Page 2220 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 August 2014
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organisation. Well, this afternoon I am going to detail, in part, the fundraising activities of the Greens. They run slick and deliberate fundraising operations. In fact, who knows, they may well even be better organised and more centralised than the other major parties. The Greens like to propagate a myth that they are a humble operation running on goodwill, the sale of the odd fair trade coffee and lamington drives. Well, it simply is not so, and they should be scrutinised like every other party is.
The Greens run a centralised online national database called CIVI, which deals with many aspects of their operation. Unfortunately, their professionalism was somewhat limited as they accidentally and temporarily published the procedures manual for the database and their fundraising online. The manual is riddled with screen shots, videos, support contact details and instructional text. There are many interesting components of this document. The Greens national fundraising procedure, as updated in April 2012, has an interesting section on donor recognition. It says:
It takes a lot of time and resources to generate donations, and unless we acknowledge our supporters appropriately, we run the risk of losing them … It is also important that people are recognised in a manner consistent with their level of giving.
This means that they owe some people more than they owe others. How the Greens would cry foul if such words were included in a Liberal Party document. The Greens have donor statuses including “lapsed”, “lapsing” and “never”. They also class people as major donors who have given $10,000-plus, high value donors, bequests and regular donors. It says:
All new regular donors should be contacted with a phone call from the home state. These are highly valuable gifts, as such, it is strongly advised that each state to develop a good relationship with them. Regular Donors should also be invited to supporter events, and should receive end of financial year thank you letters with combined receipts for the year. It’s also a good opportunity to give them a call and possibly uplift their regular contribution.
It goes on:
Those tagged as major donors are subject to specific approaches, eg. those up to $10k still get appeal approaches unless other conditions are specified. Those who donate over $10k only receive personal approaches.
Another interesting line is:
In general, we do not delete records unless they are spam, particularly if there is donation or membership data attached.
The database stipulates how often phone calls should be made to donors, such as every second or third donation. For people who donate above $1,500, the manual states that they should get an end of financial year thank you letter and supporter event invitations. It says:
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