Why homes turn to professional fundraisers

IT WOULD be a gargantuan task for a small charitable home to raise RM10,000 every month through public donations.

Thus, when approached by a professional fundraiser with this promise, the home for children with special needs was more than happy to take on its services.

“We outsourced our fundraising to this professional fundraiser since last year and it has paid off well,” says the spokesman of the home located in Selangor.

Their collaboration appears quite simple. The professional fundraiser would get 50% of the total raised and would have to raise at least RM20,000 a month to keep the contract, said the spokesman.

To a question on whether the sales team had a police permit as required by law to go door-to-door soliciting for funds, the spokesman claims the sales team were his “ volunteers” using the permit issued to the charity home.

“The company or professional fundraiser supervises our volunteers,” he says of the set-up.

He adds that each of the “volunteers” would be paid for food and transport daily. The “supervisor” would also decide on how to remunerate the “volunteers”. The remuneration and money for transportation and food for the volunteers would be from the share of the professional fundraiser.

Besides raking in the money for the home, the spokesman also said the “volunteers” would also help to raise public awareness on the children's home.

The spokesman says that the home engaged the fundraiser for a project that took place from August to December last year. They are currently working on a project which began in January and would end in June.

There are numerous professional fundraisers which have made themselves indispensable to charitable organisations. Among the most established ones is Sharity Greetings (M) Sdn Bhd, a home-grown independent fundraiser that has made the festive greeting card business its niche.

Sharity, which was awarded Good Corporate Citizen Award 2006 by the Malaysia Canada Business Council is said to donate 25% of all net proceeds of greeting cards to their four charity partners: Majlis Kanser Nasional; World Wide Fund for Nature Malaysia; Kiwanis Down Syndrome; and Shelter Home for Children.

But there have been times when the recipient of the contribution ends with the wrong end of the stick.

Yayasan Sunbeams Home founder Pastor Alvin Tan says working with professional fundraisers had taught him a bitter lesson.

“We engaged one of them to organise a charity bazaar last year. They promised to sell coupons and organise the event for us. But we had to chip in 40% of the cost of organising the event to start the project.”

The final tally ended up with the home having to cough up money to the professional fundraiser for its services.

Since then, more than five companies have approached him to co-organise charity events in return for up to 70% of the total amount of money raised, says Tan. But he has turned them all down.

Tan also related a case of people who came to the home and took pictures, only to use them to solicit for funds later.

“We only discovered this when one of our committee members bumped into them in Kepong. They said they had donated in kind to the home using the funds collected. But we had never given permission to them to raise funds for us in the first place.

“They might have collected RM100 but gave us RM50. We do not want such help,” he said.

On donation boxes, Tan said a group of people had asked for the home's donation box to be put in a restaurant, opened by some Hong Kong celebrities in Petaling Jaya.

“We went there and saw people putting money into the box. We were later told that the box was stolen and that a police report had been made,” he says of the incident five years ago.

Beautiful Gate Foundation for the Disabled executive director Sia Siew Chin says the organisation had reservations in accepting offers from these “fundraising” companies to work together.

Relating her experiences working with other charitable organisations which engaged professional fundraisers, she says: “Some of them asked for 50% of the total amount raised. There was a company which asked for 70% of the total amount before the deduction of expenses.”

She said Beautiful Gate preferred to organise activities to raise funds with the help of its volunteers than pay for these fundraising companies though it meant a lot of work for her charity.

Source : http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/4/15/focus/17378688&sec=focus