Harold Sumption

Harold Walter Sumption
Born	(1916-11-26)November 26, 1916 Culmstock
Died	March 18, 1998(1998-03-18) (aged 81) London
Occupation(s)	Advertiser and fundraiser
Known for	Oxfam, Montreux International Direct Marketing Symposium, International Fundraising Workshop

Harold Sumption was an English adman and fundraiser. He was associated with a number of charities including Oxfam, Help the Aged and ActionAid.

A committed Quaker, in the 1940s he placed an advertisement in the Quaker journal The Friend seeking a charity to which he could contribute his advertising experience. Cecil Jackson-Cole of the small young charity then known as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief replied. His advice to Oxfam was instrumental making them the largest charity in the UK. But although he advised the charity for 35 years, serving as advertiser, council member, and board member, he was never on the organisation's payroll.

The advertising and fundraising campaigns he oversaw for Oxfam and other charities were unprecedented, leading to Sumption being variously described as "the father of modern-day fundraising", the "inventor of Marketing 1.0" and the "shy pioneer" who was "the biggest influence on a generation of British fundraisers"

Personal life

The son of a Devon farmer, Harold Sumption moved to London in the early 1930s to an apprenticeship at an advertising agency. He became a Quaker after accidentally finding himself at the Yearly Meeting at Friends House, thinking that he was attending a talk by Jomo Kenyatta.

In 1938 he married Ruth Burrows at the Friends meeting house in Wellington, Somerset. They had two children, Jennifer and Adrian, in the early 1940s.

During the Second World War he was a Conscientious objector, and suffered a severe return of the Tuberculosis that had infected him before the war. After 18 months in bed, in 1946 he undertook his first fundraising assignment: to raise the money for treatment in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. He proposed to the fledgling NHS that they pay towards this treatment whatever it would cost to treat him in London, as this would both free up a bed and in all likelihood lead to an earlier recovery. They accepted this proposal, which covered 33% of the sanatorium costs. The remainder he secured from the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium Fund and the National Advertising Benevolent Society.

Alongside his voluntary role as adviser to numerous charities, Sumption had a successful career in advertising, working for agencies including N. W. Ayer & Son and MWK. He was a fellow and council-member of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, one of the first two honorary fellows of the UK's Chartered Institute of Fundraising

Fundraising influence

An advert for Help the Aged, by Harold Sumption, with the text: "Make a blind man see £10"

Sumption's first advert for Oxfam, a direct appeal for clothing and blankets to be sent to victims of conflict in Europe and the Middle East, ran in the Sunday Times in 1949. At the time the charity world was sedate, dominated by a few affluent philanthropists, titled people, and the religiously motivated. Press advertising was infrequent, minimal, and inobtrusive, saying merely "this is us, give". His adverts, by contrast, were deliberately artless and crude, emphasising the need that existed and showing the donor how they could help meet that need. These adverts were shocking and iconic, and were carried on banners in Aldermaston marches and appeared in leftist plays.

Sumption pioneered many modern fundraising techniques, including the "off-the page" fundraising advert (one which asks the reader for a direct response); using keyed-response and A/B testing, to ensure that all creative executions and media placements were driven by results rather than personal opinion; expanding charity advertising into previously unused spaces such as books of stamps, novels, and free poster sites, and in 1963, to commemorate Oxfam's 21st birthday, he orchestrated the first multimedia charity campaign, Oxfam's "Hunger £ Million", which including the first charity concert (by the Beatles in Trafalgar Square).

His condensed his advice to those who followed him into fundraising into a number of aphorisms:

• The charity is the agent of the donor.
• Open their hearts, open their minds, then open their wallets.
• Present the need, powerfully, not to shock but to engage.
• People give to people, not to organisations, mission statements or strategies.
• People give more if they can relate directly to the practical result of their giving, and if they know exactly where their money is going.
• Clever copy doesn’t work.
• Fundraising is not about money. It’s about important work that needs doing. If you start by asking for money, you won’t get it and you won’t deserve it.
• Success produces congratulations. Need produces results.
• Produce ads that were made to look as if they had been put together by dedicated amateurs on the scullery table.
• Make public relations, press ads and direct mail all sing together.
• Those who give, give. Those that don’t, don’t.
• The most important two words are thank you. Acknowledge every donation with a friendly, personal letter. Give larger donors special treatment.
• Share your failures as well as your successes.
• A complainant, well handled, will be your most loyal donor.
• Read donors’ letters.