How not to court donors

I give to a charity, so today I was called by a pollster who appeared to have been commissioned by them. The best I could figure from the multitude of questions he asked me was that the organization is having an internal debate about whether to remain a charity or become a social advocacy organization, and wanted to find out whether they would lose donors. So they had this pollster read a whole bunch of statements about their activities, and I was supposed to rank them by their appeal.

“X organization is able to motivate governments to work to eliminate poverty,” he read.

“Really? They can do that?”

“That’s not what they want to know. They want to know how that statement would make you feel about giving to them.”

“Is that if I thought it was true?”

“Let’s assume that, yes.”

These sort of questions are hard to answer. I ended up giving almost all the statements a 5 out of 10, because I didn’t know if they were either true or possible. And after trying to rate this amalgam of truth and fantasy, I realized I don’t know enough about the organization to be donating to it anymore.

Sometimes the best strategy is just to leave well enough alone.

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