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Direct debit cancellations 'skyrocketing'
By Hannah Jordan, Third Sector, 10 March 2009
Regular donations cut as consumers rein in spending
Cancellations of direct debits to charities rose sharply in 2008, according to a report by the payment processing firm Rapidata.
The Charity Direct Debit Tracking Report 2009, published today, shows an increase in cancellations of direct debits to charities in December 2008 of 67 per cent on the average December figure since 2003.
In July last year there was a 54 per cent increase on the average July level for the same five-year period.
The figures contrast with a steady decline in cancellations of charity direct debits between April 2003 and July 2007. Scott Gray, managing director of Rapidata, said the decline stopped abruptly after the collapse of Northern Rock. "Cancellations skyrocketed last summer," he said.
He said charities might have to shift their focus from donor acquisition to donor retention. "Charities need to take steps to reactivate the donors they have lost and, more importantly, prevent donors from cancelling in the first place," he said.
He said it was difficult to predict what would happen in the coming year, or when cancellations might return to pre-recession levels.
The report also suggests ways for fundraisers to discourage cancellations, such as offering donors lower giving levels or 'payment holidays'.
The NSPCC, which gets a third of its income from regular giving, reported an increase in cancellation rates for payments through direct debits of about 14 per cent last year.
A spokeswoman said: "We are naturally anxious to retain all those generous people who donate, and we do our best to persuade them to stay with us, even if it means reducing the monthly amount they give."
Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of the Institute of Fundraising, said the Rapidata report provided useful and practical tips and was a benchmark for fundraisers to compare their own figures against.
But the main percentage increases looked more dramatic than they probably were, he said.
Rapidata processes an average of four million charitable direct debit payments a year.
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Mike Ellis, 10 March 2009, 11:54
Let’s call a spade a spade shall we? For starters the NSPCC are already funded by the tax payer via government funds and in the guise of charity are little more than part and parcel of a Nanny State in the making made up of Closed Family Courts, Social Services, Cafcass and they themselves the NSPCC. Suffice to say their State given power goes far beyond what is norm for any charity and as such they have been given licence to involve themselves and have open access to family data the like of which can only be seen as the undermining of the Human Rights Act and UN Convention on the Rights of the Children, add to this the recent press release indicating that the NSPCC will soon have access to a database full of details including their medical files etc on every child under the age of 18 and its not hard to see just where this is leading too. And if this is not enough they have now been appointed as overseers of an inquiry in Glamorgan involving their bedfellows the Social Services and a child abuse case, yes bedfellows they are and one used as a referral agency to the already public funded Social Services. Also as is little known by the general public and those who give donations is the reality that a portion of all donations is spent on so-called rehabilitating sex offenders many of whom are on the sex offenders register. So, from where I come from charity begins at home and there is more happiness in giving than receiving, never should it be a money making business the like of which brings in an estimated 200 million pounds per year and yet still they plead poverty!!
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