The day I tried to give to charity... and the follow-up call which proves no good deed will go unpunished
ON Sunday night, like hundreds of thousands of others, I was sitting in front of the fire with a glass of wine to hand as I watched the latest shenanigans on I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. It’s my favourite reality TV show, perhaps because it’s on at a time of year when we’re all winding down and looking forward to a season of plenty.
It is classic schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the pain of others when the celebrities, many of whom stretch the definition to breaking point, have their pomposity punctured as they are forced to lie in coffins with snakes and rats, or have thousands of cockroaches dumped on their heads, or bite into kangaroo testicles.
Starving
This time, though, actual reality intruded, and it was sobering. During the break, there was an advertisement for the Médicins Sans Frontières Yemen Appeal. The civil war that broke out there in January 2016 after five years of general unrest has left over 56,000 people dead and 17 million starving, and the advertisement graphically showed the effect it has had, particularly on children.
MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, is a wonderful charity that sends medical staff into countries ravaged by war, famine and natural disaster. In any given year, around 30,000 personnel – not just doctors and nurses, but also engineers and water and sanitation experts – are active in more than 70 countries, and this work was recognised in 1999 when the organisation won the Nobel Peace Prize.
So when the ad asked for a donation of €4, I admit to feeling guilt. As I surveyed a cosy living room with a blazing fire, the massive television set I treated myself to a couple of years ago, and the nice bottle of Spanish red that cost three times the four quid requested, I reached for my phone and messaged the number on screen.
There was a time when this was a simple process and you received a text in return thanking you for your donation and explaining it would appear on your next phone bill. Alas, not anymore. When the text came back, it appeared under a similar one from Sightsavers, to which I donated in September. ‘Hi!’ it began cheerily. ‘We’ll call you shortly to take your donation. With your help, MSF can provide medical care where we’re needed most.’ Just as, three months ago, the Sightsavers message read: ‘Hi! With your help, Sightsavers can ensure no child goes needlessly blind.’
What happens next is the annoying part. A day or so elapses and you get that phone call, from a call centre that operates on behalf of all the charities, and this is where it crosses the line into something different. It is a business.
By donating in the first place, you have demonstrated a willingness to help, to be charitable, to care. It also might make you seem like a soft touch, because the caller then tries to extract more money than the €4 you expected to donate. You i mmediately are under pressure to commit to monthly payments by direct debit and, when you demur, you feel lousy and mean. An act motivated by empathy and concern is sullied, and you’re left feeling as if somehow you’re a bad person rather than a kind one.
Important
I tweeted about this and found myself far from alone. One man said a charity phoned his wife every Saturday looking for her to set up a monthly debit, and she eventually had to block it completely. Some years ago, I donated to a multiple sclerosis charity and was cold-called for two years afterwards despite demanding my number be removed from the database. Only when I threatened them with the Charities Regulator did the calls eventually cease.
Another friend made a very valid point, saying: ‘Ultimately, I think they lose out because I don’t make the donation when I see they will call you back, and I’m sure many others feel the same.’
She’s absolutely right. It’s horribly offputting, not least because when I was called about my MSF donation, I was in the middle of something important and had to ask to be called back another day instead. When that call came, I was firm and said I wanted to make the one-off donation of €4 only and didn’t want any spiel. Then I was asked for my credit card details, and the first line of my address, and I just thought, no, I’m not doing it this way. They would only add me to another database and I would get calls for years, so I said I’d donate online instead. There, at least, I can tick a box saying I want no follow-ups, a request they now must comply with thanks to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
Pardon
But while that will work, what about those people who endlessly knock at your door, ask for a minute of your time, detail by rote the work of charities with which you already are familiar, and again try to sign you up to monthly debits? I explained to one of these people that I had three charities I already supported regularly, which is true, and did not want to commit to a fourth.
‘What charities are they?’ he asked. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I said.
‘The charities – which ones are they?’ Well, the red mist descended. ‘The very second that becomes any of your business, I promise you’ll be the first to know,’ I said, then felt bad for an hour for being rude, because charity is supposed to begin at home, not end there with a slammed door.
As it happens, MSF saw my tweet and responded, saying: ‘Hi Philip, thanks for your feedback and for thinking of helping our work. When supporters receive a callback, there are several options available, including making a one-off donation. We rely entirely on the generosity of our supporters to do our work.’
But, you see, in that ‘there are several options available’ lies the problem. If the ad said ‘text 50300 to find out how you can help’, that would be fine, but when it says ‘text 50300 to donate €4’, that is all I expect to do. Why is that so hard to understand? Why can’t the money just go onto my phone bill and be done with it?
Charities here have struggled in recent years to overcome the fallout from scandals involving poor governance, personal enrichment and misuse of funds, so the last thing I expect is to be shaken down, and have my willingness to give result in me being guilt-tripped into giving more.
I understand why charities want to concentrate on the work on the ground and leave the collection of money to private companies, but I still would like to know how much of my donation is swallowed up by the agent.
Of course, none of this should result in the sort of retaliation that would leave the children of Yemen sick and starving. I committed to giving, and give I did. I cut out the middle man, went on the MSF website and, yes, I increased that €4 to a tenner. That’s what I’ll do from now on because when I text in good faith I expect to make the donation requested, rather than being made to f eel that – as American dramatist Clare Boothe Luce so brilliantly put it – ‘no good deed goes unpunished’.