Looking back over the past 6 months brings to mind two significant occurences that seem to point towards a major shift in charity activity in this country. These seem to be copying what is going on in the wider world and now we’re seeing the charity world follow suit.
The first of these was the launch of Totally Free Wills, a service to charities that provides an online completely free Will-writing service to both the charity and the donor. Significantly, the service has been designed to meet all the requirements of the Institute of Fundraising’s Legacy Fundraising Code of Practice. In doing so, the TFW service has levelled the playing field for all charities, so that no longer can the Big Boys say that they are the only ones to offer free (albeit paid for out of voluntary funds) Wills to everyone. Now the little players can offer the same service to their supporters too.
The second occurence was the recent announcement by BMyCharity that they were suspending all charges for using their online donations facility. This came just weeks after Virgin Money launched its online donations service at a greatly reduced percentage charge per donation. Again, it levels out the playing field so that any charity can now promote online donations, regardless of size.
This seismic shift will alter the face of fundraising and also create a much more competitive playing field amongst service providers.
It is interesting to see in this week’s charity press that JustGiving have recorded their best-ever profits. I wonder how they will respond to their two main competitors now undercutting them in the marketplace? I guess you have to balance cost with quality of service. The latter might be difficult to measure until Virgin Money have been running their service for a while. If people percieve BMyCharity’s service as being as good as JustGiving’s, then they could begin to migrate away from JG. It is fair to say that JG does have a good reputation for their service and the way they have developed this over the years, despite a major crash a few months ago.
To me it’s more a question of what will the public decide? With so much focus on transparency, Joe Public could conclude that when a service is provided free, why should charities use their donations to pay for services from other providers? JustGiving may not have any choice but to make significant changes to the way it charges, in order to keep itself in the game. We shall see.
One wonders what will be the next service that experiences a similar shift in costing? Will the Institute of Fundraising (and other high profile orgnaisations) start to offer training and conferences at affordable prices for small and local charities to access? Their regional groups already do this.
As Mr Dylan sang: “The times they are a changing!”
