Professional Fundraising criticises lazy fundraising press releases
Howard Lake | 17 September 2004 | News
Professional Fundraising magazine diary columnist ‘The Raizer’ has criticised the lazy wording of many fundraising press releases sent to the magazine.
The Raizer is particularly annoyed by the frequent use of the phrase “vital funds”. Your charity needs vital funds? “Yeah, well,” she writes. “So does everyone else and we have their press releases to prove it.”
She offers a pro forma headline that UK Fundraising can confirm crops up in far too many fundraising press releases: “[Name of charity] holds/stages/runs [name of fundraising programme] to raise vital funds.”
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It’s not simply a matter of poor use of words, according to The Raizer. She argues that, given the definition of vital is “essential to maintain life”, then “if your charity won’t collapse if you don’t obtain these funds, then it wasn’t vital to get them in the first place.” As such, charities who misuse this word “are not being totally honest and transparent with the public.”
UK Fundraising receives a large number of press releases each week, and we rely on them for many of our news items. However, we have similar concerns with Professional Fundraising magazine. Too many press releases we receive from charities and fundraising agencies are poorly targeted, not genuinely newsworthy, poorly written, and sometimes formulaic.
So, given that news releases are important to us, here are some tips on how to get your news across in an effective manner:
- only send us news about fundraising or of interest to fundraisers – we don’t cover all charity/voluntary sector news
- do include a relevant Web address. If the news release is from a PR agency, please include the Web address of the charity about which you are writing.
- please don’t ring us up to ask if we have published a news item. Look at our Web site, or search it, and you’ll find out. It’s free to access, and available 24 hours a day. We’re not a paper publication that you have to wait for a week or two before you know if you’ve been featured.
- we’re an online-only publication, so please e-mail us news items. We really don’t enjoy receiving paper news releases, and certainly don’t like them faxed to us. We love the PC’s cut and paste facilities – and if you insist on paper or fax you make cutting and pasting impossible.
- don’t spoil the impact of an e-mailed press release by sending a duplicate paper copy in the post a couple of days later. We get confused.
- when sending us a press release by e-mail, feel free to put the text in the body of the e-mail and/or as an attachment e.g. in Word.
- don’t just add our e-mail address to your standard press release distribution list so that we receive everything you send. Think about whether the press release is relevant to us and our audience.
- don’t send us too much. More than one news release a week from the same organisation and we start thinking that you’re stretching the definition of “newsworthy”.
- yes, you can send attachments such as photos. They can even be large files: we have broadband access, so we’re not too bothered.
- do make sure that photos you send are interesting: handing over an outsize cheque with smiling faces is, let’s face it, outdated and dull.
- we’re always looking for developments that are new or innovative. As a result, we tend not to cover the numerous fundraising events that happen each week – unless of course they are genuinely innovative. Sorry about that, events fundraisers.
- don’t puff up your news releases with hype: we know, like Professional Fundraising, that for many charities a particular appeal is not genuinely vital. Important, but not vital. Also, new initiatives are unlikely to raise millions of pounds, so please don’t tell us they will. In short, give us the facts and some background, rather than too much spin.
One final suggestion: as a fundraiser, do you read your PR department or agency’s news releases about your activities? You might be able to offer them some useful advice.
Well, thank goodness we’ve got that off our chests. We’re now going to share some of these thoughts with nfpSynergy’s latest Charity Media Monitor questionnaire.
And to all those good PR departments and agencies, do please keep sending us your material. You know who you are because you’re already following most or all of our guidelines – so thank you.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.