how many Canadians feel financially today.

By that he means many people feel precarious about their economic situations. They may have jobs, but that could change—they could be downsized, the factory could close, their jobs could be transferred off-shore.

Plus, many Canadians are employed in part time jobs, or on contracts. If people are unsure about their financial security, there are implications for giving.

Toycen was also asked about social media? Isn’t that a solution?

Yes and no. Yes, he said, it engages many more people. But no, it hasn’t resulted in higher giving.

“The new technology has been effective in engagement, but not in actual fundraising,” he said. “People feel like they are doing something when they give us a ‘like’ on Facebook. But in the past, there was more willingness to make a a donation.”

Toycen also said out loud what all of us in fundraising know—it’s expensive to raise meony.

Back in the mid-1980s, when I started in non-profit communications and marketing, few church-related charitable groups employed fundraisers on staff. 

All we had to do was send out a letter to churches once or twice a year. The churches took offerings, and the money came in.

Those days are long gone.

Today, only a fraction of the dollars raised by church-related non-profit groups actually comes from churches. Most of it comes from individuals.

This is partly because many churches are struggling just to pay their own bills. Others are busy supporting local charities or ministries or sending money overseas to their own service projects.

Add in the decline in church attendance, and there is less money coming to church NGOs.

The result? Organizations need to target individuals. That means direct mail, e-mails, sophisticated databases and, yes, fundraisers.

Said Toycen: “It is costing more to reach people. You get smaller audiences now—in radio, TV or newspapers—but nobody is charging you less.”

At World Vision, they spend 20 percent on fundraising and administration. Other organizations are similar.

Again, this is different than when I started, when five to ten percent was normal.

Overall, it was an interesting interview. You can read it here. 

"If The News Is Important, It Will Find Me”

Earlier this year I spoke to a university class. I asked the 20 or so people in the room where they got their news.

Newspapers? (Online or in print.) Two or three.

Radio? A couple.

TV news? One brave soul put up her hand.

So if they didn’t get their news from traditional media outlets, where did they get it from?

Facebook, they replied.

My tiny poll confirmed what research is increasingly finding out on a wider scale: When it comes to news, many people learn about the world from social media.

According to the Pew Research Center, one in three Americans get their news through Facebook today.

This is why some of the largest media outlets in the U.S., such as the New York Times, recently struck an agreement with Facebook to host its news on that site.

Of course, people aren’t going to Facebook for news; they find it there while looking for something else.

"People go to Facebook to share personal moments — and they discover the news almost incidentally," says Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew.

And how do they do that?

The same way we all do: A friend posts a link and says: “Check this out!”

This is more than just a shift in the source of information. It also represents a profound shift in thinking.

Among the first to notice this was Jane Buckingham of Intelligence Group, a market research company.

As reported by the New YorkTimes in 2008, Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group on where people got their news.

A college student said: “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

Let that sink in a moment: If news is important, it will find me.

For the mainstream media, or for any non-profit group trying to share its messages, this is represents a reversal of how news dissemination has worked for a very long time.

Previously, people depended on experts to help them make sense of the world—to select the stories they thought people should see.

It was what’s known as a “push” strategy. A few individuals at the centre push information out to consumers.

Today we live in a “pull” world. People look for the information they want and discard the rest.

Of course, it was probably always this way; few people read everything an editor put into a magazine or newspaper.

But social media changes things dramatically. Instead of a few sources of information about the world, people have access to a multitude—including their friends.

Increasingly, that is the new filter being applied when deciding what to consider.

So instead of subscribing to a newspaper or newsletter, or watching a newscast, people check their Facebook feed to see what’s coming their way.

Their friends are the new editors, in other words, and they do the same for the people they know.

Again, it was always this way, whether around the campfire, the church foyer or talking over the backyard fence. Social media changes the scale.

For non-profit groups, this means using people (donors) to amplify and pass along their messages—being part of the social media conversation.

We can contribute to the conversation, and try to shape it, but in the end it’s what the audience decides is important that will get shared, and which others will finally see.

Because when it comes to making the news these days, many people don’t go looking for it. They wait for it to find them.

 Infographic at top from Daniel Zeevi.

When it Comes to International Development, Are We Nuts?

“Are we nuts?”

That’s what Hockey Night in Canada commentator Don Cherry asked in 2013 on Twitter after learning the Canadian government had sent tens of millions of dollars to Haiti.

"Maybe it's just me,” he wrote to his 118,000 followers. “But Canada gave Haiti 49.5 million dollars last year. Are we nuts?"

Cherry acknowledged that he, like most Canadians, wants to help people who are poor in the developing world.

But he asked if Canada can afford to do that when people in this country are hungry, homeless and in need of medical care.

"We've got a guy dying in Toronto waiting 3 hours for an ambulance," he Tweeted.

“We got people waiting 7, 8, 10 hours, if they're lucky, in a waiting room with one doctor for a zillion people.

We nickel and dime our doctors, nurses and veterans plus a million other services. Yet we can send almost 50 million to Haiti."

Through his Tweets—which received extensive media attention—Cherry asked the question that is on the minds of millions of Canadians.

Why do we send money to other countries when there are so many needs right here?

It’s an important question, and one that deserves an answer.

Unfortunately, those of us who work for international NGOs often don’t spend enough time developing a response.

We do spend a lot of time planning various communications strategies. We create talking points and messages about MDGs and SDGs, about the causes of poverty, the effect of climate change, the Istanbul Principles for CSO effectiveness, and many other topics.

All important—but that's not what the public usually wants to know.

Their concerns and questions are simpler, and more basic, and just as important.

So it’s good that someone like Don Cherry comes along to remind us.

So: “Are we nuts?”

Does anyone have an answer?