An end to the age of spin, hopefully.

The banking debacle, and some of the spin put out by their PR and communications people has been nothing short of jaw dropping. Rather than apathy or cynicism their continued protestations have been creating outright anger. I’ve been seeing the same thing with lame government excuses and justifications for the mess the economy is in. Rather than a simple shrug of the shoulders many people are genuinely appalled.

Perhaps the most bizarre recent example of spin I’ve seen was from a US company who called their latest round of job cuts ‘career upgrades’ for those poor souls losing their livelihoods. They pitched it as an ‘opportunity to expand their career experience with new and exciting organisations elsewhere’.

It is very hard not to write a series of expletives at this point.

I think people have had enough, enough of being treated like idiots, being given messages with no meaning and of being fed a ton of cobblers masquerading as the truth.

Applying this to our world of fundraising I detect a similar trend emerging. People are sick of gimmicks, of window dressing and of false or misleading claims. Supporters don’t want to be spoken down to, patronised or fed the same corporate line. What they do want is something of substance, something real, something tangible. They want the detail, they want the information, they want the facts.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if your mobile phone company told you that the new model actually had a better battery life, more free minutes and a faster web connection rather than making some spurious claim that it will improve your life in new and exciting ways. It’s a phone, get over it.

Fundraisers who let their donors know the need for funds, in no nonsense terms, are likely to find that they generate a much better response than those who use spin to cloud the issue. The world does not need more spin, what it needs is truth and clarity. And that applies equally to fundraising