For a long time, if you wanted to support a good cause and help people in need, charities were the vehicle through which you did this. You donated money to charities, which then turned your donations into services to transform the lives of their beneficiaries.
Charities no longer uniquely occupy this pro-social space. Over the past 20 years, there has been a rise in the number of other actors who are cutting out and displacing ‘middleman’ charities from giving, asking for support and service delivery – a process known as ‘disintermediation’: Companies deliver services; crowdfunding platforms enable giving directly to people who want help. But what might surprise you is the number of ways that charities are losing control of their fundraising and donor stewardship.
This session presents a typology of disintermediation developed by the international fundraising think tank Rogare and Kingston University Business School in the UK, and then sets out the implications for charities, their fundraising, and their hallowed place in the civil society ecosystem. Because it turns out, people might not need charities at all to carry on feeling like they are changing the world.
