October 8, 1998 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Pressure tactics. Punishment. Persistence.
Those words may sound like suitable strategies to use against a recalcitrant foreign enemy, but Smart Money magazine (October) uses them to describe what it calls “the modern-day rules of engagement when it comes to fundraising.”
“Polite persuasion has been pushed, somewhat hurriedly, out the window,” the magazine declares in a story titled “An Embarrassment of Riches.”
“In its stead, a new type of fund raising has emerged — this one a full-contact sport.”
It isn’t direct-mail solicitations or annoying dinner-hour cold calls from anonymous fund raisers that Smart Money homes in on, but rather pitches from friends, relatives, neighbors, and colleagues who use their intimate connections as leverage to get money for their favorite charities.
“The truly aggressive pitches are coming from people who know you — everyone from close friends and business associates to long-lost college buddies and clients you’d like to impress, from occasional golfing partners to the next-door neighbor who’s always trimming the hedge to the fellow parent on the school committee who never seems to shut up,” says the article.
A practice that Smart Money rakes with especially sharp barbs is the solicitation of gifts from co-workers — notably by a boss seeking dollars from subordinates. “The simple fact is, if it’s your boss doing the hands-on fund raising, it’s hard not to hear that Latin whisper: quid pro quo,” the magazine says.
It tells the story of an Atlanta financial analyst who says top managers at his company repeatedly came to him looking for a donation to a United Way campaign.
“When you’ve got these influential high-risers hitting you up for money, there’s really only one thing you can do,” the analyst says, noting that at the time he was trying to pay off some big college loans. “I had to give these guys whatever they wanted.”
United Way of America spokesman Phil Jones disavows the tactic, telling Smart Money that “giving is a personal matter. No form of coercion is acceptable.”
