Get the message right and your supporters will 'opt-in'.

There’s the old joke about the man shipwrecked on a desert island who tells his fellow survivors not to panic. The charity he gives money to, he explains, is bound to find him sooner or later.

More recently though media stories about the sector’s propensity to track down supporters have been no joking matter. Probably the most notorious case is that of Olive Cooke, the 92 year old poppy seller who, it was claimed, killed herself after being hounded by charities writing to her and cold-calling. Long after the media pack moved on it emerged that there were other reasons for Mrs Cooke taking her life, but the damage was done.

Of course the story found fertile ground because of the experiences of many of the public. The prevalence of charity ‘chuggers’ on the streets, stopping shoppers trying to negotiate high streets up and down the country has done little to burnish the reputation of charities, and nor have stories of well-paid charity executives, the Kids Company debacle or concerns about funds sent overseas funding extremism.

New guidelines introduced by the Institute of Fundraising include specific requirements around opt-outs and opt-ins in charity mailings, giving the public much clearer notification of their rights and the ability to prevent future mailings and marketing. First published in September, the changes require fundraisers to include statements clearly and prominently explaining how donors can opt out from receiving communications in the materials they send out.

Meanwhile the charity Save the Children revealed in written evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee that more than half of its supporters are now opting out of receiving future mailings after it changed the wording on its online forms.

With the advent of digital media, charities now have more ways than ever before to communicate with supporters, but abuses by some, even if exaggerated in the press, mean that everyone in the third sector will now see their wings clipped.

Ironically, the widely received wisdom is that charities should aim to increase their contacts with supporters; yes to ask for support sometimes, but also to update them on the impact of their donations, to tell them about campaigns and successes.

The challenge therefore has to be how to connect with supporters through powerful, emotive stories about the good work that attracted a donor’s interest in the first place, not just photo-ops of trustees or poorly framed accounts of recent news, however un-engaging the content.

Writing in his autobiography in 1901, Booker T Washington, a former slave who founded the Tuskegee Vocational Institute in Alabama, wrote of his fundraising credo, “Asking outright for money ... does not, as a rule, secure help. ... persons who possess sense enough to earn money have sense enough to know how to give it away, and the mere making known of the facts [about a charitable cause is] more effective than outright begging.”

In other words, the message is all.