As belief in the banking sector dwindled, confidence in charitable institutions rose. "The public might just trust a charity with its money before a bank," said Joe Saxton, co-founder of nfpSynergy, following a 2009 survey by the research consultancy showing that, while public trust in banks was down 9%, two-thirds of UK adults – 23% more than the previous year – had faith in charities.
Faced by an unusually sympathetic audience, NGOs had the perfect opportunity to effect a paradigm shift – away from reductive imagery of suffering children and the munificent giver/grateful receiver dynamic of traditional charity, and towards a more positive and nuanced portrayal of the development process, one that would help people understand and engage with development issues.
The British public has habitually shown generous support for emergency appeals and campaigns such as Live Aid and Make Poverty History, and the development sector has evolved accordingly, adopting a highly commercial approach to marketing and fundraising strategies. But the accent has always been on quantity rather than quality. But NGOs now had a chance to change that.
Sadly, the opportunity to reform from a position of strength was not taken. Two years on, Finding Frames, a detailed investigation of the British public's engagement with global poverty, trotted out a depressingly familiar refrain, its authors noting that "people in the UK understand and relate to global poverty no differently now than they did in the 1980s".
If anything, in fact, public perceptions have apparently become more negative. "The financial crisis and ensuing spending cuts have had a clear impact on public opinion, with recent polls showing that slim majorities now favour a reduction in UK aid spending," warned a report on public attitudes to aid and development published last summer by the Institute of Public Policy Research and the Overseas Development Institute.
The report also argued that "some of the communications and fundraising images NGOs and governments use may have contributed to public scepticism", adding that repeated portrayals of people living in desperate need has "created an impression that very little has changed over the past few decades".
A more positive image
One way of altering that impression might be to make the contribution of local actors and organisations more visible, shifting the focus away from the narrative of suffering and instead highlighting the efforts of people working to improve life in their communities.
According to Professor Charlie Beckett, head of the media and communications department at the London School of Economics, such an approach would promote a clearer understanding of how development works and what money donated by the public can achieve.
"If you want your donor publics to understand the process of development then you should be foregrounding local organisations and local actors much more," says Beckett.
"It's a strong message, because if you highlight local activists, you say, 'Look, we're not just frittering our money away by sending lovely middle-class girls called Tessa to go and dig wells, we're actually doing something much more sustainable, which is trying to get local people to help themselves.'
"It's the old give a man a fish business, which Oxfam and the others buy into – yet their communications message doesn't always highlight that that's what they're doing."
As Beckett acknowledges, that omission is largely down to an anxiety to maximise brand visibility for fundraising purposes. Yet highlighting complex realities can also serve commercial ends.
"Breaking it down and making the difference visible is always a powerful fundraising and engagement tactic," says Kathleen Enright, president of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, a US-based grant-making coalition.
Enright cites Heifer International's approach of gifting livestock, which enables donors to "picture a family in a rural village somewhere getting a flock of geese" rather than just putting money into "a big pot".
"If the goal is $1m, then my $50 feels like it just doesn't matter," says Enright. "But if the goal is one child, one family, one something, then people do feel a bit like they're making a difference. The broader campaign perspective, speaking with one voice, is helpful, but you also need to break it down for people and make them understand what their money can yield."
Could a similarly local emphasis work in the UK? "So much is about emotional triggers and trust that an organisation will do the right thing and spend donations wisely," says Gavin Ellison, consulting director of YouGov's public sector unit. "That trust is very often between a person and a very well-recognised charity. To take a step back and push forward a local organisation could be hard."
A more sophisticated message
There is also the question of how best to communicate more sophisticated messages, something for which respondents to the public attitudes to aid and development study expressed a clear appetite. Beckett believes this needn't be difficult.
"You can say, 'Here is Joe Bloggs, who works for X organisation that Oxfam supports; so here you are, these people are doing things for themselves,'" he argues. "That's not a very complicated thing to say, is it?"
Now would seem an opportune moment for NGOs to speak up. The latest research by nfpSynergy suggests public confidence in charities is at its highest level for three years. They have been urged to capitalise by communicating more effectively, and making local efforts more visible would be a good place to start.
"The positive – if you can get the message across – is that the sense of distance between the public donor and the charity spending the money could be reduced," says Ellison. "You're not just giving money to a big corporate brand, you're seeing where it's going in the end – to a local charity. It could be a real success."
