The Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation announced a plan yesterday to work with state attorneys general to improve telephone fundraising reporting.
The federation claimed that reports generated by several state attorneys general were misleading, unfair and alarmist. The federation recommended changes the attorneys general could make to their reporting to make it fairer.
Recommendations included:
· Get final figures before reporting campaign data.
· Distinguish campaign purpose.
· Present data in context.
· Display data under the name of the nonprofit and/or fundraiser, not by numerical listing or ranking.
· Let charities check the accuracy of reports.
· Do not use pejorative language.
· Exclude extraneous data.
· Refrain from issuing excerpted news releases.
“These misleading reports are unfair to nonprofits and only serve to engender mistrust in the eyes of the general public,” Senny Boone, executive director of the DMA Nonprofit Federation, said in a statement. “They can lead to unintended consequences that will harm nonprofits for years to come.”
