UNICEF Ends “Hunger Porn” Fundraising–and So Should We

“You won’t see those dead or dying children in UNICEF’s campaigns.  In Africa’s Sahel, where a terrible famine is just starting, UNICEF has broken old habits by not depicting the dying.  First, says [Anthony] Lake, [UNICEF's director since 2010] ‘It’s exploitative.  Even children one day old have the same right to privacy that we would want if we were dying.’  Moreover, though: showing those pictures doesn’t work.  Lake says, ‘….If you, over a generation and more, keep showing those images, then many simply say, “Well, it’s happening again, I’ve been sending all this money and yet they still seem to be dying.”‘  Lake’s own experiences have pointed him to a better way.  In Chad recently he walked into a tent full of severely malnourished children.  ‘And it was clear to me: a number of these children were going to be dead within a day or two.  I stayed with them a while, and talked to their parents, and then I went to the next tent–which held the children who’d been in the first tent a week ago.  They were still in a tough state, but were sitting up etcetera.  I talked to the parents of one, and their little daughter’s name was Fatima, and I was inspired to do all I could for her in part because I was so d–ned curious to know–and I’ll never know–where Fatima was going to be 20 years from now.’  UNICEF now uses pictures of recovering children.”

“How Aid Got Smarter,” Simon Kuper’s “Opening Shot” column of May 19/20, 2012, Financial Times (London), emphases mine

A lot of our clients over the past quarter-century we’ve consulted to nonprofits in fundraising ask why they shouldn’t use terrifying or saddening “crisis” photos and language in their social media, email, or postal mail fundraising.  This post explains why.  One of the longest-standing users of this tactic (which we have heard called “hunger porn”) used to be UNICEF.  No more.  And if UNICEF can stop it, so can we–for the same reasons: it doesn’t work.  It doesn’t work to portray anyone’s suffering as never-ending or defining of who they are.  And it doesn’t work because donors don’t “get” it the way fundraisers want them to “get” it!

Donors “get” hope.  Donors “get” positive solutions, even partial ones expressed with faith and love.  Make sure you give it to them.  Give them hope, and they will return over and over.