Why are we donating stuffy old teddy bears, but not money?

The refugee crisis is bringing out the best in many people. Concerned citizens donate boxes full of old blankets, old toys, and warm woolen socks to local refugee shelters. Their generosity has even reached the extent that the city of Amsterdam has tweeted the request to no longer bring goods to some of their refugee shelters.

Charity organization Red Cross has also been occupied with helping refugees in numerous places, but in order for them to do their work, they need donations in the form of money. And that is currently lacking, says Red Cross director of The Netherlands Gijs de Vries.

Unfavorable coverage
Why are so many people donating supplies and time to the refugee crisis, while large charity organizations are struggling to get funding? A reason might be that charity organizations have received much unfavorable media coverage in the past years. Nature preservation organization Natuurmonumenten was recently criticized for not mentioning bonuses in their year report, and several charity organizations, among which Greenpeace, were asked to explain why they had offices on prime locations in Amsterdam. Therefore, many people have doubts about what their donations are spent on.

On top of all this negative coverage, another unfortunate article appeared this weekend, when Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant printed an article with the headline ‘Goede doelen willen af van discussie over kosten’ (‘charity organizations want to stop discussion about costs’). The article stated that charity organizations want to instate new rules, in which there would no longer be a ‘kostennorm’, the norm that states that organizations can only spend up to 25% of their funds on getting new donations. In the new rules, charity organizations can decide themselves how much they spend on attracting more donations, as long as the amount is ‘reasonable’ compared to their achievements. Achievements will no longer be viewed in terms of money, but in, for example, square kilometres of rainforest saved, or infants vaccinated.

As expected, many people reacted upset to this article. These are a few examples of comments posted under the article on nu.nl. Pay extra attention to the first comment ;). 

The coverage of these proposed new rules is promising to be yet another PR disaster for charity organization that were already struggling. Admittedly, the announcement of these new rules does seem odd, especially in the light of recent scandals in which the media scrutinized charity organizations for their finances. But is this fair?

Improving the old system
The proposed new rules state that spendings on attracting new donations have to be in a ‘reasonable’ proportion to the organizations achievements. In this new system, achievements will not be measured in terms of money spent on certain causes, such as education, but in more concrete ways. The amount of children that received education due to this charity organization, for example. These new rules are a response to the current system, which provides guidelines mainly in terms of money. An important rule is that a maximum of 25% of the income of charity organizations is to be spent on increasing donations. However, this system is very susceptible to creative accounting, in which charity organizations shift expenses around. For example, when sending a mailing to potential charitable givers about the work an organization does, the costs can be categorized as awareness instead of attracting donations, as long as there is no bank account number mentioned. Therefore, the year reports charity organizations are required to publish are not always what they seem, and make it difficult to see what an organization has been doing with its donations. By requiring concrete achievements, organizations hope to increase their credibility.

Unfortunately, the opposite has happened. By the media mainly picking up on charity organizations wanting to abolish the norm for spendings on increasing donations, the responses are skeptical and upset. While the proposed new rules are not final and are supposed to start a discussion (instead of end it, as the headline of the article of de Volkskrant suggests) in politics and among givers, the resulting discussion so far has portrayed charity organizations as untrustworthy, and the proposed new rules as ‘’bedacht door een pr medewerker’’ (‘’thought up by a pr employee’’). Sadly, this negative image had already affected many organizations, and is likely to only increase.

What do you think? Do charity organizations really have such a negative image? If so, is there anything they can do about it? As a PR professional of a charity organization, how would you explain these new rules, and how would you communicate this?

Read more about the proposed new norms here (in Dutch). 

Lotte van der Sijs