Ken Burnett, one of the founding fathers of charity direct marketing, has claimed that charities should aim to generate at least 3,000 complaints in fundraising campaigns in order to make more impact.
Speaking at an Institute of Fundraising National Convention, Burnett told delegates: “The more complaints we have, the more impact. Complainers care. We should be looking for 3,000 complaints or even more.”
Fundraisers were using more and more “daft statements”, he said. For example, they sometimes admitted a campaign had failed to bring in money, but argued it had succeeded because it had raised awareness.
Burnett said fundraisers also needed to have better conversations with donors and should have zero tolerance of poor donor service.
Adding that fundraising today was “a deeply shallow profession”, he continued: “The stupidest question in fundraising is asking what level of donor service we should provide. The answer should be ‘what we would want if we were a donor?'”
In the early Eighties, Burnett founded Burnett Associates, one of the first agencies which specialised exclusively in the charity sector. For two decades Burnett Associates was credited with producing original, donor-focused and effective communications campaigns. The agency relaunched as Lion at the tail end of the Nineties, but re-emerged as Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw after falling into financial difficulties. Burnett set up again as Burnett Works, but left in about 2005 and now works as a consultant.
The words “Completely ” and “out of touch”, spring to mind