Bewildering fundraising rules – again
I’m just checking my email after a busy weekend. The sun is shining and it’s a beautiful spring day so I’m chuckling rather than ranting at the email notice I received:
You may remember that I wrote in October about my attempt a few months before to get this gift of a microloan shifted directly into a donation to KIVA’s general fund. KIVA was simply unwilling to do that, preferring instead to let this money remain unused for ONE FULL YEAR until their arbitrary deadline expired, despite my attempts to have them do otherwise.
You can read the story here: Do your fundraising rules bedevil your donors?
I guess their customer service department also forgot to annotate my account noting the correspondence we had previously. By failing to pay any attention to my past history with them, KIVA has now given me a new reason to remember the frustration I had almost forgotten.
Luckily May 8th will soon be upon us and the KIVA tale will end.
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Unfortunately, don’t we all have stories like that? With all our talk these days of honoring donor-intent and being donor-centered it’s amazing that these things still happen. I wonder if it was an issue with their database, with an un-flexible policy or with a customer service rep who didn’t know what to do so chose to ignore the request. Glad that your tale will soon be over!
This really stinks. And unfortunately, it’s all too common. Too many fundraising systems are set up in a way that is too rigid and there aren’t enough people paying attention to individual donors.
Sorry you’ve had this experience Gayle, but thanks for using it as a learning opportunity for others.
Sandy Rees
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