It’s another Tuesday on Facebook. Scroll your feed, and you’ll see it: dog rescues, food banks, local causes all belting out the same refrain:

The drama is familiar. Emojis, heartstrings, and the weary phrase “every share helps.” It’s charity theatre at its best, and the curtain never comes down.

But here’s the plot twist nobody applauds:

When real, zero-cost, professionally managed help is offered, the standing ovation turns into a stampede for the exit.

The Art of Looking Helpless: Performative Fundraising 101

You’d think a charity’s goal is to solve its funding problem. You’d be wrong. For a certain breed, the real goal is to perform need look busy, look desperate, and keep donations trickling in just slow enough to keep the show running. Solve the problem? End the act? Unthinkable.

How does it work?

1. Publicly beg for help on every channel.

2. Ignore or reject any solution that involves less work, less drama, or actual, lasting improvement.

3. Repeat, and blame “scammers” for every offer, even from those who filtered you out of 150,000 charities to respond to your actual plea.

Inventive Excuses for Saying No to Impact Books

The reasons for rejection are always creative:

• “Too busy to try something new.”

• “Sounds like a scam, because it isn’t complicated enough.”

• “We only use what our volunteers make in Canva.”

• “We’re waiting for a grant (but meanwhile, please donate!).”

• “We don’t want to bother our supporters with something meaningful when a tombola will do.”

Yet, these same groups will happily pay a thousand quid to a “charity consultant” for a PDF press release or an “impact report” that nobody reads.

How I Filter the Performative from the Practical

Let’s be honest: not all funding appeals are equal. Some charities are “performative poor”, all show, no will to change. Others are the real deal: fighting, working, and open to support.

When I respond to an appeal, it’s never random spam. I filter. I check if you’re a serial shouter or if you authentically value support. If I’m in your inbox, it’s because you’ve publicly stated a need, and your record suggests you’re not just after pity clicks.

So, when you say “no thanks, we’re fine struggling,” what you’re really saying is:

Who Really Pays When You Say No?

There’s something quietly sinister about causes that put out a plea for help, then reject, ignore, or sidestep genuine offers of sustainable support.

Let’s not sugar-coat it:

When you turn away real, strategic solutions, you are not just choosing more work for your team. You are choosing to keep leaning on the same loyal donors, again and again, often at significant personal sacrifice to them.

Every time a cause chooses the performance of poverty over the resolution of need, it isn’t the charity that pays the price; it’s the supporters.

• The pensioner who skips a meal to send £10.

• The person who donates “just one more time” because they can’t bear to see another dog face hunger or maybe not get that vet's treatment

• The single mum who was going to get £20 of electricity, but gave you £10.

• The young volunteer who gives their time to help your cause, traipsing through town with a coin collection bucket while you check up on them from your Range Rover!

To repeatedly reject meaningful support, while continuing to pressure your community for handouts, is not just poor management, it’s morally indefensible. It’s the charity equivalent of running a never-ending fundraiser and never paying out the prize.

The Real Cost of Saying No

Not much, if you love a treadmill. But for causes genuinely running on fumes (the ones we seek to help), every rejection of honest help is an acceptance of more exhaustion, more last-minute appeals, more “awareness” events with no outcome.

Here’s the part nobody wants to admit: Many causes that say no to zero-cost, low-friction help later say yes to high-priced, high-friction “support.” They’ll pay for “book deals,” PR campaigns, or grant writing services, and get less than what was offered for free.

When the dust settles, they’re poorer, no further forward, and a little more cynical. All while continuing to live under a short-term survival mindset, it's sad! Meanwhile, the opportunity to create a sustainable, passive fundraiser, a book they can use for years, even as evidence in grant applications, is lost, like gont to the big charities, because they love money, and if someone comes along and says here's more of what you love the most, they will embrace it, then literally fritter away £50,000 on a 20 second TV advert. I wish smaller charities would, for the love of god, start loving the idea of income, as much as the big fish do, but with one notable difference: you stick to the core principles of your cause (rant over).

A Challenge to the Reader

If your organisation has ever posted a public appeal for help, and you receive a respectful, relevant offer in response, ask yourself:

• Are you saying no because you truly don’t need the help?

• Or are you saying no because it feels safer to stay where you are?

• Or are you saying no because you like to prey on the vulnerable and the poor?

Impact Books exists to make fundraising less exhausting and more sustainable. If you want to spend your weekends writing appeals and chasing one-off donations, that’s your choice. But if you genuinely want to break the cycle, maybe, just maybe, the answer to your plea is already in your inbox.

Ready to stop saying no to yes?

Visit writepublish.co.uk/impact-books and see for yourself.