Comments

I don’t think annoying fundraising is to blame. Those fundraisers have always been quite annoying. Bounce back mailings to people who have just given a donation and plenty of appeal letters have been the norm for decades. The street canvassers are prolific because they are relatively successful in raising funds for organisations, even if at the same time they turn many people off. Fundraisers have always been faced with trying to get the balance right between leaving off and pestering, and they have found that not being pushy is a recipe for fewer and smaller donations. Perhaps this extra fundraising expenditure is like revving a car with its front pressed against a wall. More fuel is used, more noise is made but the car is not going anywhere. Maybe Australia has hit the wall with fundraising. We know that, despite media and politicians’ statements about our generosity, only a small amount is given by Australians in total to charities each year - around 0.3% of GNI (https://devpolicy.org/changes-in-donations-to-ngos-over-time-an-analysis-of-abs-data-20140313/;http://business.nab.com.au/nab-charitable-giving-index-indepth-report-12-months-to-august-2015-13518/;http://eprints.qut.edu.au/72596/1/Tax_stats_2011-12_Working_Paper_ACPNS_63.pdf). You could argue that this leaves a lot of room for expansion, but given that decades of fundraising have delivered no more than 0.3% of national income to charities then you would be a very optimistic fundraiser to think that this total could be lifted by a large amount. Perhaps more and more charities are fighting amongst themselves for a relatively small and fixed amount of money.

Like Simon, I also wonder about the efficacy of some of the methods used. For example, an NGO that I donated to last year constantly sends me paper mail outs. As someone who frequently has to use the services of professional printers in my job, I know the high cost of creating these things. Despite initially donating to this NGO online, at no stage have I ever been able to opt in to receiving digital spam instead, which frankly I'd probably be more likely to click on a donate link from, particularly if I could pay really quickly using something like Paypal. The mail outs often go straight from letterbox to recycling bin. The paper mail outs actually really annoy me. I agree with Simon that some of the methods need a big rethink, particularly if targeting younger donors. Also, the charity muggers at the shops are often so ill-informed about development, the NGO they are spruiking, or anything really. I mean, it's not surprising that would be a high turnover job, and I might not be the average donor given where I work, but I think younger people are well travelled and a lot more savvy about these things. Plus there is so much choice out there that if you have one annoying experience with an NGO (i.e. a particularly irritating charity spruiker at your local shops, mail outs that you don't want), it's pretty easy to support your chosen cause without choosing to support a charity that has mildly irritated you.

I am a development worker and have always set aside a portion of our annual earnings for charitable giving but I have to say Australian charities have become noticeably more aggressive and predatory in their marketing techniques. I expect part of the explanation for falling effectiveness of promotion is down to this. If you donate you are immediately sent another donation request and plagued by phone calls. Fundraisers reject one off donations wanting people to sign up to monthly deductions. You can't go to a supermarket without having to run the gauntlet. I think these techniques are backfiring. Some research and reflection is necessary if this problem is to be redressed.

Hi David, You may be interested to learn of a new operator serving Australia and New Zealand to the Solomon Islands. They will be covered in the next www.sendmoneypacific.org data collection in December and will then be listed on the website's comparison tables. There is information about their service in the Solomon Islands news section of the website. Best, Jonathan

Thanks Garth, And I definitely agree that form and environment of the question are important. Indeed, this is (hopefully) something I'm going to try and do some more work on (or at least trying to expose people to more information than can be contained in a simple question, in a form that they might expect to read it). Terence

I agree Terence that the omnibus response has some real world aspects to it. Just suggesting that the form and environment of the question can also be important factors in shaping the response and are worthy subjects of study also.

Truly African countries have greatly depended on foreign aid, this has some impacts to their economies and I can sternly answer Jo Spratt that in many African countries you realize that budgets are made with a side thought of "we will borrow money no worry". In such a situation failure to be lent money leads to economic degradation of a state. This may cause some inflation and even increases in prices in some of basic commodities which in return may not favour many of the countries citizens. Truly foreign aid has advantages and disadvantages but the disadvantages sideline the advantages.

Regarding cost of international transfers, here is an example from my experience. One agency situated in a particular Pacific Islands country donated USD 100K equivalent in the local currency to a development project involving partners in multiple regional countries. A USD bank account was set up in the host country of the project's organisation. The 100K in the local currency of the orginiating country was transmitted as a TT to this account. What arrived was 88K. So 12% or USD 12,000 was taken by the banking system in one transaction - in a matter of seconds. That is probably not a particularly extreme case.

I think that our country is bankrupted by the O'Neill government.....I feel sorry about the future of PNG.

Thanks Garth, The Kaiser link is particularly interesting. WRT omnibus surveys, it may be the case that "fitting an aid question into an omnibus survey between one on washing powder and one on election preferences is not likely to elicit a thoughtful response or one that they would give when seriously thinking about the human connections and ethics involved in aid". However, this (thinking about matters other than aid) is actually how the average Australian lives their lives, so my mind is going to provide accurate-enough information, at least with regards to how people currently feel. cheers Terence

Given we know that people are not very knowledgable about aid, underestimate its benefits and exaggerate its costs it is not surprising that giving them more information about aid in an interview tends to result in more positive responses (eg http://kff.org/global-health-policy/poll-finding/data-note-americans-views-on-the-u-s-role-in-global-health/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NWtAukUPIY). In addition fitting an aid question into an omnibus survey between one on washing powder and one on election preferences is not likely to elicit a thoughtful response or one that they would give when seriously thinking about the human connections and ethics involved in aid. As each survey is different it is hard to compare, but my understanding from reading lots of these surveys is that dedicated aid surveys tend to have more pro-aid results than one-off questions.

Thanks for the comment Jeremy. I wouldn’t place too much faith in the figures that the World Bank ($1trillion for bribery) and World Economic Forum ($2.6trillion for ‘corruption’) produce – because of the nature of corruption it’s almost impossible to put any real numbers to it. And because of this there are competing numbers about how big corruption is. Having said this I agree that corruption is a key problem for developing countries. Yes, the mishmash of topics, not only within SDG 16 but across all of the SDGs, is unfortunate and means that the SDGs will likely lack focus. I guess that is what you get when trying to increase ownership among such a long list of stakeholders. Personally I’d like to see a pared down version of the SDGs that focus on what I see as more central concerns, such as education, food security, economic poverty, etc. Rather than having a separate SDG, in my world corruption would be a key strategy for achieving these core aims. Unfortunately it is too late to reshape the SDGs themselves, but it is not too late to shape the indicators – particularly those given a grey status. Hence my blog. In terms of the SDGs ‘failing’ to address corruption, that will depend on 1. the validity of the indicators and 2. how we expect to these indicators to perform over time. And discussion around the latter has not yet happened, but need will need to once the indicators have been set. Thanks again for the thoughtful comments.