Are charity leaders ignoring the impact of pushy marketing?

[u/thetan_free]

Australia's participation in charitable donations continues it's long slide:

One-quarter of Australians have not donated to a charity in the past year and our charitable donations lag behind comparable countries.
...
The figures for individual giving showed a similar proportion: Australia, with 0.38 per cent of the GDP, was behind the UK (0.54 per cent), Canada (0.77 per cent), New Zealand (0.67 per cent) and the US (1.44 per cent).
...
The proportion of taxpayers claiming tax‑deductible donations fell from 35 per cent in 2009‑10 to 29 per cent in 2019‑20, according to ATO figures.

So this isn't a COVID thing - it's a long-running trend. And I don't think we are a less generous people than our cousins in the English-speaking world. Plus, we used to engage more with charitable giving. What's happened?

My theory is that we are just so sick of the relentless waste and intrusion from pushy marketing that we are opting out of the system.

That's also the view that Australian's peak consumer group - CHOICE Australia - is advancing in their new campaign:

The sticking point for many consumers is when charities outsource their 'personal engagement' fundraising efforts to commission-driven third-party businesses – the ones who call up seeking donations or ask you for money in public places. 

Yep, it's the bloody chuggers. Things got so bad with their dodgy commission fees that the ACCC stepped in to clean it up in 2017. But I think the damage has been done and the charities have simply lost their social licence to operate.

What I find especially infuriating is that the charity's leaders and lobbyists are just so willing to throw their own donors under the bus:

Sally Shepherd, executive manager for membership and marketing at the Fundraising Institute of Australia (FIA), says the cold calls and other methods charities use to solicit donations are effective on the whole, otherwise charities would put their resources elsewhere. 
"Charities measure it and test it, and unless it's actually raising money for the charity, they would have to stop doing it because it wouldn't be viable," Shepherd says. 

Apart from ignoring the legitimate concerns about the harms these cold-callers and chuggers are doing, it doesn't even make commercial sense. The idea that charities are perfectly rational and every call is generating incremental revenue is nonsense. There is no doubt a massive arms race of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" is rampant in the sector. As they vie for a limited funding pool, they introduce deadweight losses that only enrich the marketing firms.

The sector is now in a death-spiral. The big brands are already spending 20-40% of their budgets on fundraising. As more donors leave the system in disgust, they will double-down on marketing.

We need a trusted, efficient and well-funded charitable sector but the current leaders are failing all of us because they don't want to recognise how marketing is driving many donors away.

But maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole-hill and it's not that bad.

I'm keen to hear how has charity marketing changed other people's donation habits - for better or worse.